Painkiller: Hell Wars [Xbox]

It may happen slowly, but the Xbox is dying. Just admit it, and prepare to move on. Considering the console's "sooner or later" demise, we're almost tempted to soften our stance on games like Painkiller: Hell Wars. When there's less and less promising content to liven up the big black console, this simplistic shooter almost looks good. But in reality, Hell Wars is no more compelling than Serious Sam 2, or any other bog-standard shooter we've seen since Doom threw down the gauntlet.

Those who have been paying attention may remember Painkiller from 2004. It was the shooter in which a violent car crash ripped you from life, leading to the need to destroy hordes of demons in order to reunite with your wife in the afterlife. It had a cool stake gun that used Havok physics to send enemies flying head over heels and finally hang against a wall.

The Hell Wars subtitle makes this release sound like an expansion or sequel, but it's really just a port of the original and the PC expansion, making this a reduced quality Gold Edition. Exactly why this has been in development hell since 2004 is anyone's guess, but even on the fading Xbox, Hell Wars is too little, way too late.

The story and accompanying action are almost too simple for words. A few cutscenes will introduce vague characters, which tell you what to do, but the actual level design is purely straightforward. From one chapter to the next, the only tactic is to kill everything that moves, then proceed. It's amazing that this sort of approach is still considered workable, even when throwbacks and nostalgia are able to make a dent in the marketplace.

Predictably, the approach gets old fast. A few bones are thrown, like the tarot cards which can be earned, then burned to provide power-ups for the duration of a chapter. There are also destructible elements of the environment, but over time there's very little to distinguish one area from another. The locales are disjointed, and all drawn from the tried and true "dark shooter" rulebook.