In November of 2007, gamers were introduced to one of the Playstation Networks greatest releases, PAIN.  This game took all that was great about ragdoll physics based games like Burnout and gave us the best part...the crash.  Flinging various characters from a catapult and destroying buildings, signs, cars, etc. was never as much fun as here.

It’s just about a year later, and Idol Minds has just released the much anticipated “Expansion Area” with PAIN: Amusement Park, and they have left a little to be desired. 

Gamers are greeted with this introduction upon first opening the new area: “Uncle Jimmy’s Fun Spot, the indoor amusement park, has cleared up nearly half of its public safety violations and is now open for business!”  What a great hook line for this area, a perfect way to whet the appetites of fans looking for more mayhem, more destruction, more PAIN...Instead, after playing this new area for a while, you come to realize this is really just the same PAIN with a new package and a few new tricks.

The basic single player experience is still primarily the same.  You aim the newly designed catapult around the flashy, fast-moving environment of the Park and fire away trying to rack up hugely painful combos and score the most points.  The environment itself is very nice looking and there are tons of rides that you envision falling over, or blowing up, but in reality, the environmental damage seems less than the original Downtown area.  Rides don’t collapse, and there are plenty of places to get stuck with low scores in this new, multi-level arena.  There are also ways to cheat your way to bloated high scores, like landing a grab in the water ride at the right angle to spin yourself around in circles slowly accumulating points; or, grabbing hold of the bottom of one of the spinning rides and holding on for dear life as your score sky-rockets.  The area also doesn’t have the scope of Downtown.  Perhaps it’s the lack of buildings to jump over, or the enclosed horizon that plays an optical illusion, but the park seems smaller.

There are several new modes added to this expansion to freshen the gamers experience.

TRAUMA is the new HORSE.  In fact, it plays the exact same as HORSE except that you now have the added task of making your ragdoll flyer hurt the same body part as the challenger and score more points.  Clown Toss is really just Mime Toss with exploding barrels, and throwing the filthy clown seems less hysterical than throwing a French mime...maybe that’s just me.

There are two truly new game modes for the Amusement Park though, one in multiplayer (Call Da’ Shot), and one in single player (Hot N’ Cold). 

Call Da’ Shot is a step up from HORSE/TRAUMA that lets you challenge your friends to hit certain objects around the area in one shot.  There are point values attached to each item with things that are in one place being higher scores than things that are all around the park.  The fun in this mode comes from one-upsmanship.  You can challenge your friend to hit everything, but they have the ability to make you “eat it” and then you have to do it or they score the points. 

Hot N’ Cold was truly challenging, and addicting.  Strewn all around the park are hundreds of stuffed bears that explode on contact.  Hidden amongst them is your “Target Bear.”  The way to find the target is by sending your character flying at a random bear and score a “Hotter” or “Colder” score based on how close you got to the target.  After each launch you can view the overhead of the map to determine which bears are Cold/Far from the target (illuminated in Blue) and those that are Hot/Close to the target (illuminated in Red).  This was really an enjoyable mode because the locations of the bears will truly challenge even an experienced player.

In addition to the new modes, there is also the PAINlab, which is a way for the developers to test new ideas for use in the game by releasing mini-games for players to try out like throwing explosive teddy bears at a spinning ride and watching the carriages holding people fly off in devastation.  This is a neat idea and lets the gamer get a feel for what the developers are leaning towards introducing next.

There are also trophies now attached to PAIN, although most of them seem to be “time-wasters” (make 30 “eat it” shots in Call Da’ Shot, 100th Strike, 100 games of TRAUMA/HORSE) and some are even attached to characters that you have to purchase like “Get exploded 200 times in Fun With Explosives as any female character,” or “Get PAINful Bullseye trophy with either Scurv Dog or Hung Lo.”  This is a great way to get people to purchase the add-on characters, especially those who have to have every trophy...and if that’s you, there’s also the score 100,000,000 points in Downtown trophy that seems impossible.

All in all, the additions that come to PAIN in the form of this expansion are enough to keep players into this game.  There is something fascinatingly simple about the concept that sucks players in and now there is a new area to play through, which is great.  I just expected more from this because of the near year-long wait for the release of this expansion.  There is also the feeling that there just isn’t enough overall destruction in the Park itself, knocking the logs out of the log ride doesn’t cause the chain-reaction as crashing one car into the side of a building did in the Downtown area. 

Of course, even with the flaws and the underwhelmed feeling I had after playing this expansion, it won’t stop me from playing this highly addictive game anytime that I need a quick fix of entertainment.  The Amusement Park expansion is a good way to reinvigorate me into turning this title on again.
 

Gameplay: 7.3

The overall play of this new expansion is the same as the original: pull back, aim, fire, combo and ooch your way to points.  The addition of new modes is nice and the arena is a great new area, but this is the same concept as the original just with new packaging.

Graphics: 7.0

Ragdoll physics are always fun.  The Park is full of shiny rides that have lots of lights and moving parts that make the environment much more interesting than Downtown and the domed in building is slightly reminiscent of being in Circus Circus in Las Vegas.

Sound: 7.0

The jukebox feature is nice because you can now play your music saved on your Playstation HD while flying through the air, but there’s nothing really spectacular on the sound front.

Difficulty: Easy/Medium

Concept: 7.5

The idea of PAIN in an amusement park is awesome.  Going from a single-level Downtown area to this multi-level Abusement Park keeps me hopeful for the next expansion and the future of this franchise.  I just wanted the destruction to be taken to the next level as well.

Multiplayer: 6.9

The multiplayer modes in Amusement Park aren’t anything spectacular.  TRAUMA is really HORSE with a twist and Call Da’ Shot is fun, but not more fun than any particular single player mode.

Overall: 7.3

PAIN: Amusement Park is a nice addition to the original PAIN.  And, although there wasn’t the bar-raising that I thought would occur after the developers had 10 months to work on this new area, the gameplay is still good and engaging.  After all the expectation that was built up over the course of a year waiting, this just plays a lot like the same old PAIN.