Painkiller: Battle out of Hell (BooH) picks up right after where the original ends. Once again, you are Daniel Garner. You've just slain Lucifer, and are trapped in Hell with Eve after learning that you've inadvertently aided Alastor in gaining control of the minions of hell that were once ruled by Lucifer. With Eve's help, you escape your impending doom at the hands of a mob of demons, and are once again trapped in Purgatory. You need to fight your way back to Hell and stop Alastor before he can take over. The catch? This time Hell knows you're coming.

Painkiller: BooH has made some very nice improvements over the original. First and foremost, they've tweaked the graphics. They've become sharper, and cleaner than before, and the developers have added a few more features to the already impressive repertoire. They've added new options for dynamic lighting, now giving you the choice of OFF, NORMAL, and of course, ULTRA. They've also added blooms to the game, playing off the lighting effects and making them more realistic. In addition to these, you can also look forward to haze and heat effects, and much more refined shadows. Unfortunately, in lower end systems, and even some higher end, all these graphical features may tend to lag down the frame rate a bit but the added realism is definitely noticeable.

Along with our new stash of graphical features, more importantly we have a new stash of weapons. We get to keep all the old favorites, from the painkiller to the rocket launcher, but new to the arsenal are the SMG/Flamethrower and the Bolt-gun/Heater. Respectively, these are a Sub-machinegun with a flamethrower attached, and a rapid fire stake gun with the capability of launching a barrage of ten time-activated grenades.

Of course, what good would these new weapons be without something new to use them on? Painkiller: BooH has about thirty new monsters and several new bosses which, since the previous Painkiller, have become even more twisted and disturbing. Some of the things to sample are the evil orphans, which are extremely scary in purgatory's very own orphanage, and their demonic toys known as 'Pinokios'. Can you guess what their attack is?

Each different level comes with more custom created monsters than before; there's the burning remains of Leningrad, with tanks, soldiers, and explosive Deto Soldiers; the Loonypark, which has demonic clowns and 'Corn', a bizarre combination of man and popcorn, who throw poisonous projectiles at you.

After you make it through Loonypark, you'll get to see another brand new feature of Painkiller: BooH. At the end of this area, you hop on a cart which will bring you around the whole level on a twisting roller coaster. Yes, a roller coaster which moves along a track while deadly enemies are shooting poisonous projectiles at you and marionette like puppets attack you from above.

Of course, with the good always comes the bad. While I had an enormous amount of fun in the beginning and enjoyed the slight amount of strategy that came with fighting bosses in the first Painkiller, the developers decided to add a bit too much strategy into the game for me. It veered away from being a suspenseful action packed first person shooter, and did a not-so-great job with the one kind of puzzle every gamer dreads… jumping puzzles.

They seem simple enough, but most first person shooters don't have the kind of control needed to properly execute them. I spent about 20 minutes trying to make a relatively simple jump from between 3 fire escapes to get to the checkpoint in the third, running back and forth, over and over until I had to get up from the computer desk and sob for a little bit. I came back with a clear head, and managed to get it about 7 minutes later, but had spent almost half an hour of time falling down that I could have been playing the game.

I'm not done ranting yet. There was another puzzle, in the Coliseum level that was even more infuriating. This one took me over an hour to get through. Call me a bad gamer, but I simply could not get this. It involved jumping over three pits in the ground. First one was simple enough, but the second was near impossible. If you didn't land it perfectly, then you would fall and die. This wouldn't have been so bad, but the load times are about a minute or two each time, and that's a lot of time to wait just to make one jump. But, I tried...and I tried...falling...and falling.

It was around this point that I would have snapped the CD in half had I not been reviewing the game, so after a brief walk, to clear my head, I relented and checked online. There were several strategies and a few message board posts… and a video. Clearly this was a common problem, and that made me feel better. Regardless, it wouldn't be the last frustrating puzzle, but it was definitely the worst.

While the original Painkiller had 5 chapters, with about 4-6 levels in each, which adds up to about... err… quite a few, Painkiller: BooH only had 10. The developers compensated for this by making them much, much larger while still managing to keep them architecturally astounding and full of fun things to explore. The added size had an effect on performance, but changing the clipping distance helped alleviate this a bit.

The new monsters added new life to the game, and the new weapons added a whole new avenue of destruction to unleash. While I had my disagreements with Painkiller: BooH, for the most part it kept true to its roots. It still kept me in suspense, still kept me on the edge of my seat, and still made me plug in my night light while providing me with wholesome gore and destruction.

Graphics: Even more beautiful than the first, with new options and even more stunning textures. Occasionally they needed to be turned down though, due to lower framerates in some medium ranged systems.

Sounds: Much like the first, the sounds were part of what made the game so enjoyable. They added a definite atmosphere, and kept you gripping your mouse with white knuckled suspense.

Gameplay: The gameplay was still fun, but with some definite issues. The new strategy portions added more frustration to the game than I was used to in the original.

Control: Same as the first, these were classic First Person Shooter controls, which is always a favorite. They weren't as accurate as I would have liked them with the newly added strategy parts, but they did serve their purpose for the killing.

Story: An extension of the original game, but with a bit less plot. There were only two cut scenes in this one, at the beginning and the end.

Re-playability: There are definitely portions that I would play again, but some I wish to avoid like the plague.

Multiplayer: Still as fun as the original, with added features such as Warm-up modes, and spectator modes.