"Oh joy of joys!" I thought as I discovered I'd be reviewing the follow-up to People Can Fly's Painkiller. After all, I loved the first game, played the expansion to death and thought the unique 'Heaven and Hell at war' idea was brilliant. The slew of enemies made each encounter fresh and challenging, providing a thoroughly enjoyable and entertaining experience.

So, after taking the specially hermetically-sealed disc containing the preview code from its fresh from the publisher wrapper, I was looking forward to some good things from Painkiller's newest sibling, Painkiller: Overdose. Originally a mod, Overdose is now being developed as a standalone game: 'the prequel to the sequel' as the write up calls it. It promises to deliver seventeen single player levels, six new weapons and more than forty new enemies and bosses. With all this on offer, I thought Overdose couldn't go far wrong…

"This is only a beta," the game reminded me as I clicked the exe. "This is only a beta," said the loading screen. "This is only a beta," said the title screen. "This is not looking good," I said to myself as the first level loaded. Even on maximum graphic settings, Overdose still looks like what it is: a mod for a game that's now three years old. When Painkiller was first released it pushed the boundaries of what game engines could do, but now it looks decidedly ancient with very little in the way of dynamic lighting, some appallingly misaligned textures, some B-movie style effects and environments that are plain - nay - bland!

What of the forty new enemies? Well, they're not particularly brilliant, truth be told. Ranging from blue skeletons to, well, red skeletons, there is very little on offer that gamers won't have seen before. One new enemy is a demon torso rolling around on a barrel. Why? I haven't the foggiest. It hardly seems like barrels would go down well in Hell anyway (with all the craters and lava pits I imagine it would be hard to get rolling at all). And his attack? He shoots fire. Wow! A Hellish minion that shoots fire. What other new and original twists can this game provide? How about a really big demon, right, who shoots (wait for it) fire from a hammer? Yep, got one of those too. There are one or two non-fire-based enemies, like a cyclops and a kind of Gladiator-style fighter, but not one of the new enemies is particularly impressive or different from any other demon I've seen before.

Overdose starts where Painkiller left off (though I won't spoil it by giving away any plot elements) and so you're (more or less) the same guy who was in the original. The first level takes place in a Grecian style city, apparently in the grip of a volcanic eruption (the volcano in question is little more than a bitmap image on the background). Whilst there are clearly some good ideas in the levels - like the way almost everything is ruined and collapsing, and the clever use of fire to funnel you in the right direction - the graphics did little to immerse me into the game world. After seemingly endless rooms that all featured the same drab grey walls, I quickly got bored. There are no puzzles, no side quests, no… nothing, just room after room of killing the same enemies who spawn in the same way and use the same attacks. The fact that enemies often spawn behind you is annoying rather than exciting too; it seems like there has been little effort to create interesting encounters, as it's more a case of seeing how many enemies of the same type can be spawned in one room. At least the original offered some purpose to proceedings, but Overdose just feels like a poor imitation that struggles to get going.

After completing level one - a Grecian style city, remember? - I discovered that level two was called Japanese Massacre. "Huh?" I exclaimed. How did I get from Greece to Japan? Was I abducted? Did I take a wrong turn at Albuquerque? Maybe I simply got tired of the killing and decided to rent a summer holiday home. Well I'll never know, because there are no cut scenes, no storyline and no exposition of any kind. Japanese Massacre features (no points for guessing) demonic Samurai, demonic Geisha girls and demonic Old Men with long beards. Not so much fire on this level, more floaty skulls and shuriken. My adventures didn't stop there, as the level after placed me in the desert. Some new enemies appeared - scorpions, beetles and skeletons. Bizarrely, one of the new enemies in the desert looks like some kind of fish that hops over the sand. Fish in the desert? There's only so much I'm willing to believe. The entire game continues in this fashion and it's just plain annoying.

What of the weaponry? Starting with a severed demon head that shoots laser beams, each level gives you a new weapon at the start. There's a melee/long range weapon that looks like the Hellraiser cube. There's a shotgun that can fire holy water to freeze enemies, as well as a medieval style chain gun-cum-grenade launcher. Admittedly, the crossbow is cool, but ridiculously over-powered - one arrow kills pretty much anything and it can also fire grenades to clear a room - but each weapon is well designed. The shotgun comes complete with bones around the barrels and the crossbow has shrunken heads hanging from it. The chain gun looks very steam punk, while the demon head is actually quite freaky. In fact, the weaponry is perhaps the single redeeming feature of Overdose - it's great looking and the different fire modes really help to balance the gameplay well.

The Tarot cards from Painkiller make a return appearance and each level features a task that unlocks a specific card, ranging from destroying all objects to collecting all ammo. One such task is impossible at the moment - the objective? Collect at least 400 gold. Amount of gold in the level? 360. Tarot cards do allow you access to some extra boosts to your character stats and powers, including increased strength and health, telekinesis and the ability to kill foes instantly. In addition, you can also become some kind of uber-demon yourself and travel around the world killing anything in one hit. This occurs when you have collected enough souls and only lasts for a short time.

Multiplayer is a no-go at the moment (there simply weren't any servers so I couldn't test it), so only time will tell if that's where Overdose's greatest strength lies. The developers have said that multiplayer will be a massive part of the game, so maybe that explains the shortcomings of the single player mode.

Painkiller: Overdose doesn't look pretty, doesn't play well and just doesn't seem to have any kind of structure. Painkiller was fun back in the day, but the times they are a changing and the series needs to move on to compete with the current generation of shooters. Admittedly with this being a beta version the graphical issues could easily be resolved, but there is no fixing bad gameplay; the boring repetition of clearing a room to move onto the next room would be more at home in an online puzzle game than a first person shooter. It's not even particularly fast paced; the enemies shamble towards you as you blast them into oblivion, barely even coming close enough to attack. It's possible that the multiplayer and some graphical enhancements could make for an experience that's better than what this beta has to offer, but at this point it's looking like there will be more emphasis on 'pain' than 'killer' when the final title hits the shelves.

Previewed by John Barnes for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).