The PSN has been home to several unique IPs including PAIN, by developer Idol Minds. PAIN, as most of you know, is a game about strategy, comedy, and most importantly, causing as much damage to yourself and the environment as possible. Previously, the game only included one area, and while there was a whole lot to explore and do in the Downtown map, it eventually ran out of steam for a lot of players, myself included. Now, for $5.99, PAIN expands, bringing a whole new environment, several new modes, and quite literally more content than the entire original game.

The Abusement Park

The Amusement Park is quite a colorful and detailed environment with a whole lot to slam into and destroy. The idea is still the same though: cause as much pain and destruction in one launch as you can. The free play mode this time around is called Abusement Park instead of Pandemonium, but the pursuit of the highest score is still your main goal.

As with the Downtown environment, there are dozens of ways you can do this, but it all starts when you launch your character into the air. This time around instead of aiming for the hotel, the bowling ball, the cereal billboard, or any of the other Downtown items, you'll be aiming for a variety of amusement park rides to smash yourself into, or fire yourself off of. These include roller coasters situated high up on the ceiling, a rotating ride of large feet that will punt you back out into the environment, a vertical rotating ride with three objects that look like rockets that'll send you skyward, a small water park, the Tilt-A-Hurl, and even a massive volcano that you can somehow secretly set off. There are also various characters running around the park, like a mascot dressed in a big dinosaur outfit, and Jimmy, the owner of the park, driving around in his purple car.

When you tire of this or just want to try something else, you can check out one of the other new single player modes like Clown Toss or Hot n Cold. Clown Toss is similar to Mime Toss from the original, it's really just a Mime Toss for the Amusement Park, but I'll elaborate on it shortly. First, I'd like to talk about the truly new mode of Hot n Cold; in this mode, you get five launches to discover a single teddy bear (which by the way essentially replace the monkeys of the Downtown map), in the Amusement Park that is sitting amongst dozens of decoys. To begin with, you can launch your character anywhere; when he hits, the game will inform you that you are either Cold, Getting Warm, or Hot, in relation to how close you are to finding this single bear. I didn't find myself playing this mode for very long because it just seemed a little to arbitrary; there were times when I got “Getting Warm” four out of my five launches but I couldn't come away with that bear, and I don't know how satisfying finding that sucker would really be once found. So while it's cool they included this new mode, I don't think it's going to add much to the total package.

Getting back to Clown Toss, this is indeed very similar to Mime Toss. Instead of sending a Mime through a glass pane, this time you want to grab Spunky the clown and send him into explosive barrels. When the mode starts, a timer begins to count up, and Spunky bounces up and down in front of you. It's up to you to decide which side you want to grab him on (top, bottom, left, right), and how you want to sling him. The goal is to destroy all barrels as quickly as possible. I still have trouble with the grab mechanic a little too often for comfort, as I did with the original PAIN. Fairly often I either miss the grab or bump into the object I'm trying to grab, but this is a lot more tolerable with being able to relaunch in an instant by pressing R1. I think the best part about this mode, which is in most ways similar to Mime Toss, is that the environment this time around adds the opportunity for more strategy and even luck as the Tilt-A-Hurl ride and that vertical rotating ride are nearby, and tossing Spunky onto either can induce some laughs if nothing else.

Share The Pain

Multiplayer this time around brings with it a couple of modes in the forms of TRAUMA and Call Da Shot. Neither mode is online again, so local play will have to suffice. TRAUMA is similar to Clown Toss in that it's a retooled mode for the new environment, where in this case TRAUMA is similar to HORSE was in the original game. Besides spelling a new word and having the new environment to do it in, there isn't anything really different here.

For Call Da Shot, this mini-wagering game allows one player to challenge another player to hit one to four objects on a single launch. The harder the shot is to make, the more points the challenged receives for hitting it. I found this to be perhaps the most fun part about this new expansion besides the Abusement Park mode because it's a lot of fun challenging your friend and being challenged and watching the results. You'll either laugh at yourself or your friend for missing the easy ones, and sometimes inadvertently getting the harder challenges.

Furthermore...

Other content was released in addition to this expansion pack last week for PAIN that I feel I should talk about here. First up is PAINLabs. PAINLabs is an extension to the community that the folks at Idol Minds have put together. It's kind of like Echochrome in that each week there will be some new content available, that is created with the help of the community. This first week there is a very basic environment called CinderBlast. It definitely has the look and feel of a user created map in that your basically on an infinite looking plane and just in front of you are three tall cinder block walls, three narrow but tall towers, and several characters just mulling about. There really isn't a whole heck of a lot to do here except try to destroy the cinder block walls, which is a pretty monotonous experience.

Still, the fact that the developers are allowing for free new content each week, even though it at least so far looks like basic stuff, is nice. These PAINLab experiments benefit both the community and the developers, and the more successful experiments are likely to be included in future expansions of PAIN.

There are also three more playable characters available now for $.99 each. These include the overweight Kenneth, Tati the Latin American dancer, and Yeony, a schoolgirl. Personally, I still prefer to play as the little ninja character, Hung-Lo.

Trophies are now a part of PAIN as well, for both the original PAIN and this expansion pack. Goals include doing 100 Oochs, and hitting various objects, amongst several other pursuits.

And with that, lets get to the wrap up...