Video games have undergone a number of paradigm shifts since the Pong days, with Jolt-fueled programmers creating bursts of inspired play mechanics that forcibly drag other games to the next level. For the first-person shooter genre, that Darwin moment most likely came during 1998's Half-Life, specifically the part where the goddamned evil army guys started throwing your grenades back at you. Suddenly, tactics began to outweigh firepower, and strategy and planning became almost as important as fast-twitch reflexes. The occasional canny throwback aside (most notably the underrated Serious Sam series, which compensated for its lack of sophisticated enemy AI by having, like, hundreds of bad dudes on the screen at any given time), merely having a bigger, cooler gun than your enemies is now no reason to kick back and relax.

Painkiller: Hell Wars, an Xbox expansion port of 2004's best-selling PC title, feels in most respects like a remarkably faithful throwback to the Doom era, but without any real sense of purpose. Despite some impressively grisly graphics and a faux-moronic premise that would make GWAR fans drool, it ceases to be any sort of fun. Via a number of stiffly acted cut scenes, the game casts you as a purgatory-imprisoned, leather-jacket-wearing tough guy, seemingly separated for eternity from your wife after a fatal car crash. Under orders from a notably fey archangel, you undertake a mission to wipe out Lucifer and his generals. And as it turns out, they're all allergic to bullets.

Shallow as it may be, this hell-bound, backwards-LP-scratching scenario allows the designers to get fairly inspired with the environments, which range from oozy, bubbling swamps to decrepit, maggot-ridden mental asylums. The creatures are also impressively rendered, with a crass menagerie that includes zombie knights, skeleton paratroopers, and straightjacket-clad infants with an eye for your hamstrings. Any real sense of danger, creativity, or suspense, however, is mitigated by the unfortunate tendency of every single enemy to rush full-tilt directly into your gun sights. No matter the situation, the mechanics always stay the same: enter a new area, back up against the nearest wall, and start blasting away. Repeat until cranky.

The variety of weapons does threaten to make things interesting for a while, particularly a nasty combination crossbow/grenade launcher. But here, again, the enjoyment is severely hampered by an awkward play mechanic, which requires you to go to a separate, slowly loading inventory screen in order to switch guns. More often than not, you'll find yourself just sticking with your primary weapon and hitting the trigger until your finger gets tired, as the same sub-Dokken butt-rock guitar riff loops every time combat is engaged. Taken in five-minute chunks, Painkiller may allow the casual gamer to temporarily get his or her ya-yas out. In larger doses, though, the lack of inspiration quickly wins out. Satan deserves better.