There's a reason why Painkiller is on my short list for PC action game of 2004, and there's a natural tendency for me to have the strongest of urges to snap up any kind of official continuation of the game coming out of developer People Can Fly - the game simply rocked. After a few years of mostly dismissing all the first-person action games on the market, Painkiller brought me back into the fold with its DOOM-esque pacing, Quake-ish settings and People Can Fly's own unique ingredients thrown into the mix that helped shape one of the best shooters of 2004.

Battle Out of Hell (or BooH as I like to call it) is the first official expansion pack for Painkiller, and while it's no cinematic masterpiece, the expansion will once again bring shooter fans back to the afterlife with a lot of new goodies. The game can only be described as "a must buy" for Painkiller fans. For those folks that have never tried Painkiller I highly recommend you grab a copy of the game and give it a try - it's worth the price of admission - and that price has no doubt been reduced from when it was first released earlier this year. Now onto this expansion and why it's good, bad, ugly and ultimately a lot of fun...

BooH's main appeal is that it adds a whole new ten level single-player chapter to the table with a myriad of different contrasting styles. These include an orphanage, an amusement park, a modern post apocalyptic city, Leningrad during World War II (beaten and battered as it was during that tough time for Russia), a secret lab, an underwater temple, and pirate caves. While these levels looked at as a whole make no cohesive sense, if you're paying attention to the story (light though it is), then it makes perfect sense that the expansion's single-player missions are diverse.

The story takes place directly after the events of Painkiller, where Daniel Garner (the hero of the story) has defeated Lucifer, only to find that Alastor has taken over Hell's army and is looking for a way to attack Heaven. After escaping a nearly unwinnable confrontation with the forces of Hell, Gardner realizes that Hell's army will mount a major attack by passing through one of several areas in Purgatory that are linked to Hell. His goal is clear - kick a lot of evil ass in a variety of different realms that offer new challenges, new enemies and even bigger bosses than the first game.

That's about all you can squeeze out of Painkiller: Battle Out of Hell - the game follows the tried and true action game tradition of creating a story that you could put on a postcard. Mail that postcard to your momma, because BooH is about shooting things - if you're looking for an adventure game try The Adventure Company's latest releases. Likewise, the cinematics and voice acting in the game are pretty forgettable, but ultimately it's all a wash as you plow through levels and kill anything that moves.

And if you like killing, than BooH won't disappoint. From killing demented little orphan children that explode (evil seeds no doubt), to taking down demonic nuns and priests, Painkiller walks the line between bad taste and serving up a disturbing picture of hell. And if that doesn't bother you but clowns scare the pants off you, then BooH also offers some even creepier foes for you to face.

The game offers a myriad of environments that are greatly contrasted from each other. Although we mentioned them already, the most notable are the orphanage, the post apocalyptic city and the amusement park. Of the three the amusement park is the most noticeably well designed of the three, offering evil rides and attractions that make the settings in "Something Wicked This Way Comes" (an obvious tip off of my age) seem like the kiddy fairs that only pass through small town America. In this park the rides are fun, but the clowns, marionettes and other inhabitants aren't very friendly. But the real centerpiece of the park is a giant roller coaster that players ride throughout the entire park, shooting bad guys as they go. It's a lot of fun and a surprising contrast from the rest of the levels.

The next notable level is the orphanage - but not for it's design. The orphanage serves up an army of demented little children hell bent on killing you. These children are obvious evil seeds who hate the living with a passion. I have to say that the children in this orphanage were really disturbing – and killing them gave me some moral dilemas. The ability to kill children in a video game is usually a taboo subject that most videogames developers won't touch (though it was certainly an option in Ultima VII and in Fable on the Xbox - so it's not unheard of). To be fair, the game represents hell and we can safely assume that murderous little boys and girls end up there too - or perhaps that is the form that murderers take on as punishment in hell - use whatever justification you need to blow them away, I guess.

Lastly the apocalyptic city is a cool level because it shows off the Havok physics in a new way. In this city are tons of abandoned vehicles that fly up into the air when they explode. Now imagine ten of them flying through the air as they explode - at you. Or better still, imagine blowing these cars up to level an army of zombies hellbent on using your skull as a salad bowl. The physics in this level are its key selling point, and People Can Fly did them right.

The rest of the level design is game is well designed and fun to play through, but not quite as fascinating as the three I already mentioned. Overall the ten new levels are a little more difficult then the set of single player levels found in the original game.