If the developers of Pain had included blood, this Network title would’ve been the most disturbing game since Postal. The aim of Pain is to launch a person from a catapult, before causing them massive physical damage as they crash into a cityscape. Whether it’s rocketing into a monkey on some scaffolding, or rolling a giant bowling ball on to a police car, Pain incorporates bodily risk to create a brutally comedic gaming novelty.

It defies genre, to be honest. Pain does little to shy away from the idea of catapulting a man to his hilarious death, but there are a number of extra modes that add a suitable amount of depth. These include the oftenfrustrating Spank The Monkey mode (hit all the monkeys in record time), as well as the slightly better Mime Toss challenge (throw a mime through glass barriers). Beating your record time on each of these has an incentive; a lot of Pain’s emphasis is on the community aspects, so leaderboards are pretty important to the overall experience.

The real meaning of Pain, though, is about wreaking urban carnage to maximise your score. The various ways in which this can be done are incredible – dragging a giant bowling ball on to a train track, and creating a 20-car pile-up is its own, 1.5 million points reward. Pain shouldn’t be played intensely, but revisited after you’ve left it a while; and so, it’s ideal fodder for the ever-burgeoning selection on the PlayStation Store.

Samuel Roberts