At E3 2012, we caught up with Nordic Games to take a look at their work on the upcoming Painkiller reboot. Titled Painkiller: Hell and Damnation, the game remakes the first game and its expansion in the Unreal 3 engine. At the same time, it looks like the developers are being careful and not fixing what isn't broken, and the gameplay seems just as fast-paced and intense as fans of the original would expect.

The new game isn't a complete one-to-one copy of the original, as the developers wanted to put in some additional work, such as rebalancing the weapons and reinterpreting the boss encounters. The story is still largely based on the original, but according to the developers, it will also take a new direction in some areas, though no specifics were given. Some new enemies will be thrown into the mix as well, though the demo that we saw featured only the hooded enemies armed with axes that served as the base enemy type in the original.

We didn't get to see a whole lot of the gameplay, but the core fast-paced action as the presenter blasted his way through the level clearly made it seem that what made the original game fun was left intact. The painkiller still has its iconic dual attack modes, as does the stake thrower and the shotgun. Enemies and objects in the environment still drop coins, and once 66 are collected, you can trigger the demon mode, which wasn't shown.

It's worth noting how much better Painkiller looks under the new engine, with enemy animations and the lighting effects in particular a step up from previous offerings. Other standouts include weapon effects, such as when enemies are frozen, and other graphical effects, such as muzzle flashes that light up the room. Overall, the game looks like something released in 2012 should, while keeping the presentation simple so that the player can focus on mowing down enemies.

Multiplayer modes were only mentioned very briefly, and though the game will feature a handful of standard multiplayer modes such as deathmatch, team deathmatch, and capture the flag, there will also be some others. Co-op support was also teased as a potential multiplayer option, with other teasers including the potential for console and WiiU support.

We should know more about Painkiller: Hell and Damnation's supported platforms once we get closer to the projected release window near the end of the year.