10 Video Games That Literally Dragged You Through Hell

With combat being the bulk of a lot of gaming, you're often beating or putting down countless waves of enemies, all in the service of whatever motivates your particular character. We do this safely in the knowledge that we're sending them to the place that they belong, and we won't ever see them again. Yep, they are all going straight to hell, because that's where the evil guys always go. Right?

However, some games are brave enough to try and recreate a vision of that terrible place, and send us players straight to it instead. Whether we're there to rescue someone from a terrible evil, search for some great power, defeat huge numbers of fearsome demons or just because it seemed like a laugh, plenty of games have sent us to Hell on our latest quest.

It's quite impressive how varied these depictions of Hell are; some are your classic demon-infested, full of lava, literal hell-hole, but some couldn't be further from that stereotypical vision. If you ever fancied seeing the darker side of the supposed afterlife, here's ten games which dragged us kicking, shooting, looting and screaming through Hell itself.

Painkiller's whole deal is the conflict between angels and demons. As the protagonist, Daniel, you are the judge, jury and (mostly) executioner of the forces of Lucifer. The first game sees you fighting scores of demons with an inventive variety of weapons, all so you can escape Purgatory to be with your wife in Heaven.

In the last level of the very first game of the series, you descend to Hell to confront Lucifer himself. Where you might have been expecting the typical fire and brimstone environment from this otherwise very stereotypical presentation of Satan's demon hordes, you'd be pleasantly surprised. Painkiller's Hell is one altogether of a much more human construction.

This particular version of Hell is one huge amalgam of some of the worst human wars. You'll be shooting up demons amongst uneven wooden pikes, trebuchets and flags from the medieval era, skirting around crumbling fortresses as you go. Eventually, you'll wander through some very familiar trenches and emerge over the top onto battlefields from the first world war; you might even spot some period destroyer ships literally frozen in time. Everything around you screams of loss, and how Daniel is seemingly a last hope in the fight against the demons.