There’s a point in this über-violent shooter where the hero expresses outrage at himself for not killing every last man on a previous mission. That’s the kind of game this is. No moralising, no mercy – just the sheer joy of brutal death. Sure, that’s what we all sign up for with any first-person shooter, but it’s usually hidden behind a veneer of noble purpose – saving the universe, rescuing the girl, defeating robo-Hitler, whatever. This guy? He just really likes murdering people. For money, ideally.

Oh, there’s some vague sub-24 conspiracy theory causing US freelance mercenary Thomas Mason to stomp across the modern globe, gunning down gentlemen of assorted (but rarely Western) ethnicity in their hundreds, but really Payback’s just gun porn. Over 30 accurately modelled weapons, apparently. Tactics and AI and variety and storyline and, well, everything, come second to being able to say “Yeah! I totally blew that Chinese bloke away with an AK-muddafunking-47!” If you’re that guy, then this is the game for you – but please, stand over there, well away from us.

All the stuff vaguely interesting in the game’s North American release – entire limbs get detached, heads explode and arms pop off as your oddly silent victim staggers around, blood gushing from both bloody stumps – are absent from the re-edited Aussie version. Without the shock factor, what remains is just low-tech and silly, like a half-baked B-movie. Without the walking blood fountains to provide the comic relief you’re quickly able to recognise the game for what it really is. And that’s pretty average indeed.

There are two types of enemy to be found in Payback’s relentlessly linear levels. The first lurks well off in the distance, barely visible even on a 32-inch HDTV. As soon as you cross the invisible trigger that activates his awareness, he’ll shoot ceaselessly at you wherever you are, wherever you hide – to the point that you’ll swear he can see through walls. His tendency to stand stock-still at least means he’s quickly dispatched once you’ve finally worked out which tiny collection of pixels he is.

The second AI type pops magically into existence behind or to the side of you, usually while you’re trying to aim at one of the first type. You can check again and again that a darkened corner’s man-free before you wander into it, but pass a certain point and blip! There they are. They’ll run up and clobber you with the butt of their weapon, sometimes even spinning you into another identi-faced clobberer – in which case you end up in a pinball loop of skull-crunching punishment, leading inevitably to your shameful demise.

Such AI cheating means death’s fairly common in Payback, which wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t for the inconsiderate checkpoint system and unacceptable 30-60 second load times that follow each fatality. Sure, your Schwarzenegger superguy can take a ludicrous amount of bullets, and even a mere pistol sounds like a nuke detonating when wielded by his beefy hands, but the meatheaded charm of this is undone by the next pop-up army murdering you unexpectedly in the back.

Payback’s a nasty game through and through. Not in terms of its gore, because there is none, but in pretty much every other respect. With zero characterisation, a barely-there plot and no room for stealth or strategy, all it has going for it is murdering men. And it doesn’t even do that very well. Thoroughly unsympathetic to the player and cursed with level design and AI that would have been embarrassing in the 1990s, it’s an arthritic dinosaur of an FPS. Go play Call of Duty 4 again instead.

Payback almost does gun selection well. Before each mission, you can customise your loadout minutely – do you want a machine-gun and a shotgun, a sniper rifle and an SMG – or dual-wielded SMGs and a silenced pistol? Ooh, yes please. There’s also a generous array of optional scopes and handgrips to increase range or accuracy. It’s initially liberating to tweak the game to your play-style this way, but apparently your character’s too dumb to take enough ammo with him, so early in each mission you end up having to resort.