In a YouTube world, teens have grown obsessed with passing around videos, particularly "humor that happens at others' expense," says Travis Williams, producer for this upcoming downloadable PS3 game, where the main goal it to slingshot a rubber-like avatar into the air and cause him as much "pain" as possible.

Of course, the flingee doesn't seem to mind getting propelled across a city landscape, flipping over giant billboards, plummeting several stories -- hitting a precipice on the way down -- landing face-first on the concrete and then getting run over by cars and trucks, all the while groaning in pain, but with a bemused look on his face. It's all so absurdist, it's hard to tell whether laughing or wincing would be the best response -- so we settled on doing a combo chuckle-cringe while putting the hurt on our all-too willing victim.

The game can be played solo or with up to four friends offline and, eventually, will contain some kind of online multiplayer component. In the single-player mode, Pandemonium, take on the open city and find new and inventive ways to deliver pain. As an intro, we tried to fling our pain-monger onto a giant spoon (sitting in a giant cereal bowl high atop a building) and then saw how many ways we could harm him on his way down to the street. He fell into some crates, got hit by a car then went head first into the bottom of a ladder. Take that, Action Jackson.

Pandemonium does seem like a prelude to the real action, which heats up in the Challenges mode. Players can partake in several Mime Toss games, which as the name implies, requires tossing a mime through panes of glass randomly placed throughout the city; Skeet, a "much more fun version of Duck Hunt," a painful version of H.O.R.S.E. and Spank the Monkey, which requires aiming and slinging the avatar into monkeys randomly placed around the environment. Don't land in a prime spot? Use one of three "Ooch" points to slightly nudge the body into a better position.

The game, like YouTube, aims to build a big community following. Users will be able to pull off moves, record them and upload their video clips to PlayStation 3 Home screens for others to watch. Leaderboards will deliver bragging rights -- "Hey, I just spanked 300 monkeys," and the entire game will be downloadable, with different segments of the game rolling out over time. Look for the first collection -- a city environment with a special selection of challenges -- later this year.