The game controls like a first-person shooter, so you use the right stick to look around and the left stick to move. You can actually play from a first-person perspective, if you like, but enemies tend to attack in groups, so not being able to see what's hitting you from behind is reason enough to stay out of the first-person viewpoint. Inventory control is handled by the D pad, and it's done reasonably well, though it would have been nice if you could change weapons more easily. Also, make sure you go into the control settings, and set it up so the flashlight is turned on and off by pushing in the right control stick. This is a thousand times easier than fumbling through your inventory to save batteries every time you encounter a room that's light enough to see in. (It's weird that the game simply wasn't set up this way by default.) The game is available on both the PlayStation 2 and Xbox, and we'd have to give a slight edge to the Xbox control scheme. It feels slightly more natural on the Xbox controller, and the game's auto-aim seems to track a bit better in the Xbox version.

This game earns its M rating, big time. Few lines of the script are delivered without a healthy dose of profanity.

Where The Suffering really scores is in its presentation. The game's monster design is interesting--with most monsters representing a different method of execution, from beheading to lethal injection. The mainliner is a creature that has a ton of glowing hypodermic needles sticking out of its body, thus representing lethal injection. It'll throw needles at you, and if one hits, your vision blurs for a second or so. The way the slayers move is appropriately creepy, especially when they're grinding one sword along a nearby wall or floor as they run at you. In general, while you'll see all the tricks the game's monsters have to offer fairly quickly, they do make a great first impression.

The rest of The Suffering looks pretty good, too. The models aren't the most detailed ones in the world, and the environments aren't supremely detailed, but since most of the game is incredibly dark, you'd have to really squint to even notice. It also moves at a smooth frame rate, which is nice. The game's coolest effect, though, is how Torque gets completely covered in blood after close encounters. It will wear off over time, but since you're usually getting right back into the middle of a fight, Torque is usually pretty much caked with gore. As you might expect, the Xbox version of the game looks better than its PlayStation 2 counterpart. The Xbox version also has widescreen 480p support, which is cool. The PS2 version's frame rate isn't quite as solid, and the texture work isn't quite as clean, but beyond this, the two versions look similar.

Multiple endings and the chance to make some moral decisions give The Suffering some replay value, for good measure.

Great sound is key to making a horror game. The Suffering's sound is as great as it needs to be, with lots of strange ambient noise, good shrieking monsters, and other cool little touches. The game's voice acting is a big standout as well. Though Torque himself stays silent, you'll hook up with a variety of characters and will hear things like radio chatter and other speech throughout the game. All of it is very, very well done. The sense of fear and impending insanity really comes through in a lot of the dialogue. Also worth mentioning is that The Suffering has an extremely dirty script. The game's extreme language doesn't feel out of place. You'd certainly expect that a bunch of surly prisoners would swear a lot, so you'd have to believe that they'd do it even more so when being attacked and killed by hellish creatures. Between this and the game's high volume of blood, The Suffering certainly earns its "M" rating.

Though The Suffering tends to rely more on startling you with visual effects and sudden attacks than on actually trying to scare you, it's still a pretty refreshing take on horror-themed games. It's also a bit longer than you'd expect from a straightforward action game, though the increased length is offset by an overall lack of variety. More monsters, more ways to do them in, and perhaps some slightly more-involving puzzles would have probably made the game feel more in-depth. But even taking this into consideration, The Suffering is a fun shooter that fans of action games will get a kick out of.