The Suffering is an action game at heart, even if it does like to claim itself as a psychological horror. At the beginning of the game it may be but we'll get into that later.
STORY - You are Tourque. Sent to prison to await your death for the murder of your own family. Funny thing is you can't remember any of it. Upon arrival monsters styled after different types of execution start killing everyone. But why? It's up to Tourque to get off the prison island and find out what's causing the suffering.
Yes, it sounds slightly bland but the story isn't told through cut scenes. Well, other than the intro that is. Everything else is done through flashbacks or standing around listening to other survivors or monsters all while leading you to the ending. But to be honest, I didn't play the game for it's story.
GAMEPLAY - The most important feature of any game. The Suffering is primarily a 3rd person shooter although it can be changed if you tap Square on the ol' DualShock 2. The 1st person perspective is very clunky though and you'll end up only using it to get a closer look at something or someone rather than use it in combat. The setting itself, a prison and mental institute to name the big ones have a great and creepy feel to them (Especially for 2004). Everything has been destroyed, torn apart and worse giving you an insight to how the inmates and guards tried surviving the ordeal and how most ended up failing. I say most as you'll come across a few survivors. Some will tag along and some are mental and will try killing you. All the while two voices in your head will try make you help them or kill them. That's where the moral choices come from as if you're good you're less incline to of killed your family whereas if you're bad you probably did.
The monsters themselves are rather creepy, representing different styles of execution such as hanging, decapitation, gunmen, buried alive and a lot more. Although their creepiness wears off after a few levels are they're so easy to gun down and ammo is a plenty. But all in all the action is fairly solid.
GRAPHICS - For a 2004 game it's standard. Nothing impressive and, to be honest, the PS2 version is lacking compared to it's Xbox and PC counterparts. The textures are a bit off and the jaggies are more clear but it doesn't really suck you out of it in the slightest as the art direction is quite brilliant.
REPLAY VALUE - Since The Suffering is based on moral choices you'll get 2 playthroughs minimum. Although they play near the same only for a different ending. If a save of The Suffering is detected on your PS2 memory card or your Xbox/PC HDD you can carry your ending over to The Suffering: Ties That Bind, linking the two.
OVERVIEW - I may of just given this game praise but it doesn't hit the horror theme it tried to. In fact it dropped horror in favor of action in about 10 minuets and the gunplay isn't all that involving. The environments and seeing what bad guy would pop up next is what kept me playing through to the end. It's rare to get a setting like this so I would advice picking it up. Hey, for 1p on Amazon you can't argue with it.