The Suffering (PC) Publisher: Encore Developer: Surreal Software Genre: Third-Person Action Adventu
In The Suffering, you play as Torque, a silent, mysterious man convicted of murdering his wife and children. Torque suffers from unexplained blackouts, and he can't remember what he does during them, so it remains to be seen whether Torque is genuinely guilty. Throughout the game, he experiences sudden flashbacks, as well as visions of other people's crimes, and these fill out the story and keep you wondering about Torque's true nature.
In fact, moral ambiguity is a major theme of the game. Not long after Torque arrives in his cell, an earthquake plunges the prison into darkness and frees him from his cell, while also liberating nightmarish monsters. Your job is to get Torque out of the prison and off the island alive. Along the way, you'll often encounter situations where you can act compassionately, neutrally, or like a cold-blooded killer. When you run into a fellow convict trying to escape the horrors of the island, do you help him, hurry past and leave him to the monsters, or kill him? Torque's visions let him see the brutal crime that landed the man in jail in the first place, which adds to the dilemma since it's not so easy to be compassionate towards such a man. These moments make you wonder who the real monsters of the game are: the humans or the shambling creatures from the netherworld. In a neat touch, you'll actually hear the personified voices of conscience during these decisive moments, urging you one way and the other. You shape the ending of the game by your choices.
Either way, as a symbol of the latent violence lurking in everyone, Torque can, when he's killed enough enemies, temporarily transform himself into a horrid, clawed creature that shreds apart anything in his path. You'll need this ability because you'll have to fight not merely vicious cons and crooked, murderous guards, but also nightmarish creatures that embody different execution methods. For lethal injection, there's a scampering creature with glowing needles jammed into its body. It throws these at you like darts, and if it gets close enough, it will grab you and ram a needle right into you. Firing squads are personified by lumbering beasts with guns sticking out of their bulbous heads. Other creatures represent the horrors of hanging, beheading, and so on.
You can play The Suffering from either a first- or third-person view, and you get to wield a range of well-balanced weapons: an axe, shotgun, Tommy gun, Molotov cocktails, and other real-world implements of death. Unlike more than a few survival-horror games, the movement controls and camera views are reasonably clear, simple, and intuitive here, feeling much like any standard shooter. Every once in a while, though, Torque will get caught on something, and it can be unclear why he can climb in certain places but not others.
For better and for worse, combat is the heart of The Suffering. There are a few simple puzzles to break up the action, but fast-paced, blood-soaked combat is what it's ultimately all about. You won't find much in the way of genuinely spooky build-ups or truly disturbing atmosphere, ¿ la the Silent Hill series. While you shouldn't expect many really chilling frights, the levels still manage to be evocative and creepy enough. They take you through graffiti-scrawled prison cellblocks to surrounding haunts on the island, like a cemetery, abandoned mine, and haunted mental institution.
It's not your average sinkhole.
These are brought to life with decent but ultimately unexceptional graphics. The Suffering originally appeared on consoles a few months ago and indeed looks like a console port, though the monster designs are memorable either way. The audio, likewise, gets the job done without really wowing you or creeping you out often enough -- though the disembodied voices of abused children sounding from behind locked doors is pretty unnerving.
You'll find a few bugs, clipping problems, and occasional clunky moments when a character's important dialogue is interrupted by that of a scripted event, creating an audio muddle. It's a shame The Suffering didn't receive a bit more polishing and a major graphics upgrade for the PC (though the PC version includes a few extras, like a making-of documentary movie). Still, with its well-designed levels, fluid pacing, and hyper-violent combat in eerie locales, The Suffering is a fun way to safely tap into your dark side.