Gelugon_baat reviewed The Suffering for the PC...

...and gave it a 7.0.

Games like those in Rockstar's franchises sold themselves on the hype generated by the very mature and taboo-breaking themes in their story and gameplay. Since then, some other game-makers have tried to capitalize on this trend. One of them, the now-defunct Surreal Software, did so with The Suffering, aiming to make use of the issues of the conditions of maximum-security prisons, hardcore recalcitrant criminals and domestic violence, and combining these with horrible parodies of known methods of executions.

However, one would come away from the game having the impression that it uses these themes as excuses to justify the gun-toting, gore-drenched gameplay and the presence of nightmarish but typically mindless monsters – both of which are already rather common by the time of this game. On the other hand, while the gameplay is rather rote, the presentation and writing in The Suffering did make good use of these themes.

In this strictly single-player game, the player takes on the role of a convict, simply called Torque. He has just been sent to the death row at the Abbott State Penitentiary, which appears to be a fictional version of the real-life Alcatraz island prison. Officially, Torque has been found guilty of the deaths of his family, though his memories of the tragedy are fuzzy at best and he has made little attempts to piece things together; his taciturn demeanour does not help his plight either.

However, just after his incarceration, a seemingly natural disaster struck the prison, and suddenly the prison is swamped with horrifying creatures that made short work of most of its occupants, while damaging the prison enough for the rest to break out and spread all over the island. An attempt by some guards to free prison inmates to spare them from being trapped with the creatures gave Torque the chance to escape and figure out what the hell happened and how to survive.

This is how the prologue and tutorial of the game debuts itself. The game is very sparing with textual instructions, preferring to use camera close-ups of interesting objects or characters and the exclamations of NPCs to tell the player what to do. The first instruction that it provides is to obtain a sharp object as a makeshift knife (simply called a "shiv", a street slang for sharp things); failure to do so within moments is punished with the appearance of a monster that wastes no time slashing away at a defenceless Torque.

Taking the shiv in order to combat the creature would reveal to the player that close combat is a rather simple affair: wait and observe for gaps in a monster's attack patterns, and then hack away during these periods. Both the player character and his enemies have no staggering animations whatsoever, so exploiting said gaps is one of very few reliable ways to kill enemies in this game, and not just in close combat. At any other time, the player would have Torque dancing around, dodging enemies and taking potshots when necessary.

Such gameplay had been done umpteenth times before this game was released, so an experienced video game consumer should not be expecting anything refreshing from the core gameplay of The Suffering.

There are more weapons than just the Shiv, but again these would seem all too familiar: there are revolvers (fulfilling the role of the basic sidearm), tommy guns (fulfilling the role of a portable rapid-firing weapon), TNT sticks and grenades (for explosive solutions), and shotguns (which are typical boomsticks). There is an axe for better hacking of monstrous fools, but even so close combat remains a clumsy affair of ducking in and out of attack patterns.

There is a flamethrower that can be assembled and Molotov cocktails that can be thrown to set enemies on fire, but all these do gameplay-wise is just apply a damage-over-time effect on targets; they won't slow anyone down. Finally, there are mounted machineguns, but as to be expected of such weapons, they typically appear when there are waves of charging enemies to be gunned down.

If a player is looking for variety in his/her protagonist's tools of destruction, he/she would be disappointed. (There is another mechanic for combat, but its designs can be disappointingly underwhelming - more on this later.)

Torque is an obvious run-of-the-mill taciturn video game badass (though his very prominent sideburns make him stand out from the rest). Therefore, he is expectedly impossible to slow down with any level of injury, but of course to make sure that the game has some level of challenge, he dies when his reserves of health goes down to zero.

Therefore, to provide a way to replenish his health, the game designers have implemented portable health replenishment in the form of bottles of pills labelled "Xombium" that can be used at any time. Certain game consumers would be having a pang of familiarity upon discovering these.

If there is anything refreshing that The Suffering offers that makes its gameplay a bit different from many other third-person action games of the time, it is that Torque has the fortune of coming across a portable lamp that he can latch onto his wife-beater/singlet shirt, allowing the player to turn it on at any time without impeding Torque's combat capabilities, i.e. having to hold a source of light and negate the use of at least one hand.

Unfortunately, The Suffering just has to make use of an old and frustrating game design: limited battery charge for the lamp. This is associated with another old and frustrating game design, which is making environments in the game very dark.

Of course, one can almost immediately argue that batteries for lamps is a "realistic" game design, but it is set in the midst of a story with a backdrop filled with gore and inhuman monsters who certainly have no need for any light to know where to aim their attacks. To sceptical players, sticking a "realistic" limitation to the player character would seem like a cheap way to increase the challenge.

A counter-argument to the latter game design can be about how the aforementioned natural disaster has damaged the prison's lighting systems, and that the story unfolds throughout the night. This is a plenty acceptable argument if the issue is a thematic one, but the game just has to work the darkness into the gameplay as well by hiding supplies in dark areas, with no immediately apparent reason for this.

This means that if the player wants to stay topped up on ammo and pill bottles, he/she may have to have Torque searching the darkness with his lamp turned on, thus reducing the amount of charge that would be left for the next battle, which may take place in a dark place anyway. If the inexplicably hidden supply caches have some batteries, there would not be such an uncomfortable trade-off, but this is not always the case with every supply cache.

(Of course, a player can always note down the location of said supply cache and its contents, reload the game and run over into the darkness to pick them up automatically, but this is just a hassle that would not have been necessary if the game had supply caches hidden away in cleverer manners.)

The game attempts to inject variety into the gameplay by giving the protagonist a hidden power; this hidden power has to be charged up by – typically enough – killing enemies. When the meter denoting the charge is full, the player can force a change in Torque's form, turning him into a very fast hulking monster with a giant blade for an arm.

It is certainly very fast and capable of mauling individual enemies to death very quickly; killing many enemies rapidly will also build up a charge that can be unleashed to murder any monster nearby almost immediately.

However, it is a lot harder to control; its greater speed is too far off from Torque's normal speed, and the camera does not adapt to his larger form, which obscures a lot of the screen. Furthermore, this form of his is very vulnerable to mobbing, due to its larger hitbox and its complete reliance on close combat. Finally, he is not invulnerable in this case: if he takes too much damage, he will die, though he can always regenerate some health back from the brink of death if he does not take further damage.

Despite the complaints above, the game designers may have overestimated the power of this form. To balance it, they have added a penalty to staying in this form too long: Torque simply keels over and die when the charge meter runs out.

Coupled with the fact that it is easier and less risky to just keep enemies at a distance and shoot away at them, it is doubtful that the player would consider using this form in battle much. Ironically, crafty players may consider using this form to simply run away to somewhere more defensible, though this exploit can't be used much as the game utilizes another ages-old contrivance: locking down areas and boxing in the player character with enemies. The prison setting happens to be very, very convenient for such level designs.

The combat may not be satisfying to all but ardent The Suffering fans, but there is one aspect of it that most players would appreciate: the enemy designs.

The Suffering seems to be another game that uses individualistic enemies who attack without much strategy or coordination, though the natures of the enemies in this game do give a very good excuse for such simple A.I. designs. All of the monsters are grotesque creatures, each of them symbolizing a form of execution that humanity has used throughout the ages, only perverted in a manner to give it generally crude methods of attack. For example, the Slayer, with its limbs that end in blades, represents beheadings performed with blades. It has very simple slashing attacks, or can perform a corkscrew flight through the air to cut the distance between the player and itself.

Most other enemies are no more coordinated than said Slayer, which is the earliest creature to be seen in the game. However, each of these happens to have appearances and fighting methods that are different from those of the Slayer, which can make the introduction of each rather thrilling (if a bit dreadful, as they often make their debuts through disturbing scenes that often occur after a build-up of suspense).

For example, the Marksman, which is a grisly amalgamation of those slain on the firing lines, debuts itself by rising out of a hill in the fictional prison that is known for such forms of execution. From its appearance, it would appear to be a typical brute-like enemy that depends on strength to overpower victims, but it would instead run around on all fours, periodically stopping to make use of the organic turret on its back, which is its signature trait.

Another peculiar example is the Mainliner, whose name would be (amusingly) familiar to those who happen to have trivial knowledge of executions. As a creature that symbolizes executions via lethal injection, it happens to be a pin-cushion for hypodermic needles with evil liquids (likely drawn from its own body), which it will happily pluck out and hurl at the player character when in range. The first needle won't be much of a problem, but the second causes brief disorientations of the screen; it can still inflict harm in death too, due to its toxic guts spilling out.

Some of them can be very annoying and not so well-designed though. For example, the Nooseman is a character that is only found indoors, often hanging from poorly lit ceilings. Sometimes, the ceiling is so dark that the game designers simply place them outside of the level boundaries, clipping their models right in whenever the player triggers their appearance. Instead of fighting the player character like the other creatures, they lock Torque into an animation that the player cannot have him breaking out of; to kill them, the player has to spot tell-tale signs of their presence (which are difficult spot in the darkness) and exploit the slight delay between triggering their spawning and their dive down to retreat to safety before they come down and expose themselves.

If the player character keeps his distance, the player will notice that each of the different monsters may perform "idling" animations, such as the aforementioned Slayer scraping its blade-limbs against the floor and walls (if any are nearby). The creatures also have other aesthetic touches, such as making a lot of creepy unearthly noises as inhuman creatures are wont to do.

The traits and backstories for the monsters are collated into entries within the journal of a character that is not visually seen in the game. This journal includes sometimes chilling observations and remarks on the creatures, as well as sketches that also happen to be the final concept art for said creatures; they may also include tips on fighting them. The journal happens to be intact when the player character found it, but it appears that the player cannot access the entire journal from the start. Instead, the player has to discover monsters for the first time, after which their entry in the journal would be fully illustrated and text-written into it, which is a logical oddity.

Encountering new monsters and fighting them for a few times can be fun, but an observant player would eventually notice that the game recycles them for many fights, even resorting to simple variants of the same enemy but with different sizes. Battles can seem to be little more than chores between one story-centric moment of the game and the next one. This can especially seem so after the player realizes that the best way to win fights with the least risk is to keep one's distance and fire away with the very limited array of weaponry.

Speaking of story-centric moments, the story designs are perhaps the strongest reason to trudge through the game. Torque's amnesia and the horrible history of the Abbott State Penitentiary make for very good fodder for the story designers, who consequently crafted a story that is so much more sophisticated than the gameplay. This is worked into the gameplay too, in the form of situations with outcomes that the player can decide on, depending on the solution chosen.

Generally, there are three solutions for each situation: one that involves simply doing nothing and/or moving on until the situation resolves itself (usually in an ugly manner), one that usually involves Torque being beneficent and the last one is him being a complete jerk. Most of the situations involve the fates of the prisoners and guards who survived the initial onslaught and are now looking for ways to survive; there will not be any further elaboration on these, as this would constitute spoilers.

However, it should suffice to say that the consequences for these decisions will mainly be seen at the very end of the game, though the game may also provide some short-term consequences, usually through the theme that the people at a high security prison are not exactly well known for their sense of gratitude.

The ending of the game will also not be elaborated on, as they constitute spoilers, not only for this game, but also for its sequel. However, it should suffice to say here that if the game has replay value, it lies in these moments of the game, each of which has a very brief but different outcome to show for each course of resolution, and the details of the ending of the game.

To help the player gauge what kind of ending that the player will be getting, there is a visual indicator on-screen in the form of a meter that fills as the player picks beneficent decisions and depletes as the player takes nasty ones. The meter is a bit of a spoiler though.

This system would not have been much of a problem, except that the game designers decided that the liberal use of Torque's monstrous form also contributes to the depletion of the meter, further adding to the disincentives that discourage the use of the form.

The game attempts to include some non-combat elements, but these would be all-too-familiar to veteran game consumers by the time of this game's release: there are the usual hunting-down of buttons and switches, shoving and heaving light obstacles like crates around and such. These tend to be just triggers for the spawning of enemies, usually into the previous rooms that the player character will have to backtrack through. In other words, they are little more than just the calm before the storm.

The game was originally designed for the sixth-generation consoles, before it was fully ported over to the computer and released two months later.

Despite the porting, The Suffering appears to utilize the keyboard and mouse quite well – in fact, quite similar to how they are utilized in a typical first-person shooter. There is even utilization of the mouse-wheel, which during the time of this game was not as pervasive as it is now. This is much of a relief, as much of the game involves a lot of fighting.

In fact, speaking of a first-person shooter, the player is given the option of playing the game with a first-person camera, but the player would eventually realize that this is just not optimal when there are too many enemies around for the reduced field of vision to keep track of.

As mentioned earlier, the enemy designs in this game are one of the attractions of this game. They happen to be part of two major aspects of this game, which are its presentations and themes. These happen to be the main appeals of the game.

Other than enemy designs, there is the voice-acting in this game that bolsters its presentation. As to be expected of inmates and guards in high-security prisons, they are all salty and tart-mouthed, and the invasion by the monstrous creatures did not change their demeanour for the better. They are not all scared silly, though the ones that are happen to sound rather convincing in expressing their terror and disbelief at having encountered such abominations.

Those that are not scared silly happen to be the more hard-bitten of the convicts (or guards), and these also happen to be some of the enemies in the game. Whether it is due to a stubborn sense of self-preservation at the expense of others or just lack of sanity (probably exacerbated by the threat of the monsters), they may attack the player character as well as the monsters, leading to a three-way fight. (Of course, the player can choose to stay inconspicuous and let them whittle each other down before mopping up, but this is a rare luxury due to the lack of cover and corners to hide behind.)

That said, human enemies are not much smarter than the monsters that are killing them, but they do have guns and are not held back by attack animations as much as the monsters are. They are not fun to encounter, as they often come in troublesome groups, which have to be divided by exploiting holes in their A.I., such as running behind obstacles and waiting for them to come over piece-meal.

Sometimes, they are even located in hard-to-reach places, requiring the player to aim carefully to take them out; however, the presence of nearby monsters often requires that the player focuses his/her attention on them first. By the time the player has gotten rid of the monsters, the human enemies perched on top of their points of vantage would have done quite a bit of damage, or otherwise made the fight with the monsters an annoying one.

Returning to the game's aspect of presentation, one miscellaneous aspect of it concerns another set of journal entries, in addition to the one mentioned earlier. This journal divulges information on the backstory of the infamous prison. While the contents will not be elaborated here, they do a pretty good job of suggesting that the prison very much deserves its terrible fate of being overrun by hideous monsters. It is a bit more boring than the other journal as it does not touch on the terrible happenings in this game, but the writing is still adequate enough for the journal to be a worthwhile read.

The music is very much suited to the themes of the game. The soundtracks are generally suspenseful and ominous, though a bit loud at times and sometimes repeat certain tunes over and over. One would have expected that with its themes of prison life and death row, metal would have been one of the types of music in the soundtracks, but it is not in this game, perhaps for the better as this would have been rather predictable and typical. In fact, for some soundtracks, the game uses some of the sound effects in the game for their beats.

Speaking of sound effects, how creepy and nasty the monsters in this game sound – including Torque's other form - has already been mentioned. However, the rest of the sound effects feel bland in comparison, as they are mostly gunfire and noises associated with machinery used at prisons, e.g. powered gates/doors and the more macabre of execution devices. At least the latter is used to good effect in bringing forth the dreadful and oppressive atmosphere of the game and in its music (as mentioned earlier), but the former, gunfire, would not be anything any experienced gamer would not have heard before.

The Suffering has been designed with all three major gaming platforms in mind at the time, though the computer version of the game is ultimately a port-over from the console versions, as is apparent by the game's use of checkpoints and player profiles instead of more flexible game-saving options. Still, the optimization efforts resulted in a version that is a lot better than its console counterparts at bringing forth the foreboding atmosphere of the doomed high-security prison island and its terrible history. The computer version also has more detailed textures, though this is more apparent with the character models than the environment due to the supposedly better lighting and shadowing causing the darkness to be even more pronounced.

One of the game's most significant graphical traits is the decal system for Torque's model. As Torque slays enemies that are too close for comfort, blood decals appear on Torque in synch with the blood-spray particle effects from enemies. At low levels of soaking, this can seem rather believable and even cool. However, if the player slays a lot of enemies in close range, Torque's model is thoroughly drenched with blood decals, which can seem comical.

There is a flaw with the application of decals on Torque: perhaps to improve the efficiency of this system, the game designers may have designed it to be independent from the rest of the game's processes. However, this independence goes beyond game sessions, meaning that the decals on Torque's model are retained even if the player reloads a game save or even start a new game after having played for a while. This can result in visually awkward scenes, such as Torque appearing all blood-drenched when he is being sent to his cell at the intro cutscene of the game.

In conclusion, The Suffering won't be offering anything refreshing in its gameplay, which also has flaws in its execution and designs. However, it makes very good use of its very mature and not-kid-friendly themes to craft a dreadful and foreboding atmosphere in the game, as well as a surprisingly gripping story and some of the most disturbing monster designs to be encountered in the history of video games.

Get the full article at GameSpot

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