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The Suffering
by Omar Mousaly

Monday, March 15 2004

Midway's action/thriller isn't short on thrills of action, but seems to lack depth.

Title: The Suffering

Platform: PS2

Publisher: Midway

Developer: Surreal Entertainment

# of Players: 1

Genre: Action

Origin: United States

Expected Release: February 2004

Grapevine: It provides a small degree of challenge and holds enough stratagem to deserve a good stay of implementation.

Cell door closes. Loud metal clash echoes in the air. You are in the middle of four concrete walls and one small window big enough to show you the light and freedom you will never get back. Voices are calling out your name and just when you think all this is enough; it gets worse... much worse. Where are you? In prison... and prison is hell.

At least, that's what Midway wants you to think, and they did a so-so job doing so.

Enter Torque, a badass criminal convicted of murdering his wife and children. He doesn't seem to talk much, but makes up his social problems with his itchy trigger finger.
Not even five minutes after Torque enters his cell, all hell breaks loose. Guards are being cut up left and right, your inmates are screaming out for help, and you are just watching the whole thing like a Saturday Night horror flick. Yes indeed, Torque seems to have no emotions whatsoever during the whole game. He just stares at everything like he is wasting his time! But let's not get into that... After everyone dies in your area, you must proceed to room after room and meet whoever is living. Not too many cutscenes are in this game since, much like Half-Life, you go through the whole story during the gameplay. There are a lot of repetitive scenarios like "Save this fool", "Maul down these monsters with this unlimited ammo machine gun" or the classic "run down an endless field while shooting every damn thing in sight". Ah... good times... good times.

The actual game doesn’t really have a decent story, but merely covers it up with all the blood, gore and foul language you can think of. Does it scare you? No. It doesn’t really scare you at all, but it does shock you with random things popping up on the screen whenever you least expect it… but it wears off. Is it a good game, though? If Midway thinks that pulling switches and shoving crates to reach ladders is spooky, they don’t know the half of it. Resident Evil did a better job, and it is way more fun. With all the problems, what does the game actually have going for it? It provides a small degree of challenge and holds enough stratagem to deserve a good stay of implementation.

Overall: Even though the game is plagued with glitches galore, it still will hold you just so you can see what the hell will happen to your violent, chaotic “hero”.

--- Omar Mousaly

	Gameplay: [7.0] The thrills will come in droves but it just seems forced at some points. The game could use a bit more subtlety in its "spook" technique.
	Graphics: [8.0] The graphics are pretty good, though they lag behind the newest incarnations of Resident Evil, or even Eternal Darkness.
	Sound: [7.5] The voicing was fairly good, though the absence of ambient music sometimes was a bummer.
	Presentation: [8.0] The Suffering is presented in a film-noir type of way, with action only stopping during brief interludes of story and plot moving. It's not half bad.
	Replay Value: [7.0] Though the game is puzzle based, I wouldn't doubt that some might want to visit the world of The Suffering again.
	Global Score: [7.5] The Suffering is a decent thriller type action game, if not a bit too obvious.

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