The Suffering [Horror] Full Game Review For PC

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The suffering is what would happen if you mixed Silent Hill with something written by Clive Barker it's a psychological action horror game developed by surreal software and released in 2004 for PlayStation 2 and the Xbox, with a port also released later on for the PC.

THE GAME PLAY

In The Suffering, your character is a guy named Torque who's just been transferred to death row at the fictional Abbott State Penitentiary. Torque's backstories it is on death row because he murdered his wife and two kids although you get the gist from the get-go that there's probably more to it than that.

After some unintentionally funny voice acting, the prisoners was under attack by some weed horrific creatures that look like something that should be accompanying pinhead and cenobite before Torque breaks out of his cell and escapes. From this point on, the story gets a little bit weird, there's three spirits to begin to encounter throughout the prison who all have some kind of messed-up backstory often going back decades before Torque even arrived on the scene.

The real scene stealer is the creepy Dr. Killjoy, a surgeon who runs the asylum wing of the prison and he serves as something of a commentator on talks wearying mental state and also probed him for information regarding the murders he's accused of. I interacted with a spirit stalks also haunted by hallucinations involving his deceased family members.

Cinematix are interesting to watch most of the time and some of them are well scripted too, like you're watching this really kinda cheesy horror movie. The suffering is definitely a horror game and even kind of starts out like survival horror, well you've got nothing but a knife and a few healing items but before long it borders right into action mode. The prison is a large and complex facility with various sections and wings that offer up their own unique design and layouts.

When Torque isn't fighting monsters, he's either solving basic puzzles collecting weapons and items or talking to NPCs who often use four-letter words like it's going out of style. Throughout the game you see the result this incursion has had on the entire prison with both guards and inmates alike fighting for their survival, and the campaign never really loses its pace, you're always just moving onward to the next area with no delay and there's never really a dull moment.

When in third-person mode, the shooting Connor reminds me a little bit like a watered-down Max Payne without the bullet time mechanic particularly the way Torque controls and the whole dodge roll move as well. Talk can even use painkillers to restore his health points just like our boy Max Payne does as well. Also like Max Payne, you equip a primary weapon, a pistol, shotgun or tommy gun and can also equip a throwable weapon in tox offhand like a grenade Molotov cocktail or a stack of dynamite, which can be easily thrown with the right mouse button by default.

Where the suffering really differs though is that you're given the option to play in either a first or third person perspective which can be chosen seamlessly by pressing the control key, the idea I guess is that you're supposed to use third person for melee and first person for shooting things. Though the game can be played in both the first and third person views, they're sadly a few disadvantages to playing in first-person mode starters when using the melee weapons in first-person view, it's often hard to gauge how close you are to enemies because of the FOV which has to be around like 60 or so and there's no way to modify it at least as far as I could tell.

Another issue is that in the first person mode you can't dodge roll, when in third-person mode if you press strafe and jump in a particular direction Torque is going to roll to the side, which is handy for avoiding telegraphed enemy attacks. You can do this whether or not you're using melee, or ranged weapons and not being able to do it in first-person mode is a bit of a letdown. About the only objective upside to playing in first-person mode is that when you open doors or interact with items you can bypass the two or so second animation that accompanies the same action in third-person view.

This is more useful if you're in combat and trying to get to a nearby door or flicker switch because often if you're doing this in third-person mode you're gonna take a hit during these moments. Shooting open like the shotgun also feels a lot better in first-person mode as you can really see the damage you're doing up close, whereas from the zoomed out view of third-person mode it kind of feels less impactful. All in all, you can still play through the game as if it's a first-person shooter if that's your cup of tea but it's not all inclusive as it perhaps could have been warps other big ability is that after killing a certain amount of enemies you can activate a kind of rage mode where it transforms into this huge beast with large blades for arms able to defeat most enemies in a couple of hits.

The increased damage and durability is offset by the fact that if you use it too long it can outright kill you and using it too much is also gonna affect the games ending , for those brief moments when you can let loose and just decimate a bunch of creatures in seconds is pretty damn satisfying considering otherwise the enemies can be kind of bullet spongy. Speaking of endings, despite playing as someone who has absolutely zero charisma or even character traits to make him remotely likable the game forces us to choose Torque's ultimate outcome for the ending of the game, which comes down to a bunch of different factors throughout the campaign.

Throughout the game you're frequently coming across other NPCs, beard prison guards or other inmates and you're given the option to either help them or just kill them. There's literally voices in your head representing both the good and evil sides of Torque and both of them drown each other out really forcing the player to make the uncool. Your choices will then tie into the games ending depending on how many people you helped or killed along the way. That's often easier said than done though as other characters you try to help often run headfirst into combat like complete idiots and died just as quickly, so if you're gonna try to save everyone well expect a fair few rate rise slide.

From that issue though there's no reason to not help everyone you come across unless you just some kind of dick bag that likes killing people for no real reason. They have at least left stalkers a blank slate in that regard so it doesn't feel out a character for him to choose the good or evil options mostly because he has no character to begin with. You're also blatantly told in-game when you perform an evil action and a photograph in Torque’s inventory shows his moral state as well so a least you know what path Iran before the ending cinematic.

The suffering may be over ten years old you've got to cut it a bit of slack individuals dept. but they've still done a pretty good job of making a little decent enough considering the time it was released. This is one of those games that were clearly designed for consoles first with a PC as an afterthought and one look at the so called options menu is pretty clear evidence of that.

There's also a pretty cool dismemberment system in place as well where you can literally shoot these assholes to pieces or just simply blow their goddamn heads off. My major issue with the suffering is that whilst it does tell an interesting story, it does also at times tell a convoluted one. NPCs frequently mentioned how the on where the prison is brings out the evil and everyone but it's never quite explained as to what that actually means.

Same thing with all the creatures you encounter, and I think there's a point in the game where someone says that the prison staff have been experimenting on the inmates which I guess explains where all the monsters could have come from, and then another theory is that the souls of former inmates returning for vengeance but it never really goes into much more detail than that and I feel like at just being a result of the metaphorical evil of the island to be a bit of a cop-out in terms of a story telling.

GRAPHICS AND SOUND

The most recent PC version does at least support white screens so that's a plus. The monster designs are all really creative too and based off the kind of execution methods you see in prison so there's these monsters that have a bunch of syringes in their back and spit out this acidic projectile that represents death by lethal injection. There are monsters with rifles embedded in their backs that have blindfolds across their eyes representing death by firing squad. All of the creatures have jagged pieces of metal jutting out of their arms and legs making them look like they're in this world of pain which they probably are.

The game isn't shy about popping up random horrific looking images on the screen alongside loud screeching sounds to really keep you on the edge.

MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

CPU: Pentium III or Athlon equivalent
CPU SPEED: 1 GHz
RAM: 128 MB
OS: Windows 98SE/ME/2000/XP
VIDEO CARD: 32 MB DirectX 8.0 compliant video card
DIRECTX VERSION: 9.0b
SOUND CARD: Yes
FREE DISK SPACE: 2 GB
CD-ROM: 4X Speed CD-ROM

RECOMENDED SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

CPU: Pentium 4 or Athlon XP
CPU SPEED: 2 GHz
RAM: 512 MB
OS: Windows 2000/XP
VIDEO CARD: 64 MB DirectX 9.0b compliant video card
DIRECTX VERSION: 9.0b
SOUND CARD: Yes
FREE DISK SPACE: 2 GB
CD-ROM: 4X Speed CD-ROM

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OVERALL REVIEW/RATING

Graphics 7/10
Sound 8/10
Gameplay 8/10
Controls 7/10
Effect 7/10

OVERALL REVIEW

7.3\10

DEVELOPER

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RELEASE DATE

September 2008

CONCLUSION

While I look at the monster when playing this older games, whether or not they're still fun and enjoyable and that's something I think the suffering can still pull off. It really does do a bang-up job of combining third and first-person gameplay amidst a pretty well told story that can deliver the goods when it needs to. Prior to few months ago, getting your hands on this thing was a bit of a pain in the ass and getting it to run him on hardware was even more so. Thanks to good www.old-games.com, it runs perfectly and it's easy to pick up.

I don't know if I'd say it's any kind of masterpiece or anything but it's a pretty damn honed game or it matters most and the story and setting is at least pretty unique.

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My previous blogs:

Destiny 2 (FPS) Full Game Review For PC

Wolfenstein 2 The New Colossus (FPS) Full Game Review For PC

Dead Space 3 PC Game Review

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_{Other images were gotten from www.old-games.com}

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