What’s with Midway and all these blood and guts games anyway?!?

If it isn’t this game it’s Psi Ops, which features many varied ways to kill including the Bobby Flay BBQ style, the Fist of the North Star exploding head style, the Reality TV suck your life out of your body style, and the Wizard of Oz “Auntie’ Em! It’s a Twister! It’s a Twister!” slash flying monkey throw your enemies through the air style.

Then there’s the seldomly spoken of Grand Theft Auto ripoff “Roadkill” which is sorta like Grand Theft Auto… if GTA sucked. Apparently they thought they could overcome those minor things like engaging gameplay with an overdose of blood, violence and swearing. Don’t think it worked since GTA has yet to be dethroned from it’s high spot by this blood drenched clone.

And, of course, we have this. The Suffering.
You play as a member of the prison population known as Torque. Seems you are one bad dude who seems to have a bad memory. You, like a certain person on death row, seems to have forgotten the minor little details of how you off’d your family. However in your case it seems that you might be guilty, yet it might not be your fault. You’ll figure that out as you spend your few nights here at this lovely island prison slash hellhole as you fight to escape the hellish darkness seeping out of the very earth itself.

Seems this prison might as well be Grand Central Station of the damned because it, like the logical end of where your waste goes when you flush your toilet, is where the disgusting “discards” of human souls is being discharged at an alarming rate. These creatures, not exactly students of the Dr. Phil method of anger management, are bizarre representations of the way they were killed during this island‘s long, dark and bloody history.

Those who were dismembered come back as bizarre marionette type creatures with blades for arms and legs. Those who were shot by firing squads come back as hulking monsters with giant Imperial Forces level cannons on their back. Those who were put down with lethal injections come back as little squirming freaks with hypos coming out of their backs and through their eyes. And lord knows what else they did there that might crawl up from the ground looking to carve you a new one!

But it seems that, yes, like Haley Joel Osment you too can “see dead people”… and I don’t mean the creatures that stand in obvious plain sight looking to kill all they see.
I mean actual dead people. Sometimes they manifest physically, other times they are only visible when you watch the security screens (so watch them often since they often show you the path ahead, or shows you some of your “tormentors” as they do the bad things they do).

As for the ghosts? They run the gambut from good, to neutral, to downright evil.
For instance you are confronted by a fellow inmate who seems to have died in the electric chair, because he glows and sparks with electricity (E-Lec-Tricity)! He seems to be on your side, walking you through the prison and showing up from time to time with encouragements.
Then there’s this guy who seems to have died in the gas chamber… either that or he’s been to the biggest TexMex place in the afterlife because boy does he reek of gases that

kill on contact! Whoo-ee!!
He seems to be neutral. He isn’t helping you, but he isn’t hindering you… yet.
Next is a strange Dr. Frankenstein type physician who has raised the art of heartless killing to a level par with Nazi Germany. This guy, who appears often in a glowing golden form as if projected by a film projector, seems to know more about you (and your true abilities) than even you know!
True abilities? Did I mention that you can “hulk” out and become a monster at times to bash down your enemies? Yeah, hence why you are probably guilty as sin yet not guilty of murder… get my point?

Then there’s the spirit of your dead wife, who (like Jiminy Cricket) occasionally tries to be your conscious.
Listen to her. She’s cute and she knows what she’s talking about… even if the game works hard to stop you from being nice… more on that later.

And if having all these dead things in your face isn’t enough of a hassle? You’ll also have LOTS and LOTS of flashbacks… not all of them yours… to go through. You’ll see how people died, you’ll see your family, you’ll see this and you’ll see that. And all that while juggling your killing sprees to blaze a path to freedom, making sure to restock ammo and your flashlight batteries (and health gear) along the way while managing your “hulk” power (since too much “Hulk Smash” can kill you).

Eh? The game is loaded? Yeah, it is. But it’s also easy to manage.
You have a simple inventory screen to manage, which can be pulled down while you play without having to go off to a separate inventory screen (ala Silent Hill 4 : The Room).
There are puzzles, and they range from the simple to the tricky (which requires a little thought to see yourself through them). That’s a good thing since (if the game was just all shooting and no thought) it would be boring, except for the fact the puzzles are too few and far between. Wish there were more.

The gameplay is easy to manage, but I wish there was an auto aim feature that worked.
I think there’s one in the options menu but it never seems to work for me. Maybe if I had the instruction booklet I could have worked it better but I rented it so I mostly learned the game through trial and error.
There’s a ton of checkpoints as you play, so you don’t have to go too far back if you’re killed so that makes progressing in this game easy enough. And with a bit of intelligent gameplay and lots of shooting to do you have yourself a pretty good shooter.

I only wish the people you occasionally “team up” with were intelligent.
One major problem is the fact that, when you find yourself occasionally teamed up with someone, their AI doesn’t exactly cover for your presence in the scenario when it comes to attacking enemies.
They will target and shoot an enemy, and if you happen to be between said enemy and themselves? They’ll attempt to shoot right through you! Problem? Yeah. Problem. Problem is that they CANNOT shoot through you! Any shooting at you harms you, so you end up having your own “ally” shooting at you for some odd reason… especially guards. For some reason I helped this one guard with enemies and he kept shooting me after the room

was clear. Glitch or on purpose? Only Michael Moore knows for sure.

The second major problem is glitches involving clipping.
This game is filled with clipping. Enemies clipping through walls, floors, etc. Even in cutscenes you see AI characters clipping through the floors or walls.
HOWEVER this can also jam you up. If, by some odd chance (and it might happen more than you think) if you end up clipping yourself through an object, there’s a chance you’ll freeze in that spot and be unable to get yourself free! That means you’ll have to go back to the previous checkpoint and play the whole area again! And if you went through abit to get to this part? Then it’s no fun to have to do it over again!
This can also happen if you do something the game wasn’t expecting.
For instance in one area there’s a red door (fallen into a corner as if it was knocked off) and the area it was sealing is open. HOWEVER if you “close” the door (it falls close if you interact with it) you’ll become jammed inside the door as it closes, apparently the game wasn’t expecting you to do that (seems that way since there’s nothing hidden behind the door from what I could see before the mistake) and if there is something (in harder difficulty settings) it’s just not worth it if it means jamming yourself up like that.

There are some bonuses, and some things you gather as you play (as you play you’ll uncover notes on the island and the creatures) and with the solid action gameplay that rips through at a comfortable pace this game is well worth the time to pick up if you are a fan of the survival horror franchise!

It’s bloody, and violent, but it’s also solid. From the gameplay and graphics to the voice acting, which is A1 sharp and great to listen to, it’s just a good game. Yes, it’s violent, but it’s also good.
Breakdown time!

The Suffering Breakdown, Therapy Session
What’s Hot?
Yeah. It’s violent, and bloody, and has a little problem with clipping. Still, despite all this it’s still a solid shooter. And if you get tired of either 1st Person or 3rd Person you can change it around and play it the other way! Yes! The game plays well in both 1st and 3rd person and it’s interchangeable as you play!

It’s good, the story is good, the voice acting is good (no bum voices here). Everything just plays out well here. Yes, again, it’s bloody and dark… but a little darkness never hurt anyone.
Didn’t hurt Ray Parks (Darth Maul) or Christopher Lee (Saruman) so a little trip to the dark side is good from time to time.

What’s Not?
Slight glitches with clipping (that might jam you up if you end up stuck in a wall or something) is my only complaint. That and I wish the AI you occasionally end up escorting needs a brain.
Other than that it’s all good. The puzzles are there. Not very numerous but some do give your brain abit of a workout. The action is there, and solid. So I don’t have too much to complain about.

Moments to Remember?
The storyline is the best. Solid and really engaging you just have to blaze thorugh this game to see what happens next, and where this will all lead you in the end. One of the better storylines for a game like this

short of the Resident Evil games.

Then there’s the TOYS! The guns you can get ahold of is abit, and you can even get ahold of some “crowd pleasing” major sized guns that’ll help you perform your own little re-enactment of the end of Zulu Dawn as you wipe out wave after wave of creatures with your powerful big “friend”. Even to the point in one area where you can litter the floor in piles and piles of dead creatures!
Can’t go wrong with the firepower here! It’s not as much as Resident Evil 4, but it’s all good.

What to Ignore?
The first time I played through this I continuously felt the urge to, like Tomo in Azumanga Daioh, to push every button and pull every lever. Yeah. That’s NOT a good thing. I put a few people to death that way and I didn’t mean to. But THEN AGAIN…

The game sometimes (often) works against you if you are planning to be a good guy in the prison.
In fact it goes out of it’s way to stop your goodness.
Remember the few people I off’d by pushing and pulling things? Second time around I didn’t do that, and they still ended up snuffed. One guy was in a gas chamber. First time I saw him I… ahem… accidentally pulled the switch and gassed him. Second time, when I knew better, the guy with the gas problem showed up and gassed him. So I couldn’t save him either way.

You’ll often hear people in danger but the game keeps you from saving them.
It’ll place impenetrable barriers that’ll keep you from saving them, until they’re dead then suddenly you’ll be able to progress. It’ll show you people on the opposite end of glass barriers you can’t reach. You’ll hear people on the speaker system you want to save, but can’t.
Basically the game works hard to snuff lots of people, and nothing you can do will stop it.
Even your first escort mission! After awhile the game will eventually snuff him (with no penalty to you from what I could see) once you made enough progress in the game. Sheesh!

Then there’s the creatures. As in too few creatures. Considering there are quite a few ways to legally (and illegally) put a person to death you would have thought a game that shows the horrors of the death sentence would have used as many of these methods to create many creatures, but I only ran into 3 examples as I played the game which I thought was rather meek in comparison to other games and their wide variety of undead to smash. It could have been abit more, and I guess it would have been more if I managed to get through more of the game, but still… how many creatures are there?

Overall?
It’s a solid shooter that is a bloody good time.
Not even the few glitches and faux passé in the game can diminish the playability of this blood drenched shooter! And I would rather take a trip to an island prison of the damned than play yet ANOTHER future war shooter set in North Korea! What! Is North Korea going to be the Normandy/Germany or the Vietnam of the 21st Century war video games? Sheesh! Ghost Recon 2, Mercenaries : Playground of Destruction and now Project : Snowblind! All set in, yes, North Korea!
I’ll stick to survival horror. Less politics in those games.