The Top Shelf: The Second Round 034: The Suffering

by mento

Welcome to The Top Shelf, a weekly feature wherein I sort through my extensive PS2 collection for the diamonds in the rough. My goal here is to narrow down a library of 185 games to a svelte 44: the number of spaces on my bookshelf set aside for my PS2 collection. That means a whole lot of vetting and a whole lot of science that needs to be done - and here in the second round, that means narrow...

Extra Note: We've entered Shelftember! In this much-vaunted month, we will be processing one of the second round entries every day. I'll be spending one hour apiece with each game - inspired by DanielKempster's backlog-clearing series "An Hour With..." - and determining its fate from there.

I think the chief reason why this particular round features so many horror-themed games is that you really have to be a specific mood to appreciate them. Some, like Siren 2 from a few days ago, have a leisurely pace that lets you soak in its tension until you're sitting wide-eyed in the dark flinching at every innocuous sound coming from elsewhere inside or outside your domicile. Conversely, you also have games like The Suffering here, which tries to create a bridge between what is commonly known as survival horror - try to survive a bunch of scary shit with a small pile of resources and a protagonist that wouldn't last long in a fight regardless - and a more conventional third-person action game where your ammo stock is less of a concern.

The Suffering sees the convict Torque sent to Abbott State Penitentiary on Carnate Island just off the coast of Maryland, and specifically the "Death House" wing which houses those given the sentence of capital punishment. Torque murdered his entire family, a wife and two sons, though he claims it was during a blackout and therefore can't remember doing so. Just as the game starts pondering the guilt of its anti-hero through some loudmouth arguing cellmates, a massive earthquake ruptures the prison, knocks out a lot of the power, and causes a host of supernatural creatures to emerge and start killing everyone, guards and inmates alike. During his escape, Torque encounters three spirits that each personify a type of execution - a sociopathic scientist who extols the lethal injection and is interested in Torque's "development" as a mental case, a former executioner who appears as a gaseous specter and prompts Torque to give in to his demons, and the remorseful spirit of a man killed by the chair who tries to draw out Torque's good side. This is all part of the game's morality system, which makes subtle tweaks to how the story pans out and how NPCs approach Torque based on choices the player can make. Some of these choices are less obvious than others; hitting the switch in a gas chamber that contains a trapped guard is a fairly obvious "evil" example, but I feel there's been a few cases where I didn't do enough to save someone and may have been marked down as a result (there's no in-game morality gauge that I've found, so I assume the game is tracking all this in secret).

Most of the game revolves around standard survival horror gameplay such as finding maps, using those maps to figure out a path through the environment, and killing any monsters that happen to be in your way. Ammunition, flares, healing aids and flash grenades are in ample supply, at least early on, so it's not quite Resident Evil in its stringent apportioning of resources. The combat feels more reminiscent of Giants: Citizen Kabuto or Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, where it's less about standing still and trying to aim than running and strafing around while lining up enemies within your crosshair using the camera: the latter method is the best way of ensuring they don't hit you back. The enemy designs of the game are the clear highlight: The Suffering takes a lesson from Silent Hill 2, basing its enemies on manifestations of abstract concepts - in this case, different types of execution throughout history, from the guillotine to firing squads - and designing really unsettling and cool designs around those ideas. If the player finds themselves overwhelmed and can't depend on their guns alone, they also have a temporary transformation that has a separate gauge that fills slowly as the player takes down foes. While the transformation doesn't make Torque invincible, he cuts through enemies like butter while it's active. There's also a harsh penalty for letting Torque's gauge drain all the way before transforming back, so there's a risk/reward factor to relying on it for too long. I've also been avoiding it just in case it messes with the morality balance feature; it feels like relinquishing control to one's inner demons is kinda what got Torque in this mess in the first place.

The Suffering's aged quite a bit, but it's still an excellent horror action game with some effective world building and creepy visuals. I might put it on the same tier as a F.E.A.R., where the idea is taking a more conventional genre of game and presenting it through a psychological horror filter that is as effective as any traditional survival horror game in drawing chills and spooks from its audience. Given that I'm dedicating the month of October to completing all the promising PS2 games from this round of eliminations, I might just toss The Suffering on that pile as one appropriate to the spooky season.

Result: Progresses to the Final Round.

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