Xbox

The Suffering

Prison is hell, this is the slogan that the accompanying documentary flashes before the screen and, once you start playing The Suffering, these three words couldn’t be truer. Imagine yourself as an inmate in a dimly lit dilapidated prison with cracked walls and corroded drainpipes. A place that not only screams madness and death but whispers it constantly into your ear. And now imagine this place giving birth to monstrosities that can’t wait to carve you into pieces. Survival horror fans, Midway has brought us a game that dares you to play it with the lights off . . . all alone.

The Suffering is a great addition to a genre which raises the bar in action and horror. You won't be disappointed if you pick up Midways horror gem. Get ready to be on the edge of your seat, indulged in the unfoldings in The Suffering.

As if prison weren't bad enough, with hazing in the yard, shanking on the row and brutality in the shower room, imagine having to put down a horde of monsters from the bowels of hell in your spare time. That's exactly what you're charged with doing in The Suffering, a brand new title from Surreal Software and Midway Games.

Survival horror games were once a big part of video gaming. Games like Resident Evil, Carrier, Silent Hill, and others were once big deals. Everyone always clammored for the newest Resident Evil and the big question was always "what platform will Capcom make it for?" But somehow, the survival horror genre has taken somewhat of a downtick. Silent Hill 3 came and went with little fanfare, and Fatal Frame 2 came out and you almost didn't know it hit shelves. Midway wanted us to begin to relay the message to the gaming community that they want to get the revival of the genre going. Well, today Midway can come through on that very promise and has brought us The Suffering. Midway was betting that The Suffering would turn some heads. It got my attention!

The atmosphere is intense, with inhuman sounds, alarming percussion, and eerie lighting that convey a sense of danger and foreboding. It's like walking through a haunted house - perfect for Halloween. The surround sound is so effective that you can even use it to locate the source of noises. I'm glad I didn't miss out on this. If you're over 16 and can stomach the gore, The Suffering can be a pleasurable experience.

It’s been said that war is hell, but whoever made that observation probably hadn’t ever been imprisoned. I’m talking about having someone thrown in a maximum security prison with a number of murderers, rapists and other fiends of society for a long time while trying to live a somewhat normal life. For most of us, we’ll thankfully never experience this nightmare that is, unless we decide to incarcerate ourselves with Midway’s latest contribution to survival horror, The Suffering. I hope you’ve boned up on your Oz episodes, because we’re going inside the walls of one of the worst prisons to have ever crossed a TV screen.

The Suffering delivers a surprisingly coherent survival/horror package. It could be the perfect alternative for those seeking a faster-paced Resident Evil. There’s a difficult balance to strike when you’re making a horror game: Resident Evil has the scares, Silent Hill has the atmosphere and storytelling, but neither one has yet to nail the gameplay side of the triangle; the developers seem to think that clunky and plodding controls are worth the trouble if they make the game more scary. Maybe they’re right: The Suffering is a worthwhile horror game that nails the action stuff but doesn’t quite get under your skin the same way those other interactive dances of macabre do.

The modern horror game is one that sticks pretty close to the blueprint laid out by Capcom's 1996 release Resident Evil. Slow pacing, methodical puzzles, and scares centered around things that jumped out of the darkness were the order of the day then, and since that time, games have roughly based themselves on this concept. Midway's new game, The Suffering, goes for the horror thing with creepy monster design and startling visual trickery, but it also ditches most of the ammo-conservation and slow pacing found in a majority of horror-themed games. The end result is a much more action-packed experience that might be a little too straightforward in spots, but it does make for a solid action game.

Dès votre plongeon initial dans cette mare poisseuse et infestée de miasmes macabres, vous serez happé par l'ambiance immersive et malsaine se dégageant de ce titre, et à juste raison. Évènements bien amenés, tension décantée patiemment et intelligemment, progression incertaine, tout est mis en place pour vous plonger dans un ravissement horrifique. Cependant cette dimension change quelque peu avec l'arrivée d'armes lourdes et fort meurtrières, accompagnées d'une maniabilité parfois hésitante, faisant balancer le soft du côté des jeux d'actions nerveux. Un petit revirement dommageable, mais qui ne doit pas occulter le fond intéressant. Un dernier détail, un remake de la Vache et le Prisonnier à cette sauce serait le bienvenu.

If you're picking a version between this and the PlayStation 2 offering, choose this. The particle effects are much more impressive, there's better lighting (but both games suffer from repeating textures and bland environments), there's 480p video output for those wanting to count all the bloodstains on the walls in non-blurro vision, but both use Dolby 5.1. However, if you've just grabbed the PS2 build, don't fashion a shiv to use on yourself; there's very little else to differentiate the two titles. In fact, either version of The Suffering warrants a two-day play through. It's the perfect weekend rental for those craving an awful lot of offal in their action romps.