The Suffering

The Good
Between the gratuitous profanity, the over-the-top gore, and it's obvious console roots, The Suffering is actually a very good horror-shooter. The game's creepy, confined atmosphere and fenced-in gunplay are spot on, and the gameplay has a smooth flow from start to finish. The obstacles, enemies and environments are creative and appropriately ghastly. The few puzzles in the game are coherent and logical enough to prevent the action from screeching to a halt.

The Bad
The Suffering is a PS2-level console port, and it shows. Textures are low-res and washed out. Polygon counts are fairly low. While the game provides opportunities to for the player to "choose the light or dark side" during his travels, the actual impact on the game is fairly minimal beyond some cutscenes and the addition of some hapless allies. The game is completely and utterly linear, a single-player thrill ride that loses all of its charms on further play. Finally, I didn't mind the game's splatterhouse gore and non-stop hard-R profanity, but some might.

The Bottom Line
"The Suffering" is a 1st/3rd-person horror-shooter that takes place in and around a haunted prison. You play "Torque", a death-row hard-case with real anger management problems, and who may (or may not) have slaughtered his family. Put the prison's outer demons and Torque's inner demons together, and you get an amusingly bloody, surprisingly amoral, and brutally satisfying little romp. Highly recommended, especially for the low price you can purchase it for these days.