The Suffering

Surreal Software?s actiony answer to Silent Hill and Resident Evil serves up cruelty on an almost FPS-shaped platter.

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.

Incarcerated/Eviscerated
The story of The Suffering goes like this: You?re a prisoner in a maximum-security facility in which all hell has broken loose. Horrible creatures (mummies with swords for arms, corpses with hypodermic needles for eyes, massive hulks with machine-gun tumors, half-torsos on nooses, that sort of thing) have suddenly appeared for a round of supernatural vengeance; and you can transform into an evil horror of your own once.

Yup, The Suffering is gruesome and gross, with bountiful amounts of violence and gore?the section of the graphics processor that makes red pixels is definitely working overtime. The creature designs are freaky, the lighting is balanced for maximum scare, and the game makes excellent use of ambient psychology as weird images flashing on the screen, crazed (and very potty-mouthed) voices argue in your head, and horrible visions come and go as you pass through rooms. If you see it only in bits and pieces, the game might seem a bit silly, but taken as a whole, it?s a surprisingly complete and disturbing picture.

The gameplay is basically straight-up first-person shooter/action game stuff. There are no real puzzles (no medallions, no statues, no herb-mixing), either?the game really plays up the ?survival? part of its genre namesake. The control scheme works rather clumsily in third-person mode but just fine later in the game when guns blaze more often, and first-person becomes your viewpoint of choice. The game?s biggest problem, really, is its ?same-y? factor?the creature types are repeated too often, and there are only so many ways to decorate a prison.

The Red Mile
There are only the usual trivial differences between the two versions?the Xbox lighting looks better, and it controls a teensy bit better than the PS2 version?but otherwise, both are worth your while if you?re a fan of disturbing stuff. It?s faster and nastier than most of the kindred of Resident Evil at the cost of losing a little bit of edge.

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