The Suffering Game Review
Coming back to the Suffering after so many years, I am surprised how well the story holds up. The manic visual cues, disturbing imagery, unique creature design, lore, and excellent sound design still makes venturing into Carnate Island such a blast from the past to play despite the mediocre gunplay. The Suffering by Surreal entertainment was one of the few games that made me think of games as an art form with some clever use of old school horror gimmicks and clever world-building.
You play as Torque, a man who has been sentenced to death row in Carnate Island own Abott State Penitentiary for the murder of his wife and kids. As soon as you are put into your holding cell, all hell starts to breaks loose. Prison guards and prisoners get massacred by ghastly creatures, old ghost relives their old tormented lives while you try to escape and fight your way out of the island. Along the way you meet the colorful but scary denizens that live in Carnate Island. Although the premise seems like a simple horror movie cliché, the journey is worth it. It plays like most typical third-person action game from the 2000s. Strafing and shooting. Having one shooting gallery and hopping to the next one. There are some unique puzzle moments when it comes to challenging the bosses as well and is executed well enough even though it brings nothing new to the table.
The gunplay works and overall it is fun but its not as satisfying as Max Payne with a rather limited choice of weapons. You have your standard revolvers, machine gun, in this case, a Tommy gun (I have no idea why it’s a Tommy gun, I thought they will be using slightly more recent firearms maybe an MP5), the all too familiar shotgun and the usual grenades. Killing enough enemies allows you to go into a sort of beast mode which you can unleash once the meter is full, allowing you to create all sorts of havoc. Torque essentially becomes a more grotesque looking hulk with one arm being a giant blade infuse into his flesh. In essence there is nothing really new that the suffering brings into the genre.
Where Suffering truly shines though is its world-building, grotesque creature design, sound design, atmosphere, and disturbing visual cues base on your decisions. Yes this action game does have a decision gameplay mechanic and it works. Well sort of. I thought the way it was implemented was good by rewarding players base on their actions with having a short glimpse of imagery about Torques’ wife and her monologue on you. It was almost experimental, allowing you to make small subtle decisions and for a third-person action game that was unheard of for me at the time. It was more common to find decision making sequences in role-playing games than a third-person action game. Doing various actions will unlock different endings like saving a guard’s life or killing an innocent prisoner. However the game pretty much plays the same, there is no alternate route by making certain decisions. It only changes the way the narrative is told somewhat.
Despite its age, the graphics for the suffering has given it a unique and distinctive feel. Lighting is excellent and especially the sound design of the creatures is really good. It has a Silent Hill like vibe with mist-like environments. Imagery and world-building here are stellar. Carnate Island may not be Rapture from Bioshock but it is brimming with life and history. Each creature has its backstory of suffering from the festers a huge monstrosity that comes from the ocean with chains surrounding their dead bloated bodies to the mainliners with syringes stuck on their backs and eye socket. Festers are supposed to represent the slave traders who abandon the slaves in a ship crashed and are now paying for their sins. Each location as well has something to tell about the suffering that was inflicted. Old World War 2 bunks tell the tale of men being dishonestly imprisoned, the electric chair has a tale of a prisoner giving in to his inner demons. The phone rings and you pick up to listen to a dead prisoner who talks to his mom or hear your dead wife talk to you giving me goosebumps. A sudden image of your son in a room full of prison guards that are about to beat him while he yells for your help for a moment and soon you are transported back into the old empty room. You hear voices of old ghosts, their joys, fears, and their fascination with their kill.
Voice work for many of these scenes are great and done well. Even the three main bosses are excellent giving so much personality to the simple game. Dr. Killjoy the ghost who appears by using old cinema projectors or Horace who tells you about how he cave into the demands of the island and carved up his wife to protect her from the real world. Wires and electricity surround Horace with his burn up head. Killjoy entertaining introductions into your new world. The narrations by Clem about the creature’s origin or Consuela’s narration about Carnate Island history are done really well. Sometimes it feels like you are listening to those nightmarish boogeyman stories that are used to scare kids. Everything seems to be connected to the theme of suffering being a constant cycle and it is delivered so well. It just oozes with creepy atmosphere drawing all the horror gimmicks from famous movies like the Shining.
There are some issues though with it being an older game. It crashes often but there are patches and guides to help minimize the issue. The unique lore, its themes of suffering being a cycle, and the many interesting horror stories that it brings along the way make the Suffering such a joy to journey with despite the rather mediocre third-person action.
The Suffering and its sequel The Suffering Ties that bind is currently being sold at GOG.
