No.30 - The Suffering ~ Ties That Bind (PS2) :
The original Suffering (which I briefly covered here.. ) was a great game that took a lot of inspiration from films like the 1999 remake of House On Haunted Hill for its scares, and it kept me pretty much hooked from beginning to end! When this sequel came out, I snapped it up pretty quickly, expecting to enjoy it equally as much....
But, for some reason, it never quite grabbed me the same... I didn't know if it was because it was too similar and I'd got bored, or maybe the gameplay, level design or story just weren't as good..but I gave up playing after only an hour or so, fully intending to revisit it at a later date, but never actually getting round to it. So, I decided that now was as good a time as ever to finally give it another bash....
The game starts with a flashback to 5 years previously, where Torque, the character you play, is in another prison. His friend Miles believes that they wouldn't be incarcerated there if it wasn't for a criminal named Blackmore, who seems unhappy at Torque's lack of cooperation in his schemes.
A riot breaks out and Torque starts seeing the creatures he would encounter later on Carnate, before Blackmore appears and encourages him to use his "insanity" form from the first game to kill some enemies...and then the screen goes black, and Torque awakens back on the boat leaving Carnate Island...
Here the game reads your saved game from the original, and depending on how you played that, decides which opening cinematic to show you. The fate of the poor coast guard you left the island with is decided by your alignment, with the neutral setting being chosen by default if you haven't played the first game. It's a nice little feature to have, as once again your moral decisions will affect the outcome of this game too!
Anyway, after you collapse right after arriving on the mainland, you're wheeled by some soldier types into a room where you meet Janet, leader of an organisation called The Foundation. She explains that the monsters Torque encountered on Carnate, the "malefactors", are her life's work and she wishes to study you...but then of course, the malefactors she's been keeping to study escape, and all hell breaks loose allowing you to escape as well....
And so you'll wander as Torque around Baltimore, learning some of it's shady history while trying to work out your connection to Blackmore and his part in your family's downfall and how this all ties in to these weird creatures that are running around killing everyone! Hurrah!
Restarting this, I think I might have worked out why this game doesn't really click with me. The streets of Baltimore just aren't as claustrophobic or atmospheric as the prison and island were in the first game...the creatures that were co-created by Stan Winston Studio made sense on the island, but it feels like the game developers thought they were too good to not use again and have come up with silly ways to tie them in to the mainland....like the Triggermen killed by firing squad being retro-fitted to represent victims of gun crime and the lethally-injected Mainliners become drug addicts!
It just all seems a bit lazy and rushed (which is rich coming from me, I know..hehe..), and like they couldn't be bothered to come up with anything much that was new. Also the story seems a lot more confusing and although it has a few good moments, it just doesn't make you want to stick with it the same way as the first.
There also appears to be more instances of things happening when you're not in the right position to look at them, meaning you'll hear creepy voices but miss the actions that the owners of said voices are doing because you're looking at the box of ammo in the corner...
It seems to be a bit buggier than the first game too, with cut-scenes awkwardly interrupting events and controls becoming suddenly sticky at the wrong moment. It's true that a lot of this sometimes happened in The Suffering but I didn't encounter it anywhere near as much as in this game.
It might seem that the game is terrible from what I'm saying....but it really isn't too bad. It's actually an okay piece of shooty-horror gaming with some interesting ideas based around the history of its locations and some decent action sequences. It's perfectly playable ...it's just disappointing when compared to the original, which deserved something a lot better than a "more-of-the-same-but-not-as-good" sequel! It just still fails to click with me, a big fan of Torque's previous offering, and I'm finding it tricky to stick with once again...
So yeah, it's impossible to recommend this over The Suffering! If you want to find out more about Torque then by all means pick it up, but once you've played the first game you wouldn't be missing much by not bothering with this one....it's okay but it's not quite right!
Oh dear...two games down on this year's list and both have been a bit disappointing! Hopefully tomorrow's offering will be a bit better!
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