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The Suffering (PS2) by FABIO 07/24/2004, 2:50pm PDT The following is based on 40 minutes of play. A pretty good game that's creepier than the silent hill sequels but not the original (or Fatal Frame). Sadly though, this is brought down by some HORRIBLE FUCKING CONTROLS. Seriously, these are some of the worst I've seen in years. So bad it boggles the mind how playtesting didn't catch this. There are about 5 different controller settings you can choose from. This is like any other game that lets you choose from different button layouts. The problem here is each layout has one thing that makes it good, but one thing that makes it suck. One mode automatically rotates the camera to see in front of you whenever you turn. This makes walking around a breeze but it's horrible for combat when you want to circle strafe the fuck out of everything. Another mode never moves the camera on its own. This is great for combat where you don't always want to see directly in front of you, but it makes just getting around outside of combat a pain in the ass since you have to rotate the camera with the right stick every time you take a turn. You also get a flashlight that has limited battery power, and only one controller layout assigns a button to turning it on and off; for every other layout you must access your inventory then choose the flashlight. The game is not paused when you access your inventory so you'll be walking around in the dark to preserve battery power only to be jumped by enemies and waste time fumbling around with your inventory while you get cut up. The controller layout that's good for combat but sucky for exploring also throws in a wrench by assigning the "use health item" button to L3 (pressing in the left analogue stick). That's right, pressing in the same stick used for movement in the middle of combat will use up a health item. Since you're frantically jerking the stick all over the place in the middle of combat you'll be unable to avoid accidently pressing it in and wasting your healing items. So even the layout good for combat ends up frustrating you in combat. I've tried fooling around with each layout to try and find one that works for me in every area, but I just can't. Each layout absolutely SUCKS in at least one department (combat, exploring, wasting your health, easy access to the flashlight). I find myself going to the option menu and switching controller layouts every time I go in and out of combat while trying to get along without the flashlight. Now, on to combat. I got the impression that this game leaned toward the 3rd person action department. Combat certainly is the focus, and you'll be fighting a lot more than any Silent Hill game. The problem is though that it's a heavily combat oriented game that has you fighting fast and agile enemies while still using Silent Hill controls. Beside the fact that you can run in one direction while having the camera face another (only in one controller mode though) is about the only keeping the control scheme from being an exact copy of Silent Hill's (there's a first person mode but I found it to be absolutely useless). The enemies are fast. They will crawl along ceiling to attack to drop down on your from above. They will suddenly fall to ground and crawl (fast) to make themselves a more difficult target. They will suddenly leap at youwith blinding speed from 20 feet away. Imagine trying to fight the Trigens in Far Cry with a Silent Hill interface while aiming with analogue sticks instead of a mouse. As far as I could tell there wasn't any lock-on command (no such action is listed on the control menu) and all the aiming has to be done manually. Try to adjust your aim with the stick while the enemies are constantly dropping to the floor and sailing across the room is a pretty big bitch. Be sure not to press the left stick too hard or you'll waste some health! (IS there a lock-on command and I just couldn't find it? Once it seemed like I automatically tracked an enemy as he lept up to the ceiling but try as I might I can't repeat it). There's a lot more combat than a typical survival horror game and it feels action-y, but don't expect Devil May Cry calibur fighting. Combat is limited clumisily trying to aim with the right stick as you circle strafe or swinging with a melee weapon (only one type of swing). But, like Silent Hill's less than thrililng combat, the pacing and scares are good enough that I can overlook the combat. The Atmosphere The basic premise is that you're in a prison that suddenly transforms into the dark world from Silent Hill. You have no idea what caused it and you try to survive and find a way out. The prison population is dragged along with you and throughout the game you'll encounter them being slaughtered by monsters or trying to escape. In that sense it feels like a dark, supernatural Half Life. And yes, just like in every "all hell breaks loose" action game made since Half Life, you will come across a screaming person being bloodily dragged into an airvent without quite seeing what is it that's pulling him in. For the most part though the atmosphere is effectively dark and creepy. The enemies are creepy. One of them has long knives for hands and feet. In dark hallways you'll hear the *clink* of their "feet" hitting the floor. Then you'll see what looks like a sparkler heading towards you. When it gets closer you see that it's one of those monsters dragging and scraping one of his arm blades across the wall leaving a huge trail of sparks which is the only light source illuminating him. Cheeky. There's also a pretty neat way of determining the ending you'll get. The intro reveals that your character is on death row for the brutal murder of his wife and kids. His story is though that he blacked out and doesn't remember anything. The evidence that convicted him was circumstantial so know one knows what REALLY happened. *VAGUE SPOILER THAT YOU'LL FIND OUT TEN MINUTES INTO THE GAME ANYWAYS* (highlight to read)You'll come across several moments in the game where you get to make a good or evil choice. Do you kill a prison guard that points a gun at you or do you try to make it out of there with him? When one of these moments comes up you'll hear two warped voices, one good, one evil, inside your head whisper commands to you. "KILL HIM! Let him live! DIE! Mercy!" Almost exactly like the Master in Fallout. Whichever one you choose, the corresponding voice will whisper the equivalent of "good job" to you. It's pretty psychadelic. What choices you pick probably affect whether or not you really killed your family at the end. There's one part of the plot that bugs me though. It's only a guess of mine regarding the ending based on the first 40 minutes I've played and I won't name anything specific that happens in the game but if you think it might be a spoiler don't read. I'm just throwing this out there. If you know how it ends don't tell me. Maybe it's just a paranoid, sinking feeling in me, but this game is REALLY gearing up to turn out that it all took place in the main character's head and "it was just a dream!" Remember how the same thing happened in Sanitarium, where a mental patient woke up in an insane, nightmarish mental hospital which is pretty much what's happening in The Suffering? Then there's the whole "murder mystery with insane killer hearing voices in his head" angle. For those of you who've seen the movie, tell me that you didn't think "Identity" during the first "boss" fight. I hope to god I'm wrong about this, but this type of ending is becoming way too common of a copout for writers who can't think of an end to their horror mystery plot, especially when murder and mental illness are involved . Anyone see Secret Window? OOPS SPOILER!

The Suffering (PS2) by FABIO 07/24/2004, 2:50pm PDT     Final verdict by FABIO 07/24/2004, 4:02pm PDT