Disturbingly brilliant, but with a few key errors that make it for horror fans only.
Torque, the quiet strong sort with thick sideburns, is back at it. He's escaped
from Carnate Island and Abbot Penitentiary to find himself in the Baltimore. In this game, Torque will face an array of creatures, including some that are
symbolically translated from the first game into city vice concepts. While the
mainliners in the first game represented lethal injection, the equivalent
creatures in the Ties That Bind represent injectable drugs and junkies. While the original burrowers represent being buried alive as a form of execution or murder, the new version represents miner's having been buried alive and the deplorable work conditions associated with the line of work. The entire concept of creatures representing some dark aspect of the human experience is brilliant. This remains all the more true of the Ties That Bind, which features even more wonderfully horrible things.
The game remains a straightforward action game, which in the first installment of the series, is refreshing and well done. The first games weapons: revolvers, tommy guns, a shotgun, dynamite, and even a homemade flamethrower are satisfying and gritty and add leagues to the games atmosphere.
Unfortunately, the Ties that Bind features a host of ridiculously weak automatic weapons and a colt pistol on top of a two types of shotguns. One shot from the very rare revolvers originally found in the first game can take down a bad guy whereas a whole clip from the "Grease Gun" (a machine gun) or two whole clips, one from each of the two colts you can hold, might not even take down the same bad guy you nailed with one revolver bullet. Furthermore, you can only carry two sets of weapons: one pair of two smaller guns and one melee weapon, two large weapons, 2 small guns and one large gun, etc. While this is more realistic, ammo is quite limited and usually very weak. Combat, further relies heavily on Torques morph/rage mode in which he turns into a creature that represents his fury. This creature has interesting special attacks that develop along the moral line you choose and some of the attacks are very neat, however the increased reliance on this mode doesn't add much, especially given the fact that you will face many human soldiers with guns. Torque's health while in rage mode depletes just as quickly making it suicide to face a big group of soldiers with ranged weapons.
The story and action also involves a host of mercenary human soldiers lead by a ball-busting scientist known as "Jordan". In fact, there are many sections in the game where that is all you fight: human soldier's that are highly passive. They fire at you very conservatively and throw nary a grenade despite their assuredly intensive training. This is one of the major shortcomings of the game. While it iscertainly satisfying to blast mercenaries across the room with the shotgun, it takes away from the horror of the game by adding a sort of action hero element that very much detracts of the central theme of the game: symbols of human vice and corruption that you have to destroy. Now if the designers had somehow added the concept of murderers for hire or mercenaries and turned them into actual creatures, that might have been one thing. No such luck.
The final important area of the action to be considered is the fact that you are
constantly barraged with incredible numbers of creatures/mercenary soldiers that just keep coming, and even on the easiest difficulty one can become tired of having reload the game time after time because the game simply features too little ammo, too few weapons, weapons that are unreasonably weak, and the need to use rage mode despite how vulnerable it leaves Torque to attacks. The final chink in action is the fact that the health pick up system which in the first game, allowed one to store a number of Xombium pills that give you health, is changed. Now, for some reason, Torque can't hold tiny little pills in his pockets but simply uses the pills on the spot. This entirely negates the players ability to survive the ever-present onslaughts and makes the game highly frustrating. Some attempt at realism, some attempt to increase the desperation of playing the game, seems to be made here regarding how few weapons and pills one can carry. The weapons portion makes sense logically where the inability to carry a single litlte pill is preposterous. Furthermore, The Suffering represents as much of a psychological struggle as an actual physical one and that one could carry a ridiculous number of weapons and amount of ammo without so much as a fanny pack in the first game did not give one pause, but rather, rang true with the surreal symbolism of the game. In the Ties That Bind these trivial attempts at realism are incompatible and only serve to make the game play annoyingly difficult.
One can't talk about The Suffering series without discussing the brilliantly done hallucinations and flashbacks that Torque has combined with some interesting and well done spirits that were actual persons past that add to the plot and flesh of the moods and themes of the game. The Ties That Bind does both of these very well, but overall, not quite as good as the first game. Torque has frequent hallucinations in both games about his two dead boys and dead wife, and in both games, the writers pull no punches. They will show your baby boys brutalized by horrible things and blaming you for it all. However, the hallucinations in the Ties That Bind are very predictable and feel a bit rushed. There is even one instance in a sewer where you see your whole family dead and Torque's youngest son says "We all float down here" which is just so obviously inspired by the same motif from Stephen King's "It" that it loses it's effect with anyone acquainted with the work. Furthermore, Torque's late wife, Carmen, is like something out of a Jerry Springer episode in this game as opposed to the direct and insightful things that she would say to torment Torque in the first game. In fact, she is so present and close to Torque through most of the game that one doesn't blame Torque for killing her, if indeed, that is the path that one took in the first game. She swivels her hips, swivels her head back and forth, and uses gesture that are reminiscent of a bad day time talk show. The best peice of the Ties That Bind in this area is, hands down, The Creeper, the ghost of a misogynistic pimp and whore killer. Again, the writers pull no punches using
sex and abusive language towards women in the horror of the creeper. He is
brilliantly done and is sure to chill the blood of anyone with a pulse. It also serves to further the obvious social critique inherent in the game, which is never too self-righteous and always subtly hidden in the horror.
The Ties That Bind is still, all things said, worth it for fans of the first
game or for fans of horror games in general. The artistry of the first game
remains in the second and the conceptually brilliant themes are only developed further. But it the game certainly does not have the edge the that the first installment of the series did and the gameplay changes leave things to be desired.