A worthy sequel
At least the action's still just as straightforward as it was last time around, right? Unfortunately, the combat, which was one of the strengths of last year's game, isn't as satisfying in the sequel. You can carry two weapons at any given time, and you'll encounter a variety of pistols, shotguns, automatic weapons, blunt objects, and rocket or grenade launchers as you go. But, generally speaking, most of the weapons really lack punch. The game's lowly Colt pistol feels especially weak, but most of the automatic weapons are lame, too. You'll empty an entire magazine into an enemy, and it'll still come at you. Most of the game's corridors and other areas are too tight to make a rocket launcher or grenade launcher very useful, leaving only the shotgun, which is really only useful up close, and the M-60, which doesn't turn up all that often and comes with a pretty limited supply of ammo.
Controlwise, the game plays like your standard third-person shooter. With a gamepad, that means that one stick moves you around and the other looks. On the PC, the mouse and keyboard setup works just fine, and even manages to give you slightly finer control over your aim in some cases, making taking out enemies on the PC a little easier. Graphically, the PC version edges out the other two versions by a little bit, but the Xbox version isn't far behind at all, especially if you're running the game on an HDTV.
The visuals in The Suffering are effective at conveying the game's bloody, gory theme. As in last year's game, Torque and his weapons get absolutely splattered with blood during the game's heavier fights. It wears off over time, but it's definitely a cool-looking effect. The game's monster design is largely recycled from last year's game, which is disappointing. The way the monsters in the last game were based on various methods of execution was interesting, but retrofitting them to fit Baltimore street crime seems cheap. For example, the crawling creep that represented lethal injection last time around is still in the game--only now he represents heroin addiction. Blasting the monsters apart with a shotgun causes many of them to chunk apart, making for ludicrous gibs. Finally, some of the scenery you'll catch as you move around is pretty detailed. In one room, you stumble in on a suicide, moments after it's happened. So you'll get to see a corpse, shotgun in hand, large chunk of head missing, blood still squirting out of the hole. It's kind of gross, but, obviously, fits with the theme just fine.
Many of the monster designs have been recycled from last year's game.
The game's sound is where most of the game's attempts to be creepy come from. You'll almost constantly be catching bits of conversation from people who lived long ago, often turning into a full-on hallucination-style cutscene. The dialogue is reasonably believable, but Blackmoore, who is constantly talking about "being a player" and "the game" just sort of doesn't fit with the game's darker theme. The creeper, a manifestation that pops up from time to time and tells you how much he hates women and loves to kill them, is far more effective. Just like last year's game, the script is teeming with curse words, including a couple that you've probably never heard in games before. Given the whole "city overrun by hellish creatures" motif, mixed with a return to a prison setting for part of the game, the script's foul mouth also works.
The Suffering: Ties That Bind has its moments, but most of these moments are the same sorts of moments that you saw in last year's game. If you're a fan of the previous game and you're looking for more of the same, Ties That Bind fits the bill, but more expansion on the themes of the first game would have made for a much more interesting final product.