The suffering is a solid action game, all angles considered.
The unlucky hero of the game is Torque, this tough as nails, very silent death row inmane, who got sent to Abbott prison because he murdered his family. Abbott is basically this island that has top security and such. After the introduction, monsters start to appear. Your shortly armed with a shiv and then start your monster hunting days.
As you progress you find lots of weapons. Most of them seem a little out of place for today's time such as the Tommy gun or Revolver. Where's an AK 47? Where's a Rocket launcher? You also find a Shotgun later on and these will be your 3 primary weapons. You also find flares that act as grenades, but honestly I never found any use for them.
A major problem with The suffering is the pacing, which is pretty boring. You just shoot a monster or 2 and then keep going. You never really ask questions because you won't get any answers. This game has to have one of the most confusing storylines of all time and frequently you wil see these flashbacks such as when you killed your family or you might see them running through a cell block to try and scare you. The problem is, is that you see all of this in about the first 1 hour of the game. Another big problem is the monsters. There's only about a handful of different kinds and although they all look pretty creepy, such as one that has a blade for both arms and legs that will use these blades to scratch the wall that will totally freak you out, none of them present much of a challenge. All of your foes can easily be taken out with a shotgun blast or a few tommy gun rounds.
All of your enemies present different types of death. One enemy has needles coming out of his back, showing death by injection. Others are these monsters that come underground and then whip you with their chains. It's all pretty freaky and this is one of the most atmospherically scary games since Silent hill.
By the time you finish it, which will take you about 12 hours, you'll body will have gone numb from both the killing and the confusion. Still, there is tons of memorable moments in the game, such as when you flee to this asylum and get to meet Dr. Killjoy, who haunts you out and really plays with your mind.
The overall feel though is pretty much go to pont A then point B, none of it is to challengeing and the fact that you can find ammo and supplies in just about every room is ridiculous. Seriously, you can find about 100 tommy gun rounds and about 3 bottles of health in each and every room, no matter what difficulty your on. This is somewhat disappointing, especially since you have to ask yourself, where the hell did this ammo and supplies all come from and why is scattered all about?
The suffering does quite a few unique things. For starters, early on you loose your sanity and can morph into a monster. This monster rips everything to shreds, but you can only do this once your insanity meter is full. The demon isn't really needed, since pretty much every foe can easily be taken out, but it's moments like these that make The suffering such a spine tingling adventure.
Of course, getting health back is almost necessary to keep going, but why get health packs to heal your wounds when you could just take drugs!? Since you lost your sanity, I guess you also lost your mind, but that's right whenever you lose health, just take some Xombium drugs to keep you going.
The suffering is a pretty foul mouthed game. Almost every line in it has cursing and this is one of the few exeptions when it doesn't seem to wrong. I mean come on, the entire prison has been overrun by hell, it's only right that the entire place goes nuts. Throughout the game you do run into quite a bit of prisoners who you can either help or just kill. Helping them will usually benefit you because they might help kill monsters, but for the most part there pretty annoying and can just be killed. Depending on if your nice, don't really help or bother, or just kill all of the guards and prisoners you meet, you get 3 different endings. One really neat trick they do with this game to show that Torque's sanity is lost is you'll have voices in your head telling you at the same time to either help this guy out, or just blow his head off. Whichever you choose, you will usually get a flashback with something like: "I knew there was still good in you" or if you kill them: "Your nothing but a monster".
Graphically the game isn't to great. It's all very drab and extremeley bland. The game is pretty dark at all times and doesn't show to many pixels on screen, but still, once you get up close and personal with some of your enemies, you can see just how good the character modeling is.
The suffering has a pretty bad inventory system. This is easily one of t's lowpoints. You have to use the D pad to look through each of your wepons and documents you encounter. Not to bad, but when you have about 5 monsters on your tail and you need to switch weapons, it can become a problem. Another big problem is when you need to turn your flashlight on (which is in the same place as where all characters from Silent hill put here flashlight at when they find one and it even looks similar) you have to scroll through to turn it on. That's why if you pick up this game, I highly recommend that you turn the controls to where you press down on the right thumbstick to turn on your flashlight.
The suffering's voice acting is downright superb because you'll experience a lot of voice acting in the game. Although Torque himself doesn't say anything, you'll find lots of voice recordings and such that shows lots of guards or prisoners that were in trouble but died and you can see their corpse laying there. The music that plays right when an enemy spawns is always spot on and the visions you have that starts and ends with a loud noise will make you jump, I promise. It's all fantastic and if it wasn't for the muffled weapon sounds and odd monster noises that all sound the same, is about the only thing that brings down this title, sound wise.
The suffering is a pretty standard action/shooter game. You can go from 1st to 3rd person at will and can morph into a demon pretty much at will, but the odd pacing, easy puzzles and somewhat repetitive action does bring this title down. Still, anyone looking for a great game that has decent replay value to see different endenings should give this title a rental, but I wouldn't go with a purchase because this isn't a game you'd play a few years down the line, it's a beat it one day and never really touch it again title.