The Suffering

The suffering is a very solid action horror game. You play as a prisioner on deathrow, when some kinda of plague has taken over and infected most of the guards and prisioners of the establishment. You try to survive your way through until you are able to escape and end the menace. Its a simple motive but it gets you going.

The prison design is very repetitive and mazelike. There really isnt a lot of variety in this setting, and due to the repetitive gameplay this can pose a problem. Despite being a short game, it gets tedious multiple times throughout its leght. There is a lack of progression, you effectively battle enemies in the same way from start to the ending of the game. The combat gameplay is not that great, as enemies take an absurd amount of bullets to go down and the guns are not all that satisfying to shoot. There is little enemy variety as well, and the strategy is always shoot and run until they are dead. Its linear from beginning to end.

What the game manages to nail down though is the atmosphere. The game is scarse in scare jumps, but it does deliver the bleak and suffocating atmosphere that the best horror games deliver. Its a shame that this atmosphere is broken up often by enourmous waves of enemies and some lackluster level design.

Throughout your journey your character is able to perform moral choices such as allowing certain NPCs to live or die. I loved this detail of the game, and how it affect the endings of the game. There isnt really any benefit of killing off people apart from speeding things along, but the option is there.

Overal its a solid horror action game, despite all of its flaws. I would recommend it to fans of the genre, just dont expect a mindblowing experience out of it.