PS2 The Suffering

[NEETandTidy]

A few days ago, I finished The Suffering. In this case, it was before I completed Total Overdose, and honestly, I really liked it — another hidden gem from the PS2 era. The scenery is extremely destructive; you can go around breaking everything, including the cameras.

One interesting feature is that the game has televisions connected to security cameras. You use them to view the footage, but if you destroy the cameras, the TVs show static.

The game lets you play in both first-person and third-person perspectives, and you can switch between them whenever you want. The monsters are bizarre and creatively designed. Another cool detail is that the weapons remain visible on your character’s body, which adds a touch of realism.

The audio is incredible — you can even hear the character’s heartbeat at times, which adds to the tension. There are NPCs throughout the game, and you can choose to help them or kill them. Your decisions influence the storyline: depending on what you do, the game presents flashbacks involving the character’s wife, and these change based on your moral choices.

The game has three possible endings: good, neutral, and bad. I ended up getting the bad ending because I killed the NPCs — but honestly, it was still worth it. There’s also a sequel that I need to finish, since I stopped halfway through.

It’s a shame the franchise had to end.

 

[Neb Lleb]

A few days ago, I finished The Suffering. In this case, it was before I completed Total Overdose, and honestly, I really liked it — another hidden gem from the PS2 era. The scenery is extremely destructive; you can go around breaking everything, including the cameras.

One interesting feature is that the game has televisions connected to security cameras. You use them to view the footage, but if you destroy the cameras, the TVs show static.

The game lets you play in both first-person and third-person perspectives, and you can switch between them whenever you want. The monsters are bizarre and creatively designed. Another cool detail is that the weapons remain visible on your character’s body, which adds a touch of realism.

The audio is incredible — you can even hear the character’s heartbeat at times, which adds to the tension. There are NPCs throughout the game, and you can choose to help them or kill them. Your decisions influence the storyline: depending on what you do, the game presents flashbacks involving the character’s wife, and these change based on your moral choices.

The game has three possible endings: good, neutral, and bad. I ended up getting the bad ending because I killed the NPCs — but honestly, it was still worth it. There’s also a sequel that I need to finish, since I stopped halfway through.

It’s a shame the franchise had to end.
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The Suffering is FANTASTIC! Easily Midway's best non-Mortal Kombat game they put out during their twilight years. And also home to one of the best shotguns in horror game history.

 

[Cris_Agev]

It is a really nice game. I re-played it 2 months ago and left a mini review with my thoughts in the repo.

I played this game 19 years ago and couldn't finish it because I didn't understand what I was supposed to do in the final boss,I got tired and left it for good. I decided it to replay it now, with a higher difficulty and finally finished it.
It's a great survival horror: you are send to this prison in a small island as an inmate for the crime of brutally murdering your wife and 2 children but as you arrive the inhuman history of the prison and its surrounding erupts leaving you "free" to explore it and discover what happened there as well as in the moment of your crime(only the good ending will tell you what really happened). You have a bestiary as a document of some guy you will ran across eventually that gets filled each time you defeat a new monster for the first time, and another notebook written by a woman(you will ran across her husband) that has little descriptions and history of the different places you will discover in the island.
Perhaps the most annoying thing of this game is that you will have companions sometimes and their IA is stupid, they will sometimes not fight and die stupidly, getting in the way when you are shooting, repeating their dialogues lines in order to rush you over and over again, truly annoying but you must protect them for a portion of the game in order to get the good ending.
Completing the game gives a little prelude chapter when you restart the story again, a video of how the game was made and a documentary of the former eastern state penitentiary in Philadelphia, both last 10-15 min aprox. each of them, very interesting stuff. Also this is one of the few games that I like the spanish dub so I played with it.

The second part is a let down, as far as I remember, you can only carry 1 weapon at a time I think. Same as you I left it unfinished.

 

[NEETandTidy]

It is a really nice game. I re-played it 2 months ago and left a mini review with my thoughts in the repo.


The second part is a let down, as far as I remember, you can only carry 1 weapon at a time I think. Same as you I left it unfinished.

I was stuck on the final boss for a while too. I also finished it on the hardest difficulty, and great review.

 

[ThatOneLum]

I completed a "good guy" run of this recently and had a blast. The only part I got annoyed by was trying to keep that last NPC alive -_-

Its gotta be easier to just kill them.

 

[qw90700]

1st game is good if you like horror theme but I remember its 2nd game or something was very disappointing because instead of keeping the horror theme they made it a generic action game. I remember a boss fight when an ordinary military helicopter attacked you, so it was the moment I just threw the game out of my window lol.

 

[Smyth200788]

I was stuck on the final boss for a while too. I also finished it on the hardest difficulty, and great review.

Did the final boss take place in a destroyed house? It was a small area that you had to fight him in. I was going for the good ending (not sure if i was playing suffering 1 or 2) but i could never defeat that final boss

 

[ThatOneLum]

Did the final boss take place in a destroyed house? It was a small area that you had to fight him in. I was going for the good ending (not sure if i was playing suffering 1 or 2) but i could never defeat that final boss

nah, final boss of Suffering 1 takes place on a dock.

I've not played Ties that Bind but it's possible that one ends with a final boss in a destroyed house.

 

[fake-kun]

I deeply relate with the name.

 

[NEETandTidy]

1st game is good if you like horror theme but I remember its 2nd game or something was very disappointing because instead of keeping the horror theme they made it a generic action game. I remember a boss fight when an ordinary military helicopter attacked you, so it was the moment I just threw the game out of my window lol.

I remember there was a demo of it in Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks, and that's where I discovered the game.
But unfortunately they went more towards action than horror, and in the end it was the last game in the series.

Post automatically merged: Thursday at 3:35 PM

Did the final boss take place in a destroyed house? It was a small area that you had to fight him in. I was going for the good ending (not sure if i was playing suffering 1 or 2) but i could never defeat that final boss

This is in the second game, The Ties That Bind.

 

[iamthemilkman]

Alongside the Condemned games and Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, I consider both of The Suffering games to be criminally underappreciated. I enjoyed how, like you said, they can be played in both first and third-person.

Another two horror games that I found underappreciated during that generation were Manhunt 2 (Most people love the first but never mention the sequel) and Curse: The Eye of Isis.

 

[Questless Knight]

Man they did a game based on my life. Neato

 

[NEETandTidy]

Alongside the Condemned games and Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, I consider both of The Suffering games to be criminally underappreciated. I enjoyed how, like you said, they can be played in both first and third-person.

Another two horror games that I found underappreciated during that generation were Manhunt 2 (Most people love the first but never mention the sequel) and Curse: The Eye of Isis.

I played Call of Cthulhu (2018), and I liked it. I should play this other one too; they say it's good.

 

[qw90700]

Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth

And I was waiting for this PS2 game but they cancelled it damn:

It would be a blast to be able to play the full version of the game but what only left of this to play is the E3 demo version.

 

[Crashbandi]

So this game scared the shit out of me. I think I was a senior when it came out and that was a time when I'd play games at 2-3 in the morning. The games reliance on the atmosphere and background noise was genuinely scary to me. And this is coming from someone who was watching horror movies at 6, watched Child's Play 2 when I was 7. This game did such a good job of selling the horror side.

The other game that scared me around that time was Metal Gear Solid 2, and that's because at the end when the colonel goes crazy and starts spouting random shit like "Hey you've been playing this game too long, and it's late you should go to bed." Me after a 2 days gaming binge at 3 o'clock in the morning..."yeah you're right Colonel, I'm going right now."

 

[iamthemilkman]

And I was waiting for this PS2 game but they cancelled it damn:

It would be a blast to be able to play the full version of the game but what only left of this to play is the E3 demo version.

I played that on my PS2. Sadly, even if it had come out, it seemed like a pretty big departure from DCotE. I can see why it was canceled, tbh. The one that hurts me was the Duke Nukem canceled PS2 game that recently leaked. It was the 3rd game in the Time to Kill/Land of the Babes trilogy. I definitely would've bought that back in the day.

 

[Spyrone]

Midway published some of the most underrated games of that generation- NARC, Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy and The Suffering + Ties That Bind are extremely overlooked titles for how absolutely great they are. IMO Psi-Ops and The Suffering: Ties That Bind are some of the best shooter games of that generation, and are also quite innovative with mechanics like being able to switch between first and third-person perspective in The Suffering. Hell, Psi-Ops is basically like Star Wars: The Force Unleashed for that generation with it's fun as hell psychic powers like Telekinesis, Mind Control, Mind Drain and Pyrokinesis.

However, I never really found either of The Suffering games very scary at all. Both are action-oriented and your character is more than capable enough to massacre the horrors standing in his way that it cancels out any sort of survival-horror vibes that I get from them. I honestly liked Ties That Bind better because it had added far more variety to the monsters and weapons (I'm fine with only being able to carry two at a time if I have a lot more pieces to choose from) as well as actually having some sequences towards the end which actually do go survival horror when the Suppressor (apparently manifestation of CERT units brutal crackdowns on prison riots) malefactors show up, which are rather tanky, have a lot of firepower protruding from their chest cavity and also can be snuck around and avoided because they only attack when you attack or they catch you in the beam from the flashlight sticking out of their forehead.

 

[qw90700]

Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy

And, TBH, this game stole the thunder of Codemaster's game "Second Sight" which I liked a lot more than Psi-Ops. Normally I wouldn't care about story, which I won't mean this game's story is what I would like but they managed to make story progression interesting and then the game had brutal "throw people to walls to kill them with brain power" gameplay which was so fun lol.

As for Psi-Ops, it was more of a generic action game with bad story and bad story progression? IDK, at the time I was like "we already have Second Sight at home" so I didn't play the game much lol. It was kinda boring. In Second Sight you are more relied on your powers but Psi-Ops seemed to be a game you rely on guns more, kinda butchering its own "brain power go go" theme lol.

NGL never heard about "NARC". Checking its screenshots online it seems like a mix of another GTA SA clone games they spammed a lot as if we loved gangsta style of GTA SA lol, and it also looks like True Crime Los Angles, that's a series from opposite theme of GTA because you play as a cop in an open world action game. Perhaps this game is better version of "25 to Life" lol so wanna check it soon.

As for Suffering, TBH back then there wasn't much horror game and the game was a rare but popular western horror PS2 game so it was known around, it wasn't "niche". It may seem "niche" only in the context of today. Perhaps people today's have no idea how much we knew about every game released back then because there wasn't much game relesed so it was easy to fill video game magazines with recent games every month lol. Well, Suffering games attracted people who didn't even hear or cared about Silent Hill games back then, but after Resient Evil 4 release it was the only game people played and assosiated the "horror" genre with. And then Suffering making 2nd game generic action game made the series suffer from lack of vision lol. After PS1-era horror games couldn't just "improve".

 

[Spyrone]

And, TBH, this game stole the thunder of Codemaster's game "Second Sight" which I liked a lot more than Psi-Ops. Normally I wouldn't care about story, which I won't mean this game's story is what I would like but they managed to make story progression interesting and then the game had brutal "throw people to walls to kill them with brain power" gameplay which was so fun lol.

As for Psi-Ops, it was more of a generic action game with bad story and bad story progression? IDK, at the time I was like "we already have Second Sight at home" so I didn't play the game much lol. It was kinda boring. In Second Sight you are more relied on your powers but Psi-Ops seemed to be a game you rely on guns more, kinda butchering its own "brain power go go" theme lol.

NGL never heard about "NARC". Checking its screenshots online it seems like a mix of another GTA SA clone games they spammed a lot as if we loved gangsta style of GTA SA lol, and it also looks like True Crime Los Angles, that's a series from opposite theme of GTA because you play as a cop in an open world action game. Perhaps this game is better version of "25 to Life" lol so wanna check it soon.

As for Suffering, TBH back then there wasn't much horror game and the game was a rare but popular western horror PS2 game so it was known around, it wasn't "niche". It may seem "niche" only in the context of today. Perhaps people today's have no idea how much we knew about every game released back then because there wasn't much game relesed so it was easy to fill video game magazines with recent games every month lol. Well, Suffering games attracted people who didn't even hear or cared about Silent Hill games back then, but after Resient Evil 4 release it was the only game people played and assosiated the "horror" genre with. And then Suffering making 2nd game generic action game made the series suffer from lack of vision lol. After PS1-era horror games couldn't just "improve".

Psi-Ops I actually enjoy the most of the three- it has the tightest shooting mechanics out of all of them, plus the psychic powers elevate beyond a mere shooter. Second Sight was good from what I remember, but I found it's controls rather clunky and obtuse compared to Psi-Ops. Makes sense for a more narrative oriented game, but whatever. I enjoy Mind Controlling Meat Puppets to merk their buddies and then making them off themselves via L3+R3, throwing giant wrecking balls at people that make them into red smears on the ground with TK and sneaking up on people and making their heads POP with Mind Drain. It's way more fun than sneaking around research facilities and occasionally getting to shoot shit up in flashback sequences IMO. I agree that it's story was lame AF though.

NARC is really obscure- it's not even on here for download AFAIK. It was the only one of the above games I didn't get as a kid, because my first impressions from seeing it in previews were the same as yours- it just looks like another, crappier version of GTA like the True Crime games. I literally forgot it existed until last year when I stumbled upon a YouTube review of it that had gameplay footage (something no amount of Tips & Tricks and EGM were capable of producing) and said "damn, that actaully looks pretty great". It's actually waaay better than the True Crime games because the main feature in the game is literally the opposite of the theme the OG Reagan Era arcade with the "Winners Don't Drugs" BS disclaimer- in NARC 2005 Winners Control Their Habits. You get to shake down perps in a much more in depth way (you have to rough up the perps until their health bar drops to the point where you can cuff 'em) and they drop all sorts of plastic wrapped goodies like crack, weed, speed, acid tabs, and even the 'ludes, which act as power-ups in game that can also have rather deleterious side-effects, like addiction or black-outs. You can also sell them on the side, and personally that is where all of the qualudes I confiscate from perps in game goes (ludes freeze time and allow to zoom the camera in like you suddenly developed eagle eyes, which would be useful if you had to look for tiny clues or could draw your gun but you can't) The soundtrack is great too, it has every song about drug addiction from Curtis Mayfield's Pusherman to The Professional by DMX. It's so good I feel like it helped bankrupt Midway combined with how little the game sold. Also, Liquid Soul is people.

Yeah, I remember the time I was in elementary school and everybody thought The Suffering was cool as shit because of how edgy and fucked-up it was. It was one of those games that everybody with an Xbox and a significant number of PS2 owners wanted, but became somewhat uncommon for whatever reason. That, and the fact that many people's parents weren't as permissive as mine made it a highly sought after game. My stepdad worked at a pawn shop during that era so we got first dibs on whatever stuff people sold for whatever reason, which meant I got a lot of obscure games as a kid along with all the consoles from that era for cheap. I don't remember that kind of effect happening with RE4 though- sure, it's one of the best games of that generation, but it barely qualifies as survival horror because of how badass Leon is (jumping through windows and shit is way more action hero than horror survivor). That, and most people where I was living still thought Silent Hill and the older Resdent Evil games were scarier.