The suffering of a man within a suffering world is largely what [i]The Suffering[/i] is about. John Torque is awaiting punishment for an incredibly heinous crime: the murder of his own family. In Carnate Penitentiary, the punishment for such a crime is the lethal injection. However, fate has far worse than death in store for Torque. No, he will face his suffering, and he will face the suffering of Carnate itself.

Heh, I seem to be good at pushing a game’s mood and emotion, and I feel that it’s the best way to introduce a game that is very much focused on getting the player to engage with its story and atmosphere. One thing [i]The Suffering[/i] has going for it is a tremendous introduction to its gameplay. Torque is thrown into a cell in Carnate’s death row. He never talks, but people around him speak. It is through what they say that you begin to understand just what has brought Torque to being in this dire situation, and it leads to a lot of questions. Is it really true? Is the character you’re playing really a murderer? Does he even deserve to live? Well, it’s best to save those questions for later because the conversation between Torque and his cell mates is broken up suddenly by a power outage and some very nasty bladed creatures. From there, Torque has to stay alive and find a way out of the prison, and eventually off Carnate Island.

However, his journey is wrought with peril. It soon becomes apparent that Carnate has a tragically awful past full of death, cruelty and of course, suffering. And that suffering seems to have come to life in the form of creatures that symbolically represent each of Carnate’s most horrible incidents, as well as the methods of execution used in the penitentiary. Torque also seems to have an odd abilityA