I finished up The Suffering: Ties that Bind yesterday. Overall I thought it was a pretty good successor to the original Suffering, though I thought it had a few play balancing problems. Check out my review.
I finished up The Suffering: Ties that Bind yesterday. Overall I thought it was a pretty good successor to the original Suffering, though I thought it had a few play balancing problems. Check out my review.
I never had enough ambition to finish it.
I loved the first one but for some reason couldn’t get into the second one. I’m not sure why the bit of it I played seemed fairly good. Maybe I should give it another try.
I felt it let too much out of the bag up front. For example, within the first chapter, you’re exposed to several new creatures without any need to fear them (outside of the generic adversary challenge).
You really need to spotlight and build up to fear and horror. Dumping it all on your plate without any anticipation is kinda bland.
The difficulty fluxuated, too. One moment it was easy to run-and-gun, the next, nearly impossible to move an inch.
Suffering 1 was unique in that you – the player – molded this blank slate character (Torque) into his past and future. You choose if he is good or bad by your actions. By not using a new blank slate for the sequel, it becomes more confining – restricting the chance to create more visercal, new horror moments and revelations.
In Suffering 2, it’s not whether or not you are good or evil… instead it’s simply if you were consciously being evil or not.
Before Suffering 2, I enjoyed the implication that creatures didn’t appear until the Abbot Prison eruption from Suffering 1 and their uniqueness was tied to that location. Now, the first chapter from Suffering 2 sorta says, oh they existed years ago, and they’re kinda the same group of creatures. But the public just didn’t care or took notice.
There were good parts to Suffering 2. I’m being critical of it. It needed better guidance and pacing to become more than what it became – a glorified expansion pack.