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Yes, I'm suffering. Happy?

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: May 25, 2006
Author: Amazon User

All right, obligatory snarky title. I played through the original "The Suffering" and liked it; finding "TTB" for $10, I decided to give it a try and support the series.

It was probably worth $10. I'm glad I didn't pay $30 for it.

If you've played third-person shooters before, you know what to expect on a basic level. You'll spend a lot of time running-and-gunning, discarding empty weapons and picking up new ones, searching for health restoration items, and completing the occasional environment puzzle, some of which are borderline-cliche box-dragging affairs, and others which are moderately clever.

If you didn't play The Suffering: the basis of the story casts you as Torque, a (now escaped) death row inmate whose back story is to a degree dictated by the moral choices you as his controller make during the game. Now in his home town of Baltimore, Torque battles with monsters whose forms seem linked to the horrors of life in a downtrodden slum and with his own inner demons and possibly tenuous grip on reality.

In addition to dictating the storyline's twists and turns, your moral choices affect you in combat. Giving his insanity free reign, Torque can temporarily turn into a monster himself; his form and powers are dictated by whether he has been good, neutral, or evil in his dealings with the various non-aggressive characters he encounters.

Unlike the first game, the player of Ties That Bind will spend a significant amount of time facing versions of monsters that can *only* be beaten in the player's monstrous "insanity" mode and/or blocked by walls that can only be broken through in that mode. The monster can only be accessed when a meter is filled by killing other creatures, which these quasi-invincible creatures fortunately teleport in for you to kill off at regular intervals.

Contrived? Heck yes.

Repetitive and dull? By the end, it sure is.

Also unlike The Suffering, the player can essentially only carry two different weapons at a time (not counting the fact that you can wield some weapons with one in each hand, counting them as a single weapon.) But in areas where you'll face large numbers of enemies, there are convenient ammunition boxes that contain unlimited amounts of ammunition.

Contrived? Heck yes.

Repetitive and dull?... Well, do you want to spend extended periods running back to an ammo box over and over again? This dynamic breaks up much of the flow and joy of combat, especially given how many rounds of many firearms it takes to take down a single enemy. It would incline one to spend more time using the melee weapons, if doing so against many of the enemies wasn't tantamount to suicide.

Additionally, the game has moments that are very poorly planned... Placing the player in areas with limited amounts of resources without apparently having a good sense of how healthy and well armed the player would be when he got there, and then pouring on the enemies. One sequence like this pits you against four or more waves of creatures... And *then* drops a boss on you.

And may I say a word about fire? You will learn to loathe, loathe, LOATHE the factory-issue generic explosive barrels. You will want to blow them up as soon as you see them, because you'll find if you don't, they'll go off at the worst possible time when you accidentally hit them with a stray shot, or an enemy does. Use them to take out enemies? Good luck. Most of the time you'll be too busy running to line up such a providencial shot. And if you're set on fire- by a barrel, by a random piece of burning scenery, by an enemy attack, by a molotov cocktail- you will take a TON of damage. Unless you perform a roll to put yourself out- a combination executed by pressing control, a direction key, and the space bar simultaneously. Good luck with that in the midst of combat. It highlights that the game was designed with a console controller in mind; further highlights include tying grenades to the right mouse button. Change that as soon as possible if you value your life. Nothing like throwing a grenade point blank in the midst of a close encounter.

And then there's the bugs. I came to the game fore-warned about Starforce, and installed on my virtual-drive free laptop. Which only meant I had to spend half an hour poking around to find out why the game was causing a hard crash and reboot. Turns out Starforce doesn't play nice with the Zone Alarm firewall, at least out of the box. Once you update your driver (yes, update your *copy protection's* driver... I know, I know...) it works tolerably well. AI will still occasionally do dumb things, scripted events will occasionally fail to execute, and I'm still waiting for a response from Midway on the odd cut off that occurred in the final cinematic, but... It's nothing crippling, given that the game *does* get things right with a liberal check-point and save system. Kudos for that.

Griping aside, the game has an interesting tone, good production values, an interesting morality dynamic, interesting creature designs. It's a passable run-and-gun with decent atmosphere. Worth your $10, if you like the genre, horror or third-person shooter.

And incidentally, kudos to companies that are ceasing to use bad neighbor Starforce as their copy-protection. A company that refuses to acknowledge the serious problems caused by its software and accuses its detractors of links to organized crime and piracy deserves to see nature take its course.

STARFORCE !!!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 13
Date: December 12, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This game uses STARFORCE.
The Suffering is one of my favorite games.
This one goes to charity.
-----
Do a Google search of Starforce.
There is a site with a forum and a thread which contains this game.
Several had problems; a few had big problems.
I believe there is a patch ?
I stopped reading, as I already gave the game to charity.
Just wanted to update my review for those interested in the game or having problems.

Great game.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: December 20, 2005
Author: Amazon User

A great game, I didn't run into any problems while playing it. Recommended for those which are looking for a good action game which has an interesting story.
Starforce didn't give me any problems whatsoever.

Worth playing - but rent it for a console...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: February 22, 2006
Author: Amazon User

After playing the original on the PS2 and loving it, I decided to buy this sequal, but having loaned my PS2 out to a friend, just picked up the PC version. I should have just waited and rented it when I got my PS2 back.
All the macbre atmosphere and gory horror from the first game have returned, and for those familiar with it, it plays a lot like the first game. Some different weapons, some new enemies, some old enemies with a 'new' look to fit the setting. All very cool. As in the original, you can choose a 'morality' as you progress through the game, which not only influences the story, but you demon form as well. Still very cool.
A new addition are the Foundation soldiers who - guess what! - shoot at you. I found them rather difficult to deal with in third person, and thus ended up playing almost the entire game in first person. Now FPSs are my game of choice, so one might think that this is a good thing. But if you rate this game as an FPS only, then it hardly deserves a three. As an FPS, the controls are pretty bad (I had to turn the in game mouse sensitivity all the way up in order to play in First Person).
Then there are the NPCs. In order to obtain a 'good' moral standing, there are times you must help certain NPCs accomplish certain tasks. Not too bad, except that the NPCs like to get stuck in doors. Or corners. Or just run straight into a wall, and continue running in that direction, even though there's a wall in the way. But they help engage in firefights. Which is fantastic - they're all expert marksmen - but if you use insanity mode, they have a tendancy to get under foot. Or under blade, as the case may be. Or, more accurately, half of them get under your blade, the other half over the blade, and misery ensues. Whereas the foundation soldiers have average to above average AI, and average marksmanship, the NPCs have superior marksmanship, but the average intellegence of a stillborn rat turd. The most maddening thing was playing a checkpoint over and over because someone (who shall reamin nameless, but has the intials wor. den., kept getting stuck in a door.) Or the time tree NPCs surrounded me and trapped me in a corner, forcing me to a. kill them, or b. restore the last checkpoint.
One must take this with a grain of salt however, because I know that not every person out there wants to unlock every multiple ending. In fact, had I rented this game and not purchased it, I would not have felt compelled to put up with this idiocy, and been happy to only unlock one or two endings. Having only played this as a PC version, I don't know if these problems are present in the console versions, but they are enough to make me wish I had rented it and not purchased it. Which is the final recommendation.
Definately a must play, but rent, don't buy.


p.s. - watch out for the final boss battle. It's a huge pain in the arsenal if your insanity attack isn't fully upgraded.

Great shooter -- even better than the first "Suffering"!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: March 18, 2006
Author: Amazon User

A very fun horror-based shooter at a *very* reasonable price (and this is not a budget game title in the least -- it's very Half Life 2 in its graphics). "The Suffering" also runs great on my four year old Pentium (2GHz, 500Meg RAM) even with graphics on HIGH. So; if you liked Clive Barker's Undying or the first "The Suffering", then you will most assuredly also enjoy this title tremendously.

Awesome!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: December 21, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I've played the ever-lovin' crap out of this game. Although I have to admit, I kind of liked the first one a bit better, I've had all kinds of fun with this one. Admittingly, both "The Suffering" and "Ties that Bind" were kind of repetative, they still offered a decent romp through monster-infested landscapes.

Torque's inner torment, and how you play him tell the story. Admittingly, it can get pretty cloying if you play it as Mr. Nice Guy, but the ending is a bit better!

Honestly, I always enjoy Dr. KillJoy, but he felt a little tacked on in this one. Maybe more there for the players of the original, but none-the-less, I enjoyed this game!

The monsters look blocky and not scary.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: December 22, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I bought this game because I wanted to shoot monsters and I wanted to be scare. What a disappointment! The monsters look blocky and not scary. It's a bloody game. There's a lot of killing. It's tiresome after 20 minutes of killing people and monsters without any suspense.

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