Whereas Manhunt left the exact nature of its protagonist's crimes unclear, The Suffering hits us point-blank with all the gory details. Torque was convicted for murdering his wife and children: he supposedly pummelled his woman to death with his bare hands before drowning one child and tossing the other out of a window. Yeesh... sounds like one sick puppy, huh? With a rap sheet like that, I don't know how the man can sleep at night, but a quick stop at the confessional might help take the sting off 3000 volts of electricity (Abbott Penitentiary's old fashioned that way). Or it would, if a horde of demonic beasts didn't put his appointment with the grim reaper on indefinite hold in one of the creepiest openings in video game history, hands down. And though The Suffering would unfortunately have difficulty maintaining the pervasive sense of dread the first few hours instilled, the brilliant enemy design went a long toward making up for the lack of pants-soiling terror with its sheer WTF factor. Every single creature you squared off against represented one of the many execution methods carried out on Carnate Island which, in the hands of a genius like Stan Winston, made for one hell of a nightmare.
