The Suffering: Ties That Bind

The Suffering: Ties That Bind is a direct sequel to the survival horror The Suffering, in which the player once again steps into the role of Torque, a prisoner accused of murdering his family, who can transform into a monster fueled by his own rage. The story picks up where the first game left off and takes Torque back to the mainland, where he tries to rescue his former girlfriend, kidnapped by supernatural forces tied to his dark past. The game combines a third-person shooter with elements of psychological horror and a branching moral system, where the player's choices affect both the course of the story and whether Torque transforms into a monster closer to human form or purely demonic.

Compared to the first game, new types of monsters, weapons and abilities were added, and the story offers several different endings depending on the player's behavior. The mechanic of Torque's memories and flashbacks, which help the player piece together his past and understand the connections between the prison island of the first game and the new setting, was also retained.

The PC version came out alongside the console releases in autumn 2005 and offers identical content and story. It brought support for higher resolution and sharper textures than the consoles of the time could handle, along with mouse-and-keyboard controls, which proved more precise for a third-person shooter than analog sticks. The game systems, enemy AI and story branching remained unchanged compared to PS2 and Xbox.

Ties That Bind remained the final installment of The Suffering series on any platform - publisher Midway Games never returned to a sequel, so the PC version closes out the history of a series that had released on computers alongside consoles throughout its entire existence. Although players never got another sequel, both games still hold a reputation today as an above-average, well-told horror with an unusually strong emphasis on moral choices, which weren't entirely common in action titles at the time.

Why play it: For fans of survival horror with an unusually strong emphasis on moral choices, unusual for action titles at the time - also as the closing chapter of a series that never got another sequel.