The Suffering: Ties That Bind

The Suffering: Ties That Bind is a direct sequel to the survival horror game The Suffering, in which the player once again takes on the role of Torque, a prisoner convicted of murdering his family, who is able to transform into a monster fueled by his own rage. The story continues from the ending of the first game 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 morality system, where the player's choices affect both the course of the story and whether Torque transforms into a more human-like or a purely demonic form of monster.

Compared to the first game, new types of monsters, weapons, and abilities have been added, and the story offers several different endings depending on the player's behavior. Also retained is the mechanic of Torque's memories and flashback visions, which help the player piece together his past and understand the connections between the prison island of the first game and the new setting.

The PlayStation 2 version launched on the same day as the Xbox and PC releases in autumn 2005 and is identical in content — the same environments, monsters, and story branches. The differences are purely technical: somewhat lower-resolution textures and less detailed lighting in dark locations compared to Xbox, which slightly reduced the depth of shadows for the game's horror atmosphere without, however, affecting the gameplay.

Ties That Bind remained the last installment of The Suffering series — publisher Midway Games never returned to the subject for various reasons, so the PlayStation 2 version closes out the series' history on the same console on which the first game launched in 2004. Even though players never got a further sequel, both games still hold a reputation today as an above-average, well-told horror story with an unusually strong emphasis on moral choices, which was not yet common in action titles of the time.

Why play it: For fans of survival horror with an unusually strong emphasis on moral choices — it closes out the series' history on the same console where the first game began, offering an above-average, well-told story with no sequel to overshadow it.