You play as Torque, headed to jail for the murder of his family that he doesn’t remember committing. Right about then, the world turns upside down and all hell breaks loose. Horribly mutated monsters are abound in the penitentiary. The rest of the game unfolds as you try to uncover what happened to this place and, more importantly, your memory. The story line branches based on your actions in the game, and a photograph of your family is all that helps you discern whether you are leaning towards innocence or psychosis. This reminds me a lot of Star Wars KOTOR, where the picture smears and gets bloody as you shy away from good deeds.

The now standard third/first person shooter controls work well with The Suffering, using the left stick to move and the right stick to aim. I was surprised that with the quick movement and action on the screen, the framerate stayed pretty solid. On top of the number of weapons you have to defend yourself with, you can also build up your insanity meter, which unleashes a behemoth of a creature from within you. This new form that you control can actually be leveled up throughout the game.

Disturbing imagery helped keep the scary atmosphere alive, it’s just too bad that the sound, which I hear is fantastic, was drowned out in the demo room. The developers said they drew influences from movies like The Shining and The Birds, but I could even see traces of newer films like Event Horizon and House on Haunted Hill. If the game can manage to keep the adrenaline high with the fright factor, the action oriented control scheme will give this genre the swift kick in the ass it needed.

NBA Ballers:
Mark Turmell of NBA Jam fame stood in front of the audience and told us to be skeptical. He said he wanted us to not believe that a one-on-one basketball game could be any fun. He guaranteed that once we played, we’d be believers. Damn if he wasn’t right. NBA Ballers was flying low on my radar, and I was chalking it up as an NBA Street clone. But what was I thinking, Midway invented this genre, and the gameplay shows.

Let me start by saying that screenshots do not do Ballers any justice. Here I was sitting in front of the XBox version running in widescreen on an HDTV, and it looked awesome. The players faces are really the best I’ve ever seen, but what really sells the look is the excellent attention to detail in the animations (something a screenshot won’t ever show). If you don’t already know, NBA Ballers is a 1 vs. 1 (or even 1 vs. 1 vs. 1) game of half-court basketball. What’s really intriguing about the execution, though, is that it plays out like a fighting game. A standard game is best two out of three rounds to 12 points or time limit.

Moves are available in abundance, and they need to be since you don’t have teammates to involve with passes and picks. Control setup is standard for this type of game with shot and defend on the face and turbo on the triggers. Lots of tricks are available, but there are some special ones that are activated a lot like a throw would be in a game like Tekken. Once that sequence has been entered, you get a glimpse of some of the crazy moves that have been motioned captured by real And1 street ball players like Hot Sauce. Also, we can’t forget that the trademark “on fire” is in here too. Games play out in a couple of different directions, you can go for the quick score to win on points, or you can try to bring down the house. The latter involves earning enough trick points through combos to fill up a meter. Once it’s been raised, you can literally bring down the house, ripping the backboard right off its mounts. If you manage to pull that off, it doesn’t matter who’s ahead or behind, you win the game (reminds me of Guilty Gear).

Ballers has a couple of main modes to play through including the obligatory “career mode,” which they call Rags to Riches. In this, you get to create your own player using easily the best creation tools seen this side of current wrestling titles. After that it’s off to tournaments at NBA players’ houses and unlocking new superstars. It’s another strong showing from Midway, and we should see it in stores in the next couple months.