If movies like Jacob's Ladder and Hellraiser and games like Silent Hill and Resident Evil were used as a mirror held up to a generation's collective psyche, we'd feel moderately doomed. As cathartic escapisms, however, or regardless, they sure are a lot of fun.

Midway's The Suffering is the latest entry into the sick & twisted horror genre, and it holds up well to its contemporaries. You play as a prison inmate on death row suddenly faced with an invading force of nightmarish creatures spawned from the dank and dark vibe of your current habitat. We're talking ghouls riddled with lethal injection needles, hanged hangmen and chain fettered freaks burrowing up from under you, each heck bent on ending your game horrifically. Naturally, you'll want to dispatch them so you wander the halls, solve low-caliber puzzles and find objects, medicines and weapons to thwart them.

The Suffering is heavy on action, relying mainly on a steady onslaught of creepy creatures rather than the slower paced sense of dread permeating similar games. While that can make for a shallow experience, the game does monitor your play style with different endings to be had if you rescue fellow prisoners and prison guards, ignore their plight or help them on their way to the hereafter and then loot their corpses, which is pretty clever, if reflectively unsettling... Either way, The Suffering is a rock solid display of contextually acceptable, survivable horror.