Morality is nothing new in games; we've been treated to excellent moral strands in games such as Fable, Knights of the Old Republic, and Jade Empire. These games offered separate and often conflicting rewards or punishments depending on whether you played in a good or evil way. Such moral options are interesting because it allows you to explore adventurous avenues that you probably wouldn't do in real life and may even cause you to explore the social consequences of malfeasant deeds.

The Suffering: Ties that Bind attempts moral branching and, admittedly, it can prove quite satisfying if, like me, you revel in nefariousness. From the opening level, which serves as an exposition of Torque's incarceration and events from the first game, you get the feeling that Torque is the kind of guy who could swing either way (morally, of course). He's not exactly the prettiest guy on the block and has biceps that are larger than a grown man's head, but it seems almost possible that a big softy lives underneath that buff, don't-stuff-with-me exterior.

From the outset, it's clear that there is a story to be told here - of love, betrayal and nasty monsters in the closet - but the way that it gets told may irk some players. Torque escapes the prison setting of the first game only to be snatched up in the clutches of some nasty guys working under super-bitch Jordan, who in turn answers to the ultra villain of the game, Blackmore. Weaponless and clueless, Torque must wander through endless, modular rooms and corridors before coming to more rooms and corridors, oh and the odd Baltimore cityscape which inevitably leads to, you guessed it, more rooms and corridors - ad infinitum (or until you pass the game at least).

Linearity in games is not in itself a bad thing, otherwise it would be very hard for a developer to tell a coherent story, but throughout Ties That Bind your inability to progress before a) a certain scripted event has taken place or b) you have solved a boring and tedious puzzle, is constantly shoved in your face. You'll try every door in an area to find them all locked - then wait for an enemy to appear or some scripted event/voice-over before the door you just tried is either magically unlocked or blown/broken open in some way. Ties That Bind is littered with many moments where you can see into a room, mostly through glass or steel bars, and witness some nasty or gory event but you can't actually get into the room until the game decides you're allowed to.

Done properly, this can build tension and atmosphere, and in fact Ties That Bind can be quite scary at times, but after a few hours the predictability of scripted events becomes tedious in itself. Enter a quiet room and you just know something is about to happen and, sure enough, it does. Remember how in Doom 3 you always knew that as soon as you walked into that well-lit room a demon would spawn right behind you? Ties That Bind is just like that. And unfortunately, so many things happening all the time ends up desensitising you to the violent and horror aspects of this game, and may even cause you to not really care about the story. Similarly, flashbacks and hallucinogenic moments abound, to the point where it becomes difficult to stomach the constant interruptions to gameplay. You'll end up feeling like you're in a pinball machine, being bounced from set-piece to set-piece, from one scripted event to the next.

Being an action game, eventually Torque will have access to some pretty nasty weaponry; the caveat is that you can only carry two at a time. Some of the bang sticks on offer include revolvers, shotguns, sub-machine guns, grenade and rocket launchers, plus a plethora of melee weapons to get up close and personal with. Owing to the fairly closed-in nature of the gameplay, it's pretty difficult to get creative with the more powerful weapons, especially the grenades and molotovs, without inflicting damage on Torque or any NPCs you may be protecting. And when Torque's health does go down - which it will, a lot - the bad guys have been nice enough to leave about heaps of health pills (baroccas perhaps?) for Torque to make use of. Thing is, you can't hold on to these pills for later use (which you could do in the first game), so you'll probably end up leaving most of them behind and wishing you could store them for later encounters.

Ties That Bind features alternative endings, depending on whether you play as good or evil. Personally, I found evil to be a lot easier, as most of the moral decisions in the game involve either helping some NPC or getting them to follow you. When getting attacked by nasty demon bastards (who, by the way, are quite cool and scary) the oh-so-stupid AI of your companion proves to be more trouble than they're worth - so it becomes easier to simply bash them to death and thus carve a path of evil destruction. It's also interesting that you can actually play most of the game through a first person perspective if you so desire, but it's not implemented very well and is only useful for getting a good look at your surroundings.

This game has a few graphical flourishes that are nice. I was particularly fond of the splattered blood all over Torques body as he performed nasty deeds and fought enemies. The effect of being in creature form is also quite cool. As you kill enemies, your Insanity builds up. When full, it pulses and you can press a button to transform Torque into a powerful creature. In this mode, you can destroy some walls and take on monsters pretty easily, but your health constantly drains (killing enemies fills it a little) so its effects are limited. It's also quite hard to avoid friendly NPCs whilst in beast mode and this may cause several frustrated reloads.

There are also several aspects that just make the game feel a little sloppy overall. When Torque picks up a landline phone that mysteriously rings when he is near (which happens a lot) there won't be any line connecting the phone to the handset. Also, when testing doors, Torque tends to 'slide' up in front of the door like he's on ice. The voice acting is quite good though and features several Hollywood talents (what game doesn't these days?), including the instantly recognisable baritone of Michael Clarke Duncan (The Green Mile) as Blackmore and Rachel Griffiths as Jordan. Being such a story-heavy title, professional voices lend sufficient gravitas to Torque's inner journey. The situational scripting is also pretty cool and may even illicit a smile or two. Kill some scientists in an adjoining room and oncoming soldiers will come out with stuff like "That's the guy that beat the shit out of the lab guys - m***erf***er!" It shows that some effort has gone into catering for your moral decisions throughout the game. Although some audio bugs do exist, the most prevalent being that often two voice-overs will play at the same time - resulting in a confusing, jumbled dialogue.