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This Isn't Kansas Anymore Imagine heading into HBO's Oswald State Penitentiary for a seventh season. Instead of playing the role of Tobias Beecher and attempting to sidestep the advances and manhandling of Vern Schillinger and his Aryan bum-chums, walk in the dead-man's shoes of Torque; a death-row inmate with a dysfunctional (not to mention dismembered) family. He's been charged with the brutal murder of his wife and kids, but he didn't do it. Did he? Anyway, once he's banged up in choky, the lights go out, the earth shakes, and the delightfully ineloquent banter between prisoners changes to pant-filling fear after the prison turns into a giant portal for the biggest collection of slavering mutants ever to shamble forth from Stan Winston's studios. This is Oz meets Clive Barker, drenched in the entrails of Stephen King. It's survival-horror with swears. It's the proof the ESRB is kidding Congress with the non-existent "Adults Only" rating. It's offensive, psyche-damaging, brutal, makes no sense, and is unforgiving and violent. And damn good fun. Torque is Cheap Torque is a convicted murderer sent to death row in a violent game full of profanity. Ah. Don't start planning your NAACP image award acceptance speech just yet, Midway executives. Torque starts his ten-level, ten-hour romp through the dank and stinky underbelly of the Abbott Penitentiary (on Carnate Island, the scene of unspeakable violence in the past, as the hackneyed plot points out as it wrestles with the reasons why deformed Silent Hill rejects are scuttling about the place). The game gets most of its verbal shock value out of the way early, before the beasties descend. Prisoners yell out profanity like Tourette's syndrome victims with verbal diarrhea, but as Janet Jackson's boob malfunction prevents us from revealing just what these rude words are, let's just say they rhyme with "rock-sucker," "mother-plucker," "punt," and "wit:" Which the dialog, ironically enough, has little of.  That must be one hell of a headache. Now, as the prison features all the latest confinement facilities, there's little room to escape from teleporting, ceiling-scuttling evil (which is why you're then treated to more impaling in five minutes than a Ron Jeremy movie). At almost every corner, a guard/inmate runs up to a door, warbles something frantically/offensively at you, and is then brutally maimed in throbbing crimson. Hook through the head from above? Torso torn apart in a swift mangling? Spike up the corn-hole? Basically, if you've ever enjoyed working in a cattle abattoir and spent your evenings self-flagellating, you'll know what to expect. It's all here. And once you figure out the controls, you'll be joining in, too! Next: Prison Blues » Page: 1 2 |
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