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By Keith B (1st Jun 2008)

I didn’t play the original Condemned: Criminal Origins the first time around and I’m not sure why, perhaps because it was neither insanely brilliant or wincefully poor, and hence didn’t draw attention to itself as it snuck out into the market. But following the original’s well received applause, if not deafening, I shipped a copy in to get a look.

I take it from the first game that out hero-of-the-day Ethan Thomas is about as repulsive a character you could play in a video game. The former police officer has spent the past 11 months in a drunken stupor and battles with his visions of someone in a mask and other distorting elements. After staggering out of a pub, you’re greeted by the boys in blue who ask you to come back to the station after duly telling you how bad you stink. You do (both apparently stink, and go back to the station), and are informed that there’s the pattern of a serial killer emerging in the city and it bears all the hallmarks from your foe in Criminal Origins, Serial Killer X, or SKX. The last you saw of him he was bleeding out in the back of a car with a large portion of his face blown away, but here he is.

There’s also the issue of the city tearing itself apart for unknown reasons, with the homeless and drug addicted roaming the streets, starting flights and looting buildings. This gets elaborated on through the story but provides ample opportunity for head crushing so let’s jump straight to the bones of the review, and the reason for the blips of controversy: the combat.

Condemned is that very rare of a thing, being a game that puts the entire emphasis on melee combat. Gone are the simple tactics of piling on mountains of ammunition and then standing in a doorway spraying bullets until nothing moves, as instead you master the art of dodging, blocking and countering moves with a whole array of household and industrial instruments to be found throughout the game.

As you progress you do find ranged weapons throughout but you only have the ammunition that’s in the clip, so no reloading, which means it all boils down to fisticuffs anyway.

And the combat is satisfyingly brutal, with each thump of a pipe creating a wet thud as it hit’s skull and a splash of red as cuts appear. You need to get to grips with the defensive side of things first because that’s what will keep you alive, so after you learn the ropes you’re set off on your merry way. With good timing, not only can you prevent getting smacked in the face, but you can use the other combatant’s momentum to cause pain and misery on him. By parrying and countering blows you make yourself hard to knock down, and that’s the first step in any Condemned fight.

The opening few sequences serve to both teach the player how to handle the character, and also build up some pant-wettingly high drama and thick atmosphere. Hallucinations come into play as our cop hero is battered senseless by his demons. The story begins well and when the detective elements come into play there a lot of fun to be had. The murders you come across in pursuit of SKX are particularly gruesome which is even more fun to get stuck into collecting prints and samples. The developers of CSI: Hard Evidence could do with taking a look at what Monolith Productions with this because although the crime scene forensics only happens occasionally, it’s still a league ahead of what Hard Evidence pathetically offered us.

So far there are a lot of reasons to get a copy of Bloodshot, but hold on, because as with most things in life, there are things here which will prevent you playing this much beyond the first 10 hours. That’s because you’ll finish it, and then unlock FPS mode, which essentially allows you play the game again, except you have unlimited ammunition. Considering the plot hinges so very much on atmosphere it defeats the purpose when you make the character practically invincible and able to kill anything that moves while they’re still running towards you from the corner of the room. Hence after you play it once you may be tempted to go back to mop up a few achievements but that’s about it.
Going online offers you a variety of game modes which
all boil down to killing everyone else for the most part, although the mode where one team play the cops and the other the crooks, with cops solving crimes scenes through the mayhem, can be fun. The only problem I had with this is the fact that I only ever found one game online. Not too good a sign.

The other reason is that, although you’ll appreciate the story as it unfolds, it takes a decidedly negative turn for the worst when the player suddenly finds he had secret powers buried within him. Finding that out is fun, but once you’re running around with an attack that can opo the heads of enemies at 100 yards you know things have gone blurry in the plot-development fold.

However, for sheer satisfaction and innovativemess in combat, I recommend Condemned 2: Bloodshot. It’s gory, it’s scary, and it’s fun to play for a while. Had the plot finished off like it carried through the first half, and if there were more reasons to go back to single player or multiplayer, this could have been a surpsise success. It’s certainly still a good game, but too short to really warrant purchase. A rent though, that’s certainly recommended.