First thing’s first. I have not played the first Condemned. I tried the demo on the xbox 360 and quickly concluded that it was way too scary for me. However, I recently went to electronics boutique (a future review of the practices of gamestop corp. coming shortly) and traded in a few games in anticipation of the 500 lbs gorilla Grand Theft Auto 4. I received so much in trade in value that i had enough money to not only buy GTA4, but get another game as well. Since i loved Bioshock so much i figured i’d give another first person horror/atmosphere driven game a shot. Besides no game company is releasing games 2 weeks before or after GTA4, it’s that big of a game. Anyways, on with the review of Condemned 2.
The atmosphere in Condemned 2: Bloodshot is ridiculously thick. You play Ethan Thomas, an alcoholic pill popper. (presumably due to the events of the first game) This isn’t just a personality trait though, it actually affects gameplay. For example when aiming a gun (which you find relatively rarely and can never hold extra ammo) you shake. To stop shaking you have to find some booze and take a swig. I rather liked this as it made gun shootouts pretty frantic. The guns though, aren’t the main draw. It’s the hand to hand combat system. It’s pretty simple the 2 trigger buttons are left and right jab respectively. If you click in the left analog stick you modify the jabs into hooks, which stun the enemy for a little bit. You can combo dealing extra damage, but if you’re hit during the combo it cancels it. After combo’s sometimes you’ll get a quicktime event called a chain combo. These are among the fastest ways to dispatch your enemies. To gain access to more devestating chain combos you need to perform a certain number of successful chains. You can also do environmental kills when your enemy is beaten severely. By pressing both triggers you put the enemy into a headlock and maneuver him towards any skull icon. One thing i absolutely hate though is the way your character moves. The camera bobs up and down pretty severely as he walks. This made me a bit nauseous at first until i got used to it.
The next thing I really enjoyed about the game are the investigation segments. You’re at a crime scene and you have to do your best to deduce what happened. For example you’ll see a dead body and first identify the body. Well he’s wearing a cop uniform so he’s probably a cop. There’s a trail of smeared blood and hand prints leading to the body, so he probably crawled to the spot where he died. It’s a very nice respite from the frantic fighting of the rest of the game. There are also a few other game modes like the fight club, which are small objective based levels. With objectives like… dispatch the 3 masked enemies as fast as possible, or knock over 100 dolls as fast as possible. There is also a slight RPG aspect in that every level you will unlock extras like brass knuckles, flak jackets, stun guns, etc.
I mentioned the atmosphere before and let me tell you this game is SCARY. Easily the scariest game i’ve ever played. There are scenes in this game that literally had me tingling with goosebumps, and i’m not even a person who scares easily! There were scenes where i literally said ‘WHAT THE FUCK???’ out loud before getting up and turning on all the lights. The sound design is great too. As of now the psychotic giggling of meth addicts and the insane music in the doll factory is burned into my brain forever. As for the story, well just like any game the supporting characters are pretty cookie cutter. The gruff tortured main character, the slang slinging black character, the asshole white establishment character. You get the idea. At some point in my life i’d like to play a game with true 3 dimensional (and i mean personality not polygons) characters. The game also had a few graphical hitches that were bothersome, like a stuttering framerate, questionable animation, and slight pauses during environmental kills. Overall it’s a solid game if you absolutely need to have something to play. Not spectacular, but definitely not bad.
Posted on April 15th, 2008 by phaedrus
Filed under: videogames
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