So I talked about this game back in my Corner of Horror review (A series I need to get back to since I haven’t review anything since Halloween), and I think I was a little too harsh on this game. So I want to give it another review, another shot, if 你 will, and let 你 know that I really do 爱情 this horror classic. So let’s stop talking about it and start talking about Condemned: Criminal Origins.
你 play as one Ethan Thomas, a not to bright young investigator for the SCU who is tracking down a serial killer when he has a run in with Serial Killer X, a man who goes around murdering other serial killers in the same fashion they kill their victims. After Serial Killer X murders two police officers, Ethan is framed for murder and must now hunt down Serial Killer X in the violence ridden city to prove his innocence… Wait, why does this sound familiar? Anyway, the game is all taken place in a first person perspective, doing the whole generic perspective of modern horror games years before. But thankfully, this game has some good qualities to it. To solve puzzles in this game, 你 have a device that can zoom in on bodies to look for anything out of the ordinary, 或者 my favorite, a black light that can find hidden scribblings 或者 mysterious trails. My 最喜爱的 level in the game is a house that has no fighting in it, just using the black light to solve puzzles in the house to find out Serial Killer X’s location. It’s so creepy and clever and I 爱情 it. But the real best part of this game is the combat. This combat is smooth as a bathtub and feels real damn good. 你 are rarely 给 a gun in this game, and even when 你 are, it only has about five bullets, and shotguns have even less, so most of the weapons you’ll be using are whatever blunt objects 你 find lying around the city. 你 have to block, 摇摆, 秋千 the heavy fucker, and strike at enemies who are also wielding their own weapons. And the enemies aren’t pushovers either. If they are unarmed, they’ll run to the nearest object and rip it from the walls to start fighting. But 你 can use this to your advantage, as if enemies start swinging mindlessly, they can end up hitting each other and then they’ll start fighting while 你 watch like an Abbott and Costello performance. And that ambience. It’s so creepy and lonely until 你 get rushed 由 groups of angry homeless, I 爱情 it so much.
I have yet to play much of the sequel, Condemned 2: Bloodshot, but I’ve heard it is inferior to the first game, and that’s a shame. Condemned: Criminal Origins is really good, and is hard to find a horror game that is similar to it, at least in the form of how it does combat. I wish that 更多 people talked about this game, but considering that Jason Hall has bought the rights, refuses to do nothing with them, as well as refuses to sell the rights, I doubt we’ll be seeing anything for a while.