Condemned: Criminal Origins
Release Date: 2005
System: XBox 360 (also available for Windows PC)
ESRB Rating: M (Mature) for Blood and Gore, Intense Violence and Strong Language
Publisher: SEGA
"Condemned: Criminal Origins" was one of the first XBox 360 games to really catch my eye, so when I recently got my 360, I decided to give it a try. Unfortunately, "Condemned: Criminal Origins," while providing its share of scary moments, is a mostly mediocre game in a genre with many far better titles.
The game puts you in the field uniform of Ethan Thomas, a hot-shot FBI Serial Crime Unit (SCU) agent with a great record of solving cases. As the game begins, Thomas is on the trail of a serial killer known as "The Match Maker," who appears to have struck again. However, a series of events lead to a mysterious man shooting two other lawmen dead with Thomas' weapon.
Desperate to prove his innocence, Thomas sets out to find the man who shot the two lawmen, and ends up embroiled in a case far beyond anything he has ever been involved in before - one with a dangerous supernatural twist to it that forces him to fight a city gone mad.
"Condemned" is controlled from a first-person perspective, though the controls are somewhat different compared to typical first-person shooter games. Melee combat is in some ways a larger part of the game than firearm combat is, as most of your fighting is done with improvised weapons like pipes, fire axes and sledgehammers. The occasional firearm can be found or taken off an enemy, but the ammo for it is limited to whatever is in the magazine when it's grabbed - once those rounds are expended, you have to either use the weapon as a melee weapon or grab something else.
The melee combat system itself takes a bit of getting used to, but it's key to beating the game. There's not much of a range of maneuvers that can be performed - you can swing your weapon at the enemy and block with it, and that's about it. Each weapon has different traits, however - for example, a small pipe is going to be faster than a sledgehammer but won't have the hammer's power. In a pinch, Ethan can also deliver a mean kick, and he also has a taser that can stun an enemy long enough for him to grab the enemy's weapon.
Speaking of enemies, you'll face quite a few of them in this game. The city's vagrant population has been whipped into a murderous frenzy, and they all come after you on sight. You'll need to polish your fighting skills to fend them off, as you won't always have access to a gun.
As for the game's plot and atmosphere, it can be described as a survival horror game crossed with a murder mystery in the vein of movies like "Se7en," with a bit of CSI thrown in for good measure. You will be called upon to investigate some grisly murders as the game progresses, and you have an array of forensic tools on hand to find trace evidence like blood and fingerprints. Fortunately, these tools are all very easy to use, so you don't have to be Gil Grissom just to advance in the game.
Furthermore, the game has some truly scary scenes in it - not as many as the best titles of the genre, but certainly enough to make you jump a few times. In addition, the environments you find yourself in are perpetually dark, forcing you to rely on your flashlight. Add to that the fact that mundane items like beer bottles can be knocked over by a careless footstep, and you'll find yourself jumping at your own shadow before long.
Unfortunately, the game falls short in many other areas, so many that the game averages out to...well, average.
To start with, the game's plot is poorly constructed. You move on from level to level on the trail of the serial killer, and you find out more about him as you progress, but the supernatural elements in the game are never really satisfactorily explained in the course of normal gameplay. Ethan gets psychic visions throughout the game, and occasionally sees something strange (which the game goes into a creepy, grainy, black and white visual for), but none of it is ever really explained in normal gameplay, and some story elements are only touched on at the very end of the game, with very little in the way of tantalizing revelations in between the start and end.
I've done some checking on gamefaqs.com and wikipedia and have discovered that collecting special items throughout the game and unlocking certain awards allegedly rewards the player with some files that explain more of the story. I should point out, however, that I have not had a chance to confirm this by playing the game through a second time and grabbing all the secret items (mostly because I don't have the luxury of playing these games all day, every day for a living, yet). As such, this aspect of the game does not factor into the game's final score; if it did, the score would likely be a 4 out of 10 rather than a 5. If this aspect of the game is true, however, it's another flaw in my opinion. Important plot elements should never be linked to bonus content. Bonus content is supposed to be something extra to look for if you're so inclined; it should never be mandatory or linked to something in such a way that the game makes little sense without it.
Secondly, some parts of the game are just plain tedious. Throughout the game, you'll need to find certain tools to get through certain obstacles and proceed further in the game, like a fire axe to break a door down or a shovel to short-circuit a keypad. Searching for these items is often an exercise in dullness as you look everywhere for that one stupid item that will let you get this search over with and get on with the game.
Finally, the melee combat system gets kind of repetitive after a while. The different weapons' statistics provide some variety in combat, but after a while it just becomes kind of boring. This is even more of a problem because the melee combat system is used so much in the game.
"Condemned" could have been a great game with all the good elements it has, but the bad weighs the game down too much for it to ever be considered on par with the best of the horror genre. Try this one out if you want, but there are many better horror games out there to play.
Score: 5 out of 10 (a cool and scary premise with some genuinely frightening moments nearly drowned under the weight of an incomprehensible storyline and a repetitive combat system)
Title: Wolfenstein 
