A greatly underrated game that's only flaw is its length.

User Rating: 9.2 | Condemned: Criminal Origins X360
I've played this game just a few days after I finished playing King Kong on the 360 and I gotta say this felt exactly the same. It's hard to explain, but the immersion and the realism of the game is absolutly fantastic. The game is short - it will take you anywhere from 9-12 hours to complete -, but it's a thrilling ride from the beginning to the end that's well worth your time.

Let me go over a few important points.

First stop, The story. This is a dtory driven game and it delivers quite well in that regard. It's not the best story ever invented, but it's well done and intertaining. It remains really mysterious to the very end and even past the end where you are still wondering what the HELL just happened. The brillliance of it though is that if you replay the game and find all the hidden stuff (birds and metal pieces), you'll get more pieces of the puzzle that will help you figure it out.

Visually, well, it's a 360 title and it looks the part. The level design are a bit repetitive, but there's only so much you can do with the kind of environments the game story throws at you. It's mostly decapitated places, like burned out library or abandoned school, metro station, etc. Overall, the graphics are nice.

What really makes the game so special though is the gameplay. Just like Kong, it's technically a FPS, although again, you have very limited ressources so you'll haave to fight with whatever you can find 90% of the time. You do find guns from time to time, but you'll have 5-8 bullets in them and once you use them, there's no ammo packs anywhere. Because of this, you end up fighting those depraved lunatics with 2x4s, pipes, fire axes, etc. The fighting done in a first person view is extremly well done. Gruesome is the word I guess.

This game is best played in the dark, with a good sound system. It won't be the longest game you've ever played, but it's very well crafted and very satisfaying. If you are good at this type of game, at least you owe it to yourself to rent it out.

If you do buy it, know there is no multiplayer available at all, but there are a few things you can unlock by findings all sorts of thing. There are 6 hidden birds per chapter (10 chapters total). Finding them will get you acheivement points. There are also TVs that will get you acheivement points and finally, pieces of metal (3 per level) that will unlock reports from the police and FBI that will help you understand the game's story a bit more. These reports basically fill out the holes left when you first complete the game.

To me, games like this one are a must buy. If time of play is extremly important to you, then you may not appreciate this one too much, but otherwise, it's very good game.