A good thriller despite all its shortcomings.
A good rental.
This game is best played at night, with no lights on and the sound cranked up a notch. Don't increase the brightness to maximize the experience.
What's to like:
- Good sound effects
- Good suspense
- Good animations
What you may not like:
- Short game ( 6-8 hours )
- Shallow combat mechanics
- Weak enemy AI
- Weak voice acting
- Weak story
- Weak ending
- Linear levels
- Disruptive "Quick Saving"
- No replay value
- Good amount of violence, blood and gore
- Unconvincing game settings
- Ugly character models
- Graphical glitches on an 8800GTX
Story
You play as an FBI agent who is called to a murder scene. On location, things don't go so well and you end up pursuing a suspect.
The whole game is about following the suspect, gathering clues along the way, and getting rid of the few crazy people inhabiting the city. By the end of this 8-hour man hunt marathon, your sanity will be put to the test.
Game
This is a survival game with an intense atmosphere. The creepiness of the levels and the well thought sounds will keep you glued to your chair. Some areas are really dark too. Even to the point of having no clue of what lies right in front of you.
Most of Condemned: Criminal Origins (C:CO) is done in First Person View in a very realistic way. For instance, if you need to duck under a police yellow tape, your eyes will actually move toward the floor (you will get to see your shoes!) then slowly make your way up on the other side.
Though it does help in putting you in the shoes (!) of the protagonist, the fact that the cutscenes are done in third person view completely defeats whatever purpose the first person view was trying to accomplish -- you no longer feel like being the Agent, but more someone that controls him from time to time.
Combat
Enemies in C:CO are, for the most part, thugs. Crazy thugs. Their AI can be resumed to:
1) Get a weapon
2) Rush at you
Forget about dialoguing or common sense here (look, I got a shotgun, maybe you should think twice before charging me with that stick?), nothing can stop them until you brutally dispose of them.
Whether it is a gun (pistol, shotgun, smg, rifle) or a melee object, you can only have 1 weapon on you at any time. Though, this is a bit awkward considering you start off the story with a pistol on you already, and logically a holster to put it in, so why not use that inventory space? Anyway.
The melee weapons found in Condemned are all around you: gas pipes, 2x4s, shovels and the like. Each weapon has statistics associated with it: Damage, Speed, Reach and Block. Blocking is done by timing it with your opponent's swing. If you are successful, your enemy may get disoriented for a second giving you a better chance in landing a hit.
If you don't have any weapons, your character can always kick or use his taser. The taser temporarily disables an enemy for a few seconds leaving him wide open for a vicious attack or having his weapon stolen. In combination with a weapon, this means you are pretty much invincible.
A normal fight usually goes like this:
- Enemy rushes toward you like a madman
- You tase him before he gets his first swing on you
- Then you hit him repeatedly with your melee weapon until he stops moving
Fights are rarely a challenge in Condemned, but they sure are exciting.
Finishing moves
If you severely hurt your enemy, he (or she) will get on his knees, dazed for a few seconds. At that moment, you will have the chance to end their misery with 1 of the 4 finishing moves. You can slam them on the ground, punch them, twist their neck or inflict a head butt. Though they are cool and very satisfying to use the first few times you use them, you may end up just "swinging" your weapon another time at them as it is just faster and safer to do so.
Investigation
To help you gather the evidence, you have a few tools at your disposal. You won't need to think about when and where to use them. Your friendly CSI-Like agent will contact you and tell you when to use them. This is done with a special key. The same key is used for all your tools. The way it works is incredibly simple
1) Press the Tool key when told to do so
2) Press the Tool Key again when the evidence is well framed
3) Discuss about it over the phone with the CSI-Agent
4) Move on
As you can see, you won't need to do much thinking to resolve this "investigation".
Graphics
Even though this game was made in 2005 and that the system used to do this review can run Crysis with a high frame rate at close-to-maximum settings, C:OC graphics engine still manages to bring the framerate to its knees. On this system, C:OC graphics engine completely goes haywire after 10-15 minutes of play. Fortunately, restarting the game is very quick, but remained an annoyance.
The graphics are very clay-like. The characters (facial) and pretty much every texture is lacking detail and just doesn't look real. Despite the numerous graphic effects applied on them, they still look washed out with an overly reflection. This would be fine on a wet floor but not as much on normal skin. There is also the same glitch found in F.E.A.R. where the objects have a white outline in certain situations.
Oh, and not to mention the actual character models are for the most part, pretty ugly.
Leave your common sense out of the door please
Condemned really tries to make the adventure realistic in a somehow real world. This comes with the side effect of questioning some aspects of its world setting. Other than the pistol irony aforementioned or maybe the fact that your enemies can't see when they got nearly no chance of survival, it looks like the entire world seems to stop and wait for you to come by. Remember the final scene of the Devil's Advocate when Reeves crosses the deserted street in NY? Well, it's about the same, it will leave you thinking: "Where is everyone"?
If you really are an Agent and are sent to this section of the city, assuming then *everyone* knows it is populated by psychopaths, why were you sent there alone? Even so, why is it, when you ask for backup, that no one comes (until much much later) ?
There's more!
You will go through some events that should have killed you, and yet, you will survive. Then how come a simple guy can head butt you to death?
You will get your hands regularly on guns. How come you can't take the ammunition off of them and put them in your bag for later use? I mean, the baddies can reload their weapons, why can't we?
You are always in contact with a CSI agent, and yet, you don't request for any help or anything. Furthermore, the voice actor is completely relaxed and borderline, bored. Then why is it that he jumps at every flashback he gets? If he was really scared, he'd want to get out of there as soon as possible or at least try to get some help, despite the circumstances.
At the end of the game, you will have to make a decision (the only time you will be asked to). How come the ending is the same no matter which path you take?
Conclusion
Thanks to the good ambient music, the creepy sound effects, and its overall atmosphere Condemned: Criminal Origins will certainly give you a few chills. On the other hand, its short length, its incoherent elements and its low replay value definitely makes C:CO a rental, one that deserves to be played nevertheless.
- 6.8/10