Written by Jeff Buckland, 5/1/2006
Played on:
Windows
Pentium M 2Ghz
GF 7800GTX video
2GB DDR2 RAM
Windows XP
Condemned: Criminal Origins is lovingly referred to by its fans as the world's first hobo-bludgeoning simulator. This horror game from Monolith, creators of the PC horror hit F.E.A.R., does include a lot of up-close beatdowns, that's for sure. But Condemned is also a very scary, creepy game; sure, you'll be knocking teeth out of junkies and other people of questionable ethical motives to start, but it's not long before things take a turn and you'll start having to smash things directly in the face that, well, are pretty far away from being human.
It's the in-your-face action that winds up being possibly the most disturbing thing about Condemned. Many horror games can be scarier than this, that's for sure, but here you're going to have to meet your assailants in brutal closeups with violence you probably haven't seen in any past games yet. Sure, you've comically blown people to tiny little pieces in Quake, but there's just something more painful to watch when you're so close to an enemy's face that it's all you can see as you slam it into the concrete or snap his neck.
Condemned follows the story of Ethan Thomas, an FBI agent who's waking some kind of supernatural ability in himself. On the latest trail of a serial killer called the Matchmaker (who positions the young women he kills with creepy mannequins in compromising positions), his adversary gets the better of him, takes his gun, and uses it to kill the two cops that Ethan had just been working with. Now, with the rest of the feds after him, Ethan gets some help from an old friend as well as Rose, a desk-working operative, back at the FBI crime lab (as she's pretty sure he's innocent). Soon, he's off on his own hunt to track down the Matchmaker. There are plenty of twists in the story as the player goes on, and Ethan finds out he's dealing with more than just a "mere" serial killer. The ending is pretty wild, but I didn't feel like it was so crazy that it made me turn around and suddenly hate the rest of the game overall. The Xbox 360 version's been out for a while now, and I understand my opinion the game's ending is rather unique (as most seem to hate it), but I stand behind my beliefs that if you can truly play the rest of this game with your disbelief suspended, the ending should not be a big leap.
But let's rewind a bit and talk about stuff that happens, you know, before the end. While Condemned launched along with the Xbox 360 back last November, the PC version is still graphically sunning almost six months later. We might not see massive, open environments, but those claustrophobic hallways and darkened rooms have never looked so detailed. The texture quality and overall art in this game raise it to a level beyond just high screen resolutions, frame rates, and full-screen antialiasing. Although, being able to turn all that stuff up on a fast PC will certainly help make this game that much more immersive.
Many have compared Condemned to F.E.A.R., the other horror-first-person game that Monolith was working on simultaneously alongside Condemned last year. F.E.A.R. had an action element that was similar to The Matrix or Max Payne, while its horror elements were almost completely compartmentalized and separated from the action. You'd go from one shooting sequence to another, and then on to a horror sequence where you were almost totally sure no real harm would come to your character, then back to the action, and just repeat and repeat. It's not that F.E.A.R. wasn't a bad game, but horror veterans quickly realized that with only a few exceptions, the real scares were only there to be seen and not interacted with.
This is not true with Condemned. The scary things in this game can and most certainly will kill you if you give them a chance, and they will do so by tearing conduit piping out of the wall and beating you to death with it. And hey, if the electricity to that room happens to run through that pipe, too bad - the lights can and will go out in some cases if you don't deal with enemies quickly! Luckily, your uniform-mounted flashlight works at all times during the game with few exceptions.
Of course, Ethan will get his own chance to dish out some pain. He's a big guy himself and he's got no problem with smashing some druggie in the face with anything and everything he can get his hands on. One of Condemned's most unique features is the variety of weapons that Ethan or his enemies can wield, many of which can be ripped right out of the environment. In a warehouse? The wood plank with nails is a decent choice, but maybe the fire axe is better. No? How about a shovel? A sledgehammer? Head over to that abandoned high school and you can snag the blade off of one of those big paper cutters, or - my favorite - beat down an enemy with a locker door (complete with combination lock on the side).
