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63 of 67 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Play At Night in a Silent House - Quite Scary, November 26, 2005

By	Lisa Shea "LisaShea.com" - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)

Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars

Some games are mature because they have swearing. Others are mature because they are really scary and nasty. Condemned - Criminal Origins falls clearly into the latter category.

Condemned - Criminal Origins has you in the part of FBI Agent Ethan Thomas, tracking down a serial murder. Don't think that this is like Law & Order or Criminal Intent. This is about the nastiest, grittiest, scariest areas of a city that you can imagine.

Somehow it's as if a maximum security prison was turned into an area of town. You go walking through buildings that are covered with gang signs, crawling with addicts who kill police offers on sight. Most of these insane bad guys lurk in the dark and call out profanities before bashing you with 2x4s or other weapons of convenience.

Of course a wise police officer might call for backup. But in the first "situation", you're told backup will take 10 minutes to show up. Instead of hanging tight for 10 minutes, you go trekking through the building on your own with only a gun and a flashlight to keep you safe. It's not long before the gun is in the hands of the bad guy and it's you and your flashlight against numerous enemies. This is wise?? Where's your radio?

You have a helpful friend - Lt. Rosa - who helps to talk you through using your forensic equipment. However, she waits until a madman almost kills you before chiming in with some information about how all the madmen on the streets are insane and worthy of slaying. Thanks for the help, Rosa.

The game is definitely very scary. The screens are quite dark, the flashlight only lights up small areas, and there are a ton of corners for the madmen to hide out in. You see them run across the screen, take cover, lurk in the corners. You never know when they'll launch an assault. Again, it really makes me ask why a lone FBI guy is roaming around in here without any real weapons. I realize it's for plot reasons, but I want a better plot :) Surely if I was really tracking down a serial murderer, I'd have more backup and more weapons than this.

That being said, if you're looking for a scary game that isn't all-and-all out combat a la Quake 4, this might fit the bill exactly. It's you against the enemy - and the enemy is truly insane. It's not about tons of ammo here - you're lucky if you even have a gun sometimes. You have to find crowbars, planks of wood and whatever you can to stay alive. If you play this at night, with the house quiet around you, the HD TV showing you the full detail and the 5.1 surround sound tuning you in to the slightest noise, it really can get to you.

Well recommended for the mature set that enjoys being scared!

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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Criminal Origins one of the best launch titles, November 29, 2005

By	C. Bakehorn (Bloomington, IN) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars

Monolith Software flexed their thriller muscle with this year's hit PC shooter, F.E.A.R. That game featured disturbing scenes, incredibly intelligent A.I., and beautiful graphics that simply blew away the PC crowd. Their newest game, Condemned: Criminal Origins, looked to do the same thing to gamers on the new Xbox 360. After playing through Condemned, I'm starting to think that Monolith has this shooter-thriller genre mastered. Condemned is a hell of a good game, and an extremely thrilling one to boot.

You're thrown into the role of an FBI Agent sent into seedy, addict-infested environments in order to investigate the murders of a serial killer. After the events that take place during the first level, which I won't ruin for you, your investigation turns into an all-out manhunt for the killer (or killers) as well as a battle to uncover the mysterious abilities and secrets you possess. The story is very intense, and sometimes when you'd least expect it, your character will have a flashback or he'll black out and a dream sequence will give you a clue of what's going on. The ending is very abrubt, unfortunately, but I would be absolutely thrilled to see a sequel, and the ending hints towards a possibility of that.

The gameplay is unlike anything I've ever experienced in a game. Let's do some roleplaying. Completely unarmed, you walk into a dark room that is dripping with grime and muck, and there is trash and debris scattered all over the floor. As you slowly step around, you hear a crash. You look around, and your heartbeat steadily increases as your flashlight does a minimal job of helping you see the different nooks and crannies of the room. The only way forward is the door across the room, but it's heavily shadowed and deep down inside, you know there's something waiting nearby to kill you. To protect yourself, you rip a pipe from a wall and proceed forward, quickly glancing around and checking your rear for ambushes. Your character's breathing gets harder and naturally your senses react, as your heartbeat continues to raise and you continue forward. You approach the door, and you feel that sense of security and accomplishment--but WHACK, you flinch as you're clubbed by an enraged drug addict that is madly swinging a wooden plank at you, all the while loudly screaming obscenities. That increased heartbeat of yours turns into a pounding, and alongside flinching your reaction is to swing that pipe as quickly as possible. You've been hit, but you eventually overcome and finish off your attacker, who was a mere swing away from killing you. Taking a second to breathe, it hits you--you're safe for now, but you only went through a single room in the many levels of Condemned: Criminal Origins. You open the door and in front of you is a whole new room and a whole new experience.

That's how Condemned plays out. There is never a dull moment in the levels, and even when there aren't enemies trying to beat the hell out of you, you are completely unaware of what might be in the same room you're investigating. During some of the down-time, you do detective work and try to uncover different pieces of evidence that propel the story. You're given access to different tools, like a laser gun that detects chemicals and a blacklight that highlights biological leftovers. Unfortunately, the investigating is pretty straightforward, and unlike the combat, it isn't possible to be very creative with it. Still, it progresses the story, and serves as a nice breather from swinging at and blocking enemies. There isn't much else that fluctuates the gameplay experience, but it never got old for me.

The fighting in Condemned is best described as being "in your face". That's what made me flinch so much when I played it--it feels like the angry inhabitants of Condemned are breathing down your neck the entire time they're around. Fighting them feels very real due to this, and landing a solid blow to an enemy results in it recoiling, recovering, and counterattacking or running away from you. Once they're ready to attack again, you'll have to block and counterattack to stay alive. It's unwise to underestimate even an unarmed enemy, as the intelligent A.I. will tell the opponent to rip a board off of the nearest wall and continue attacking if they lose their weapon or it breaks. With all of this melee, some gamers might wonder where the guns went. Every once in a while, the game will treat you and you'll find a pistol or shotgun laying around. You'll never find ammo in the game, and with every gun, you get what you see. This changes up the experience a little and allows you to pick off your enemies from farther away, but once you've used up the ammo, it's back to clubbing enemies to death.

I've said that the environments in Condemned are dark and seedy, but I don't think words can truly capture the feeling that the graphics convey. Just as you don't know when to expect an enemy in a room, you'll rarely come across a room that doesn't have something to explore. The darkness of the game doesn't tarnish how great the graphics look, as the shiny, glossy effect makes everything look wet and grimy and the weapon models are nothing short of perfect. The flickering of light in some of the rooms makes everything much scarier. The graphical achievement that Condemned does best is creating an ambience that will scare you even when there's nothing going on. Visually, the only downfall is that the character models in cutscenes look blocky and the lip sync is a little off in some scenes. As you might expect by now, the music and sound effects make the game a lot scarier than anything else. It's the lack of music that sets the mood, and the intensity of the sound effects make the action feel even closer to you. When you're hit by an enemy and your character reacts, he doesn't just make a grunt noise or a yelp in pain--his agony is as perfectly recreated as the actual beating noise that came from being hit by the enemy's weapon. At the same time, landing a clear blow on an enemy sounds as gruesome as can be, and it intensifies the combat even more. I didn't get a chance to play this game in 5.1 Dolby Digital, but I'd say it would be one of the more thrilling games to play in surround sound.

In the end, the slow pacing might turn off gamers looking for a straightforward shooter. The game isn't very long, either. Including all of the deaths and retries that I had during the game, I finished the adventure in about eleven hours. There aren't any other gameplay modes, so once you've finished the single-player game, you've experienced everything Condemned has to offer. Does this make it a bad game? No. Is it still worth buying? I'd say so, especially if you're a fan of this type of game. If you like to breathe heavily and feel your heart pound, this is definitely the game for you. The story will captivate you and the ending will have you excited for more. The unique gameplay, thrilling story, and disturbing graphics make Monolith's Condemned: Criminal Origins worth playing, and as an Xbox 360 launch title, it's one of the top five in my book.

(NOTE: I also have this review posted on GameFreaks365.com, where I write reviews on a regular basis.)

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20 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Parent's please don't buy this game for your children !!, December 2, 2005

By	Cody B. Musser (Apollo, PA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars

Let's start off bluntly. I love Condemned: Criminal Origins absolutely! This game is the 360's sleeper hit without a doubt. It hasn't really gotten the press or the coverage it deserves, and once you begin playing the game you'll ask yourself why the hell not?? The combat in the game is engaging and INCREDIBLY realistic, the visuals are perhaps the best of the 360's launch lineup and INCREDIBLY realistic, and the most important part, is that the game leaves you with a feeling that I've never felt after playing a game ever, a feeling that is INCREDIBLY realistic.

I've made my point three times that this game is incredible, but there is one thing it's not. This game is not for your children!! I'm 20 years old, and I've been playing violent games my whole life, from first-person shooters to survival horror games, and I enjoy all of them. But, Condemned was the first game to really scare me, and I mean after I put the controller down. The feeling that you get when you smash a lunatic bum's face with a sledgehammer felt to me very similar to the feeling that you would get if you smashed a real face with a sledgehammer. It's that good.

I've never believed that people could play a game like DOOM, and have that inspire them to take out their classmates in a hail of gunfire, but the lasting effects of the environment and violence in Condemned made me feel that this game could. In fact, it probably more than likely scared me out of doing something like that, because now I can understand how gruesome some things are, but children on the other hand, most likely can't.

So to my warning, please don't buy this game for your children. The video game industry is the target of enough trouble and dismay that a game like Condemned could be the icing on the cake of a very important lawsuit or peice of legislature. Particulary if Soccer J. Mom buys it for little Timmy and little Timmy decides to go swinging crowbars and 2x4's for real. I said the game was realistic enough times to hopefully tie this together. Children today do not need this game, they don't need real violence in their streets, and they don't need violence this realistic on their television screens.

However, for every responsible adult. Go forth, and smash bum-face for the greater good.