Condemned: Criminal Origins was a beautiful and heart-pounding scary game. A game with flaws, but what it wanted to do it did so well that it was easy to over look the flaws. To be blunt, I had a blast and wanted to check out the sequel, Condemned 2: Bloodshot.
At first the game play reminds you a lot of the first. Their is a heavier emphasis on combat, which I wasn't fond of, and a much better designed forensic system. The environments are scary, the enemies are intense, and the story is straight foreword. Problems start to appear early on.
Anyone who has played Condemned knows the enemies in the first game were just homeless people who had been driven insane. The enemies for the most part were just normal people. In Condemned 2, you fight explosive dolls and a woman wearing a doll mask and holding a razor lined lolly pop in the fourth level. This is where things first begin to fracture.
Things get worse during the sixth level, where you investigate a museum. This level introduces stealth gameplay and forces you to fight a knight in a suite of armor with broad swords. The enemies in this level take too many hits and it gets repetitive trying and failing to kill a single enemy because he has armor and you don't.
Still, things still work until the next level, Black Lake Lodge. The level begins with you sneaking through a creepy cabin and being chased by a grizzly bear, all very scary. Until you get away from the bear and are told you have a new assignment. Disarm six bombs and win a shoot out with SWAT officers.
Quick, what isn't scary? Did you say gun fights? Gun fights and fetch quests? Correct! It's at this point that the gameplay changes from a claustrophobic romp through several ruined buildings and into a generic first person shooter.
(Spoiler Warning)
The worst part though comes at the end, which ends with a sequel hook for a sequel that will never be made. So yes, this is a game that starts off fun but completely loses it by the end. This isn't even a game that ends, it just stops. I recommend Condemned 2 only for fans of the first game or for people who thought FEAR wasn't quite bland enough.
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