Condemned: Criminal Origins

[Unstoppable]

This game is just awesome. You play an F.B.I. agent by the last name of Thomas. Framed for murdering two cops you're on the trailer of the match maker a murderer who uses manekins with his victims. You use all kinds of tools and weapons. It was a 360 launch title and perhaps thee best launch title. Still one of the best 360 games to date in my opinion. Just got it for myself for christmas . The graphics are quite good and remind me a lot of Bioshock. Wonder if they're using a similar engine hmph. Who has played it? It's for 360 and PC.

[Vadrosaul]

It uses the Lithtech Jupiter EX engine, same as F.E.A.R., which luckily meant the PC port was good since the engine was originally developed for the platform.

[Unstoppable]

well I beat the game on hard. Something that happend was during the final batle i had the bug of not being able to pick up ANY weapons. So before you go up the ladder into the final battle make sure you got more then one save just in case. It hasn't been patched on the 360 bah. Great game though. I had to restart the last level.

[Komag]

Holy crap that sounds like a pretty short game!

[Unstoppable]

Holy crap that sounds like a pretty short game!

 

It's 10 chapters. However if you wanna get everything the game will be longer .

[Redface]

I didn't get far in the game, it was simply boring with poor level design.

If you want a quality horror fps, play Call of cthulhu instead. Beats Condemned by a mile in everything, except graphics that is.

[Komag]

Most review sites have them about even

[Unstoppable]

wow i would say give it another go. i guess you don't like it to be linear but it's not that linear. however to say poor level design is quite a statement .

[Redface]

Allright, the level design in this game isn't poor. It's average.

After 2 or 3 hours of walking around places that all looked exactly the same and beating the same people with pipes/axes/bats/otherstuff, I gave up. I wasn't lost or anything, actually got pretty far, but the game felt like a bad joke. It simply wasn't fun at all, I guess I expected a bit more, even from a fps.

[SplaTtzZ]

I too thought Call of Cthulhu was pretty good. Thats not to say that Condemned was bad, i played it on 360 and got up to the orchard house, and it was pretty good, but Call of Cthulhu and the movie se7en were better.

 

Only thing that bugged me was the fact that Cthulhu could've been so much more. I really liked the concept of your character losing their sanity, and their were times in the game when it got pretty atmospheric because your character was breathing so hard and his vision was blurring; however i don't think they implemented this feature to it's full extent. I would have liked it if your charcter started seeing visions, hearing voices, and randomly shooting at shadows. I only died of insanity once in the game, and it was a pretty random event. All that happened was his hands clenched in front of his face and a red mist rose in the screen; I actually would have preferred it if he grabbed his revolver and blew his brains out, it would have made the game that much more disturbing and creepy. That said; i never really used the morphine that your character has access to, so maybe that might have spun him out more.

 

I don't think Cthulhu got the credit it deserved, as it did try to do something new. I hope they make a sequel of some sort and really expand upon the character being not only physically affected by his environment, but mentally as well. The game, for example, has vision blurring to simulate your character being afraid of heights and suffering from vertigo, which was a pretty cool effect. Overall I connected much more with Cthulhu's main character than with Condemned's one.

[Redface]

That's exactly how I feel about CoC.

It could have been so much better if the devs got more time, but it still IS much, much more than any other comparable game can offer.

 

So, back to topic, Condemned might have nice graphics and lots of blood & gore, but that's about it...

[Taffer36]

Yeah I heard that Condemned starts out really great, but that its pretty much the same exact thing over and over; "a one-trick pony." It looked pretty good, but I've yet to play it.

[Unstoppable]

Well for me it was everything I expected and more. I just really like the combat and was immersed in the storyline. The F.B.I. detective dosen't realize what he really is. Just to give you some clue's there will be a movie called Species X which is kind of like a sequel to Condemned or it tells the story. After the movie Condemned 2 should hit store shelves a few months after woot =].

Edited December 30, 2006 by Unstoppable