Condemned: Criminal Origins

You know, there's not much going for the XBOX 360 right now. It seems like every company that develops for it puts their foot slightly in the door, but keeps their body out of the whole room until they are sure it'll actually be a decent system to put their time into. I mean, even XBOX fans have to face it- it's not that great of an investment right now, as it seems like only a handful of companies are willing to make games for it, and no-one really knows if it will survive when the other competitors launch.

Condemned: Criminal Origins, created by the creators of F.E.A.R., was supposed to somewhat be a fix for that. It was beautiful, gritty, unique, and it had everyone at E3 2005 going “I want to play that”- and I don't blame them. It was one of the best examples of graphics that can be pumped out on the XBOX 360, and it really set the whole thing ablaze.

And now Condemned is on the PC. Like I said, it seems as if most gaming companies are a little wary of getting too XBOX 360-reliant, and Sega (Publishing the game developed by Monolith) is paranoid like that. So, I, the person too cheap to actually purchase an XBOX 360, finally get my hands on the game in my own home to review. And I was excited.

Condemned: Criminal Origins is all about a gritty realism that is not often seen in Video Games. Purportedly inspired by movies like The Silence of the Lambs and Se7en, the game is all about disturbing scenery and drugged up psychos, focusing on agent Ethan Thomas, who in the start of the game is investigating a homicide scene involving a twisted tableaux of mannequins and the deceased. Thomas' career specializes in tracking down and stopping serial killers, but a twisted form of events leads him to not only turn on his job with the FBI, but also to find that his talents in his job are a little bit more than luck.




Known to by many as a “Survival Horror” game, Condemned is a unique game with a somewhat unique perspective on things. From the outset of the game, as this is an XBOX 360 game, Condemned is completely widescreen format, which will finally give those Dell people with widescreen LCDs something to do with them. The entire game, as I mentioned before, is gritty, so expect to feel like you have to take a shower when you finish this game- it is dirty, dark, and has the feeling like you got locked in the sewer with a candle. This reminded me quite a bit of Doom 3, as it was dark, lonely, and the scenery rarely, if ever, changed. There is something to setting up a unique area and having it large, but when the entire game feels the same way, I yearn for unique environments (Serious Sam, anyone?).

Condemned set itself apart when it was first announced by revealing that the game would not rely on heavy gun use, like regular first person titles, and rather would go for a melee-style combat setup involving the use of anything around you as a weapon. Instead of giving Ethan Thomas a pistol and hundreds of rounds of ammo, the game is primarily about the ability to find and use anything around you as a weapon and slowly work your way through the levels. From pipes to even a mannequin arm, anything heavy and useful can be put into his hands and swung around- but the same applies for virtually every enemy in the game. This is phenomenal, as it adds a depth to a game that otherwise would be a boring shooter, but with close examination it is revealed that you cannot use “Everything”, but rather “What the game wants you to use”, which limits you to about 25-30 items in the entire game (Minus a pistol, a shotgun, and other actual guns, which have limited ammo with no ammo pickups whatsoever).

One interesting thing about the weapons of Condemned is that while they feel “Floaty” and have little to no difference, some weapons are known as “Entry” weapons, and allow Ethan Thomas to bust into different areas, much like an entry shotgun. For example, in the earlier levels, the doors are locked, but they are of cheap, rotten wood. By finding a fire axe (Which doubles as a phenomenal but slow melee weapon), Thomas can bust into the room and do what he needs to do. That's one hell of a lot better than using the stereotypical card key, at least in my opinion.




Another difference to Condemned: Criminal Origins is the enemies- the majority of the game is about finding your way around the dark underground of the city in which Thomas resides, and that means the enemies tend to be nothing more than violent druggies. This is odd, as I never knew stoned hippies could be so strong (Note: Whatever drug they are taking, it manages to make them insanely aggressive with some tactical techniques. The last time I met a stoner, he fell out of his chair. I think there's some fantasy going on in this respect..) nor did I ever know they could be such expert users of pipes and whatnot, but they still manage to be formidable foe. With the powerful and unique AI system in Condemned: Criminal Origins, enemies will dodge back and forth and move with strange speed, but also will move in for the kill and back off like an expert tactician, to make your life hard. This not only manages to make the whole game somewhat scary, as they pop out at you, but it also means that just about every bullet-based gun in the game is completely useless. Ouch.

As the story progresses, the game puts you in the position of examiner, as in the situation he was put in to run from the FBI, he also magically manages to carry about 30 pounds of CSI equipment, not to mention a cell phone to call the lab at opportune times. From a high tech camera to a light that turns “special” things bright green, Ethan Thomas is loaded like crazy. This whole setup is used rather simplistically- Thomas' “Instincts” hit, the screen blurs with a funky effect, hit the T key, and look around for an obvious clue so your lab can look at it and make assumptions a three year old could make. I found this part of the game somewhat stupid, as while I do not mind more “intellectual” parts in my video games, the scenes were sometimes mundane and obviously thrown in to progress the story, and the game forces you to stop completely to listen to these travesties in-game. I just wanted to bash in some more heads.

As for this game in comparison to it's XBOX 360 brother, it is a surprisingly good port, but I found the game somewhat laggy even when I had all of the graphics turned down. Even with the graphics maximized, the system seemed to lag at the exact same parts- so it may be a unilateral issue and not purely just “your system is slow” lag. This may be, like many ports, just bad luck, but I have a feeling that it has to do with poor optimization so far as the PC goes. In any case, anyone could run this game (It scales down so nicely even a laptop could run this, so long as you didn't expect magical artwork quality out of it), and it's nice to see a graphics mode better than the XBOX 360, which is at least some incentive for us PC gamers.




As I sometimes do, I will add a footnote before I complete this review and say that the Mature rating for this game is well gotten, and that at points I found this game was deliberately pushing it. The druggies, though they are purportedly “High”, manage to talk completely in curses and screams, and it just felt to me that it was purposely done just to feel “Extreme”. It was somewhat humorous to hear a druggie enemy swear for no reason (When the AI though I was going to attack but I wasn't even moving anywhere), but I can see this being somewhat offensive to more sensitive gamers. Though, I don't see sensitive gamers playing this game any time soon- it's called Condemned: Criminal Origins. Duh.

While this game is a good play for any fan of survival horror or any shooter fan looking for a breath of fresh air, I really can't say this is as good of a game as Microsoft and Monolith made it out to be. It's unique, and I enjoyed the story, but at some point endless trudging through the same kind of level with the same kind of weapon gets old. While I think this is definitely a game to experience, I doubt that I could see myself recommending any normal gamer drop $40 for a 5 hour game. My best advice is to wait until this game becomes a discount purchase, and get it for about $20 or so, as the somewhat boring game play that lasts only for a short time is not anywhere near worth full price.

Of course, if you have an XBOX 360, you might as well get this game. What else is there to get?

3 star(s) out of 5

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