Condemned: Criminal Origins Review (Xbox 360) By deej0304

8 / 10
01 Apr 2006 at 14:52

Review by: deej0304

Picture this. Middle of the night. You’re in the house on your own, no one around. You’re playing Condemned: Criminal Origins. You know, that spooky game you’ve seen in all your favourite magazines? Well, you’re playing that. You hear a creak on the stairs. Do you:
A) Proceed to crap yourself screaming “MUMMY!!!”
B) Hide underneath your blanket, hoping the noise goes away,
C) Take inspiration from the game, pick up the nearest 2x4, run out to the stairs, beat the guy senseless, and finish him off by ramming the 2x4 into his ugly ned face.
If you chose C, Condemned: Criminal Origins is you’re type of game.

Condemned: Criminal Origins takes you on a dark journey of crime, framing, crime, murders, crime, puzzle solving, crime, and mystery solving. Throughout the game you meet many people who want to connect their sledgehammer to your face. The setting is dark, and dreary. You start off investigating a murder scene, one in a chain of related deaths, a serial killer is on the loose. You are taken through a few of the games basics, and how to use those investigation instruments that put CSI to shame. It all seems fair enough, but things become progressively spooky from here on in. You’re first encounter with an enemy will have you cursing the original FPS combat system, but throughout the game, you will grow to love it. The First Person view makes it all feel like YOU are in this game. You are fighting for your life. YOU are beating these hobos senseless. YOU are being shot at by a freak with a disfigured face. That gun is pointed at YOU. The blocking system is awkward during combat, but it becomes vital later on in the game, so it will be something you need to perfect.
Throughout your quest to rid the streets of this evil, you are guided by Rosa, one of the few that still trust you, after being framed for murder. She will analyse your Crime scene pictures, and is vital to get your name cleared.
You will also meet a man who tells you that you have a special gift, and you can see things others can’t. He is another who trusts you, and helps you escape your flat when the police come round to bust your sorry ass. The special gift he refers to is your premonitions. These give you insight into the killer’s whereabouts, and help build up the story.
You will come across guns in your adventure, but this is far from Resident Evil 4. A bit more like previous Resident Evil’s. There is VERY few ammo. Most of the time, it will just be the remaining few bullets in the clip, then you’re back to your crowbar. You will find it is much more satisfying to use weapons throughout, not only because you get a gamer reward, but just because the gun takes away from some of the fun. You don’t get to experience the special moves that you can using a hand weapon. Including head-butting the guy’s face to a pulp, ramming your weapon into his face, snapping his neck, and delivering a final punch.
The graphics help set the tone of this game a lot. They are dark, and moody, and work very well with the game’s background and story. When you swing your weapon, it is flawless, you can even see the weapon become blurred as you swing it so fast, there is a lot of attention to detail. The graphics are some of the best available on the 360 at this present moment, they definitely are the kind of visions you pictured the next gen would be, and could be. Enemies move fluidly, which is chilling, as it creates more of the same lifelike scares. They will have you nervous, jumpy, and scared.
The sound contributes greatly to the atmosphere of the game. Chilling violins, haunting symphonys. If you play on surround sound, like I did, the game will be as chilling and scary as one you have ever played, even Resident Evil 4. Hearing footsteps to your right, bins falling to your left, it will leave you close to leaving a little brown trail behind you.
The game has a gradual learning curve, which is always a good thing. You aren’t thrown into any huge gunfights too quickly, you aren’t drawn into the tough enemies too soon. However, even with this, it is still not too difficult a game, main factor being it is far too linear. Yes, there are twists and turns, but you will always be led to one path, the correct path, and all becomes too easy, and dare I say it, not frustrating enough. The developers may have wanted to create a sense of claustrophobia with their tight alleyways, but it could have benefited more from a large park area to roam about, or something to that effect.
This game is a great game, one of the best for its genre, even if at times it is linear, and the only gameplay mode is the single player mode. There are leaderboards to participate in, in terms of xbox live content, but apart from that it is a specialist game in the end, one that would only really appeal to fans of the genre. The forensic scenes also detract from the fun, basically because they are so easy, even if using the camera for the first time can be confusing. All in all, a great game, with limited playtime, but because you’ll be scared crapless, it’ll still seem an eternity.

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