Condemned 2 - Bloodshot
Review » The sequel to Condemned: Criminal Origins, Condemned 2 - Bloodshot by Monolith brings back the biff in a big way. Steel pipe, baseball bats, axes, bricks, industrial equipment, dolls (wait.. what?)… all these weapons allow you to inflict grievous bodily harm on your enemies in this first-person fighting/shooting game that’ll bring more blood than your average game of Aussie Rules Football.
I couldn’t help but feel slightly giddy at the chance to play another game where your main objective is smashing the absolute lard out of the various undesirables that you encounter throughout the game, whilst moving through somewhat atmospherically scary environments.
Being a fan of the first Condemned game, I wanted to see if they managed to keep the same momentum as the first one. Verdict? Yes and no.
You play as the protagonist from the first Condemned game, Ethan Thomas, a former FBI agent who has now been reduced to nothing more than a bum with ripped clothes and a bottle of flaggin’, so in other words, he’s in higher social status that most of the protagonists you see in FPS games these days. Time obviously has not been kind to Mr. Thomas, in the months after the end of the first game. He is still having hallucinations, just like in the first game, and these hallucinations are becoming increasingly more realistic and graphic. Indeed, the entire first level of this game is a hallucination, giving you an indication of Ethan’s state of mind.
Once again, he is thrust into a world he has no idea about when he visualizes his old mentor and one of his only allies, Malcolm Vanhorn, consumed by an unknown force that is overtaking the city at an alarming rate, causing mentally unstable and violent people to become even more violent, actively pursuing and inflicting pain on you and other characters, whilst the law enforcement sits in their helicopters or high-rise buildings picking their noses waiting for the city to implode. Definitely an ample setting to crack skulls and break arms.
As was stated at the start of this entry, this game is primarily a first-person fighting game. For the first time
in the Condemned series, your own mitts are a weapon. Using the left and right triggers, Ethan will punch with his left and right hands. He can block attacks as well as parry attacks, if he blocks at the correct time (usually just before an enemy is about to indent your skull with a crowbar). Introduced into this game as well are combo attacks. Stringing together punches, blocks, kicks and stomps allows Ethan to dish out an insane amount of damage. But your fists aren’t the only weapon. Nearly everything that can be picked up, yanked off a wall or removed from another object can be a weapon. We’re talking steel pipes, baseball bats, toilet lids, fire-axes. Each weapon has 4 ratings - damage, speed, reach and condition. Damage is how much damage that weapon dishes out when swung. Speed is how fast the weapon is swung at the enemies. Heavier weapons will obviously take more time to swing, so they have a lower speed rating, which is more often than not offset by higher damage. Reach is how far in front of you the weapon reaches when swung. If you have a longsword, it will obviously be able to hit people further in front of you than say, a crowbar. Finally, condition is how long the weapon will last before it breaks. Weapons can also be used in chain attacks.
Returning from the previous game are the investigation mini-games. Unlike the previous game however, it doesn’t hold your hand through these mini-games now. You have to actually use your noggin, which is always a good thing. When coming to an area where you need to use the investigative tools, an icon will flash up on your screen with Study Evidence, and that’s as much help as it is going to give you. You’ll have to use all the tools and use your head to find the vital clues needed to continue. All the usual tools, such as spectrometers, UV lights, cameras are back. The only thing that I could fault with the investigative areas are the questions you need to answer. Sometimes you will be asked a question and given multiple choices to answer that question. Half the time though, all the answers are similar that you don’t know which one to pick. In order to get a Perfect rating for that investigation, you must answer the questions correctly.
Now to analyze each of the areas of the game, and pick for faults:
Story
The story in this game suffers from a fate known all too well in the writing industry. It starts off with a bang, and then just slugs towards the end, almost to the point that you don’t really care about the ending. The start of the game sees you chasing after an unknown figure throughout the city’s dank areas, after you find your friend and mentor, Malcolm Vanhorn, brutally mutilated. Along the way, various other people are also killed and you piece together very slowly who, or what, may have killed them. It is during these first hours of the game where the story is at its strongest and most effective.
The story reaches a peak when you realise your old buddy and primary antagonist of the first game, Serial Killer X, is alive and well after receiving a gunshot to the face in the first game. He’s no longer murdering other serial killers however, he’s murdering other people for another reason. I was dumb-struck when meeting SKX for the first time since the last game, and I was cautiously optimistic that SKX was going to introduce a whole new dynamic for this story and make it even strong. Alas I was wrong.
Let’s just say after that point in the game, the story goes downhill. The ending is such an anti-climax, I felt like throwing my controller at the screen.
Graphics
The game engine from the first game is back, LithTech Jupiter EX, obviously tweaked up a bit for this new release. It’s not a huge graphical jump since the first game was quite graphically good, but there’s some subtle differences from the first one, like better use of bloom lighting, more fog and specialized blur to make a sort of muggy, hostile atmosphere.
The environments of the game are suitably dank and unforgiving. The game has fleshed-out more from the claustrophobic corridors of the first game and brought on some outside areas, again, the game is still set at night to keep that unsettling feeling alive.
I could only fault the framerate, which is jumpy at times and can drop to pretty low FPS at times. It has been reported this also happens on the PS3, so there’s no difference, probably just missing some optimization of the graphics engine.
Sound
There is simply no other game available that, when turned up and played in the dark, can unsettle you with sound more than Condemned 2. The game uses minimal background music, and just keeps the ambient effects rolling, right before a masked lunatic jumps out of the shadows and cracks your skull with a locker door.
Make sure you turn the volume up and play in the dark.
Longetivity
The game lasts roughly 10-15 hours depending on your skill level. There is a Bloodshot Fight Club available, which is just basically unlimited amounts of bad guys coming at you and you can set which weapons you want to dish the biffo out. I should mention that the game has online multiplayer, and whilst I haven’t tested it, I have heard it is nothing special. Hence, my 2 out of 5 applies only to the single-player elements of the game.
OVERALL
The game is redeemed by its excellent use of visuals and audio to really amp up the atmosphere. The game is not very long however, and don’t expect a good strong ending.
