Condemned: Criminal Origins Review

The building blocks for what came next

Condemned is a 2005 melee focused horror game brought to us by the FEAR and future Shadow of Mordor developers, Monolith Productions. And to be honest that description tells you almost everything you need to know about the game, at least if you're aware of the other games mentioned. This is a game I had known of for a long time, but never really bothered to play until now when I was looking for some <10 hour games to play.

 The games reputation being what I'd known best, I'd heard of it as intensely scary and brutal. With a lot of wild melee combat and some basic detective elements. But actually sitting down to play it, while a few moments did live up to that reputation in my head, what I instead found was a game about 5 years ahead of it's time in general gameplay and story structure. Most evident in the graphical bugs and weird design choice, but I get ahead of myself.

What the game clearly wants to be is a highly cinematic experience, akin to something like Uncharted or maybe Dead Space. Cutscenes are detailed and full animated even as the models and animations can't quite keep up, you can only hold a single weapon at a time and all healing is on the spot via found med kits at designated checkpoints. However there is no evolution or upgrade to your combat abilities aside from occasional new guns or melee weapon types, though sometimes you're forced into using a melee weapon as what is effectively a key, resetting you back to zero even if you've been conservative. Most of the horror is via setpieces or cinematic moments, and while there's an attempt for enemies to move around and surprise you in the same manner as the dev's earlier entry FEAR. It simply falls flat, leading most encounters to feel samey and somewhat dull. Especially when the enemies animation only has a vague similarity to their hitbox and actual attack timing.

So, is it a bad game? I don't think so, it was fun enough to play through and putting myself in mind of 2005 I can easily see why it would stand out from the crowd. Being a melee focused horror available on console and with a more standard gameplay model making it way more accessible. But it still aged like milk, and I don't know if I could recommend it in modern day unless you're interested in that gaming history side of things.

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