Condemned 2: Bloodshot Review

Condemned 2 is grim. Very grim. Imagine the murder scene from Irreversible terribly twisted together with the end of Carrie, and throw in a pinch of The Devil’s Rejects for good measure. You’re about half-way there. Indeed, Condemned 2’s entire raison de’être appears nothing more than to ruthlessly brutalise your enemies through a variety of violent methods. It’s the kind of brutality that lingers in the hands, and something for which Condemned makes no apologies. Fallen-from-grace ex-detective Ethan Thomas – now suffering alcohol addiction, jaundiced eyes and all – pops skulls in metal presses, smashes heads through glass and pummels innocent drunks to within an inch of their lives. You’d think the ESRB would have a field day with it, but no. Condemned 2 is on shelves, uncensored and in all its bloody glory.

Developer Monolith are a bit of an odd bunch. Before 2005’s Condemned: Criminal Origins and F.E.A.R. they tried their hand at a wide range of gaming genres, including the puzzle game Gruntz, the platformer Claw, and the MMORPG The Matrix Online. Since then they’ve become somewhat specialists in the FPS genre, the spy-spoof series No One Lives Forever and movie-based games Tron 2.0 and Aliens Versus Predator 2 being notable examples. Their recent forays into horror and gore tell a completely different story than their varied history; you wouldn’t expect Condemned to achieve the thrills and scares of established horror titles like Resident Evil or Doom, and to some extent you’d be right.

Condemned 2, while heavy with atmosphere, doesn’t breed the same gut-wrenching dread that pervades every part of its predecessor. Condemned 2 has stuck rigidly to the formula that is applied offhandedly to so many Hollywood sequels – bigger, better, faster, louder. Rather than build outwards from the original’s brutality and primal fear Monolith have built upwards. Condemned 2 has creepy monsters, baby dolls that explode, men in hulking suits of armour, and bears that look like they’ve been infected with the T-Virus. It’s all brilliant, but also unfortunate, as Monolith had the ideas and story to evolve through gameplay made all the more frightening by a stark reality. Instead we’re left with a title that is no less engaging than the first instalment yet somewhat lacking in intensity. The far-fetched aspects of the story scream Rob Zombie’s technicolour insanity, not David Fincher’s unflinching grittiness.

This isn’t to say the game isn’t scary. There are plenty of jump-out-your-seat moments and chilling atmospherics (much of which is brought on by Ethan’s hallucinations), fleshed out with more than enough action to keep you going. Ethan’s fierce attacks feel as full of the weight that made the first game so distinct. Queensberry rules now apply, allowing the player to chain punches for stronger attacks or trigger a devastating QTE. Rushing in swinging wildly with your electrical conduit / bowling bowl / toilet seat is guaranteed to end in disaster. A careful combination of block, defence and parry is vital beating your enemies into bloody submission. There’s been a slight change to the control scheme in that blocking is now prompted by holding down both triggers, Pressing each individually causes Ethan to swing with that side of his body.

The investigative portions of the game have also received a facelift. It was one of the most poorly implemented ideas in the first game: instead of the incisive puzzle solving players were hand-held through a linear series of clues. Here it’s more like CSI Metro City. Pertinent clues must be identified, such as a bullet hole in a corpse, followed by a series of questions – is it an entry or exit wound? Is the victim male or female? The player is then graded on their analysis. While these investigations start off strong it’s not long before they settle into the more standard approach of reading door numbers or photographing objects – a far cry from the deciphering of splatter patterns offered at the outset. Nonetheless the investigations are consistently better than the first outing’s attempt.

Monolith have made a concerted effort to mix things up, and meanderings from the beaten path pay off. Ethan’s descent into insanity in the SCU building, the search for bombs in Black Lake Lodge, or the history lesson in brutality in the city museum are all favourites. Sadly other attempts fall flat, the doll factory in particular relegating exploration to the finding of switches. However when a blazing fire erupts the player must find a gas mask if Ethan is to proceed. Wearing the gas mask limits your view through a grubby visor, blanketing all sounds other than Thomas’ heavy breathing. It may seem like a cheap trick but the confines of the gas mask perfectly encapsulates the pressing claustrophobia that Condemned personifies, and as such leads to some of the tensest sections of the game. Everything outside of cutscenes is seen from Thomas’ perspective, indicating that DICE’s Mirror’s Edge is not the only title experimenting with what the term ‘first-person’ really means.

The story expands upon the ideas put forth in the first instalment and answers a fair few questions. It’s an original attempt at an interesting concept, but it’s also more than a little silly. Monolith are once again content to end on another cliffhanger – albeit one less provocative – paving the way for a possible trilogy. While the majority of the game sticks to beat ‘em up mechanics wrapped in horror archetype, Condemned 2 wanders off on a tangent in the final act, bizarrely steering its gameplay towards science fiction FPS. The gun combat is not Condemned’s strongest point, so it’s unfortunate Monolith place so much emphasis on it at the game’s finale. Nonetheless the necessity to drink liquor to steady Ethan’s alcohol shakes is a nice touch.

Condemned’s instruments of brutality may be blunt, but the game itself is not – despite what the inclusion of such frivolities as thugs attired in medieval armour might suggest. Sticking to the foreboding and atmosphere created by the first few levels would have been the best bet for Monolith, and the weak ending could have done with some of the force felt throughout the rest of the game. Yet Condemned 2 still ticks all of the boxes for a wicked sequel, and most of the boxes for a damn good game.

So are we to be condemned to a trilogy? Treated to one, more like.

8/10