Condemned: Criminal Origins was a launch title for the Xbox360. The game is played using a first-person perspective although it emphasises melee combat over the usual running and gunning. The storyline seems firmly camped in the horror genre - it refers to itself as a psychological thriller, with your character Ethan Thomas, a FBI agent, initially on the trail of a serial killer who poses his victims in gruesome scenes with mannequins.
The first level of the game functions as the tutorial, introducing all the key game play mechanics and setting the storyline rolling. Your character, Agent Thomas, arrives at a crime scene where a serial killer, the Match Maker, has struck again. You are lead to the crime scene by a fellow officer and introduced to the standard console FPS controls; the only time you will digress from walking or jogging is when you have to traverse one of the few passable obstructions in the game, you accomplish this by pressing the A button. Along the way to the crime scene you are given a flashlight, this pale circle of light is how you will view a majority of the game. Eventually you reach the crime scene and you are introduced to the much-touted forensic tools the game has to offer.
When you reach a crime scene or an area containing hidden clues, you are prompted to press the 'X' button which will bring up one of the three automatically selected tools; a laser light used to detect evidence invisible to the eye, such as chemicals, fingerprints or smears of liquids; a UV light that detects blood; and a gas detector that is used to locate the methane coming from dead bodies. Once you have located the point of interest, you are prompted to hit 'X' again to sample or capture the evidence; you do this using either some kind of sampling device, a 3D scanner or a regular digital camera. Once you have obtained the evidence it is sent back to the lab using your mobile phone, there the data is analysed and the results are fed back to you - it is through this dialogue that the most of the plot is advanced.
The common enemies that you face in Condemned appear to be the local vagrant, drug-using population. Later in the game, more disfigured individuals attack you that appear to be some sort of zombie or mutant - I do not believe their appearance is explained in the main storyline, it may be in supplemental information. When fighting the common enemies they display a limited amount of intelligence; they will upgrade their weapons before attacking you if a better option is available - including your own discarded guns with leftover ammunition; they will attempt to retreat and hide around a corner if they take several hits in succession; they will feign attacks to attempt to make you prematurely block and therefore leave yourself open to an attack; and they will also attack each other if you leave them alone for a short while, this is handy when you are low on health or when multiple enemies have guns.
Combat in the game focuses mostly on melee combat - guns are available but ammunition is scarce. Melee combat, using various objects including shovels and fireplace-pokers, relies on countering enemies attacks to gain the advantage, however timing blocks can be tricky and the range of some attacks are difficult to judge - you will think you are stood clear of the attack, yet it still hits. Clicking the right-thumb stick will result in your character kicking, reminiscent of Doom; this can be used to perform a quick follow up strike after using a melee weapon. The animation changes in relation to the angle you are looking in, looking upwards will result in a high side-footed kick that seems incongruous with your characters appearance in cut-scenes. Occasionally when you have inflicted enough damage to an enemy to floor them, but not kill them, they will kneel-up and you are provided with several different options to execute them, such as slamming their head into the floor, snapping their necks or head butting them; these actions all seem quite sadistic and brutal to be employed by a police officer.
The guns included in the game feature a semi-automatic pistol, a pump-action shotgun, sub-machine gun and a few others; very little weapon-bob is included whilst your character moves around - this always annoys me for some reason. Aiming in the game is tricky due to sluggish controls using the default settings; the inclusion of accelerated-turning after you have rotated 45-degrees also hinders aiming attempts by making it easy to swing your crosshair completely over an enemy. Whilst ammunition for guns is scarce throughout the game, you have a taser with infinite energy in your possession for the majority of the game. The taser has a decent amount of range and will stun a single enemy for a short amount of time - whilst stunned you can steal their weapon, hit them for a fatal blow or just watch them fall over. It proves useful when attacked by multiple enemies so you can temporarily incapacitate one and dedicate your attention to another.
The level design in Condemned is strictly linear, the only time you can easily careen off the intended path is when you become disoriented after loading a checkpoint and end up tracking back through the level - this is due to experiencing most locations through the circular beam of light your flashlight produces, routinely the only usable source of light for long stretches of the levels. Locales featured in the game include a subway station, a school, a department store, and a library; all are rendered using a dark-palette and the yellow lockers in the school are one of the few exceptions. All of your activities throughout the course of the game seem to take place at night or in the late-evening, the main character needs to readjust his body clock. At several points in the game, all colour drains from the game world as the main character undergoes some sort of experience - the walls disappear and are replaced with an outdoor landscape and a distorting filter is overlayed, I don't really get why.
The story told in Condemned is not ground-breaking or revolutionary, it is left open for a sequel at the end and many issues are left unresolved and unexplained: why is a police-officer slaughtering hundreds of tramps and drug-users whilst trying to find a serial killer; what is going on with the hallucinations or whatever are occurring; who is the man in the coat and why is he interested in you; why do the police seem to be out to get you. The last three points are almost certainly related and the first point just confuses me, these questions might be answered in the sequel - I do not know and I do not intend to find out. Achievements are offered for collecting dead birds and pieces of metal that are scattered through out each level, there is also a television and Xbox360 hidden in each level that you are rewarded for finding - these might improve replayability, although you could use a FAQ on your first run-through to make sure you collect them, the risk of storyline spoilers is quite low and the puzzle solving in the game consists of finding a fire-axe or sledgehammer to gain access to the next area of the level.
I played through the game on the hardest difficulty setting, it presented no problems throughout the game apart from the occasional annoyance of passing through a checkpoint with low health and then being promptly ambushed by multiple enemies - this is my own fault though. I did drop the difficulty during the final boss fight due to being outflanked by multiple enemies and having to restart numerous times, I lowered the setting just to plough on and complete the game - I was getting tired of it and wanted to finish. Generally I am not a fan of dark games that rely on things leaping out of shadows to generate frights and Condemned has not changed my opinion; it was an inoffensive game that had no crippling bugs and the graphics are still tolerable. I feel no urge or need to replay the game although for the price I paid, £6, I got around 10 hours of playtime from it and that represents fair value.
