Review: Condemned 2

Looks like: The civil war but with homeless people and vacuum heads

Feels like: A piece of meat

Sounds like: CSI with Manhunt minus middle class people divided by clowns

Smells like: Alcohol and barn yard animals

Tastes like: Piss and aspirin

Condemned 2 is the sequel to Criminal Origins, let me guess, you’re thinking “I knew that”, yes, yes go back to your pit and allow me to continue, so it’s made by Monolith the same people who made F.E.A.R, some extremely grey overrated first person shooter I couldn’t give a fuck about. I didn’t complete that game either... anyway I don’t want to go into a semi review of F.E.A.R now do I? You’re reading this for a verdict on the new Condemned game.

Right OK... so you play as Ethan Thomas and instead of him looking a like Charlie from Iceman with no hair this time around he now looks like an emo, yes I’m aware this game came out the same day as Dark Sector in the UK but this isn’t emo awareness week is it? I friggin hope not that would be worse than... let’s not get into that either. Ethan Thomas has now hit the bottle, not literally I mean he’s an alcoholic, this must be to fit in with the target audience of this game – hence why it wasn’t released on the Wii. OK so that was a low blow there, Ethan is just more of a prick this time around, that SKX fucker has messed with his mind, after all, he cut off his finger. Oh noes did I spoil that for you? It was in the first game, you should have played that game by now. So nine fingered Ethan Thomas is dragged off the streets by the crime scene unit he works with, I forgot the name and I can’t be bothered researching it, with that annoying bitch Rosa again. Albeit a bit strange they chose a drunk, homeless person with nine fingers to do the job, it sort of fits in with the story... well it HAS to fit in with the story.

Thomas sets out on his journey, with the games clock eternally set at night time, you go around beating the shit out of crazy homeless people, some homeless people prefer to wear masks that look like pigs... yeah you know the one you saw in Manhunt. So what’s new? It’s still beating each other senseless you saw in the last one but there are few new things added and some annoying things taken out from the last one. Like for example, you know those annoying doors in the first one that would say “Meh” if you wanted to break it with a fire axe but you just happen to have a sledgehammer... well there are none of them doors present here. Something new is the ability to get new perks for Ethan, so you can holster a gun, or use a stun gun which doesn’t actually make the combat a cakewalk... unless you play on FPS mode... uh.

Condemned 2 is definitely a better looking game than the original, everything seems a lot cleaner... that’s until they put about a million filters and stuff to make it extremely dark. The textures on the weapons seem to be looking a lot better now, and the blood decalcification will now stay on for longer. The one thing that really has pissed me off with this game though is the fact there isn’t a locked frames-per-second, it’s just quite annoying to see the game running at a nice 60 frames-per-second when you are in a corner, it’s quite a relief and I found myself just going into corners just to see the nice frame rate. Then the rest of the time it’s all crippled, grinds my gears I tell you...

Since you can’t see shit in this game you’ve got to rely on sound right? Damn right you do, now I’m not trying to act all tough or anything but honestly, I wasn’t scared by this game at all, it turned out to be another sci-fi game (don’t ask) which really fucked me off. But aside from that, yeah you can hear the homeless searching through cans of rubbish or the sound of crazy people mumbling. The doll factory is messed up; there are babies which can explode... yeah you heard. No we can’t bypass that, babies... explosions... babies... explosions... babies? Explosions? What the fuck is this? It’s the insanity that is Condemned 2 that’s what it is you dick, and it’s great. Violence is aplenty so you don’t need to worry about that, sticking head into grinders to throwing head in TV’s... it’s all good. The voice acting in the game is pretty good actually, too bad the dialogue can get a little off track and tries to hard at times, in other words, it’s not Oblivion.

The story doesn’t last that long either, I went straight onto hard mode and at times yeah... it was rock but it’s nothing to rival Call of Duty 4’s sheer brute difficulty on Veteran. Wait a second... there’s multiplayer? That’s totally awesome right? Guess what I’m going say... well actually it’s not that bad, it can dip into the monotonous at times after running around as one team looking for the last standing member but that can add to the experience. There is a deathmatch and team deathmatch which doesn’t need explaining. Then there is this funky mode called Crime Scene which reminds me of personal experiences. One team has to go around finding severed heads in a box while the other team has to hide the heads... weird but funny. Then there is Bum Rush where to police officers are armed to the teeth and are very hard to kill and the other 6 people or so have to beat the shit out of them, this does make some funny moments. The multiplayer though isn’t exactly something you’ll stick with like Call of Duty 4 but its fun to have a game or two in... I feel such as bastard for saying that since everyone who worked on this game must have worked real hard on it.

Overall, Condemned 2 is not the best sequel in the world, it’s not the best game in the world, it’s not the game of the year, but it’s a hilarious game which will have you laughing from beginning to end... or if you are actually normal it’s a scary game which will have you jumping out of your chair and screaming like a little girl whilst running downstairs, only to be confronted with someone in a clown mask who has a strangely deep voice, then you will start pissing your pants only to be laughed at by the clown and find out it’s your brother playing a joke on you... good game.

-- Josh Pollard, 360Stage Editor--

Note: Blogger is having a fit at the minute and I am unable to upload the picture of my cartoon, this will be dealt with whilst I go down to the Google offices kill everyone.