Joystiq hands-on: Condemned (Xbox 360)

The surprise hit of Tuesday's exposé was Sega's Condemned: Criminal Origins. To bring you up to speed, the game pits you as an FBI agent on the hunt for a deranged serial killer that likes to pose his victims with mannequins. Taking a page out of DOOM 3, the game unfolds in darkness. Luckily, you've got a flashlight, which has the habit of fading out now and again, but at least you can wield a weapon while it's in use.

I played through the opening level, which teaches you the game's mechanics and sets up the plot (don't worry there won't be any big spoilers in this post). The game has a nice cinematic touch to it, almost like you're playing through a game adaptation of Se7en. In the first sequence you arrive at a crime scene and are greeted by a detective that leads you into an abandoned building. You follow him through a series of dark corridors as he babbles on about this and that-the truth is, it's hard to pay much attention to what the detective is saying since you're distracted by the darkness. At one point the detective turns into a room and just as you are about to follow, you catch some kind of movement in the shadows down the hall. "What the #*$@ was that?!" I asked the rep sitting next to me. "Exactly," he said.

I really enjoyed the pacing of this opening scene. After rejoining the detective, we made our way into a dimly lit room were another cop was waiting. This is where our crime scene was. The serial killer in question had pieced together a violent dinner scene. On one end of a table adorned with food and drink sat a male mannequin. Directly across from him was a mangled female body (the victim) arranged on the floor as if she had been knocked from her chair.

This is where the investigation component of Condemned kicked in. After chatting with your supervisor, you get down to the dirty-dirty, breaking out the black light and other devices in order to uncover the hard evidence. In truth, I was a little disappointed about how easy the game makes your detective work-but perhaps the hints and clues diminish on higher difficulties or later levels. Basically, if you're not told directly by your supervisor to do something, you'll be treated to a flashback (yes, your character has some kinda ESP goin' on) that will show you glimpses of what happened in that particular space, cluing you in on where to direct your forensics work. But overall, this gimmick works really well, and helps to break up the tense moments that transpire as you make your way through the darkness.

Without giving up too much more of the plot, I'll just say that something is turning the vagrants and derelicts that roam the city into violent psychotics (and they're all after you). If you've followed any of the previous coverage on Condemned, you know that the game lets you grab bits and pieces of just about anything (e.g. a lead pipe, a 2x4 laced with rusty nails, a mannequin's arm, etc.) to combat your new foes. There are guns too, but since ammo is sparse, you're gonna be spending most of your time in hand-to-hand combat-oh yeah, you've also got a taser...

If violence isn't your bag, stay far, far away from Condemned. However, for those of you that enjoy a good fight, I assure you, you'll find yourself pleasantly satisfied after beating some crazed-freak to death. The weapon/combat system works well. Whenever you come across an object you can wield, a little menu will pop up that compares your current weapon with this new one. It's a simple +/- breakdown that includes categories like damage, speed, defense, etc. The combat itself is frantic and brutal. Getting pummeled upside your head will knock your POV around, momentarily disorienting you. It's best to get the fist shot in or at least try to block an ambush attack. The prevailing darkness adds to the chaos, as you'll periodically loose sight of your opponent as he ducks into the shadows or behind an obstruction.

My biggest complaint with Condemned is that your path through the levels is too linear. It would be much more satisfying if you were tossed into a building (or crime scene) and then allowed to explore it with greater freedom of movement. Instead, Condemned uses blocked doorways/passages to force you down a single path, which, when you take away the creepy atmosphere, is a lot like any old first-gen FPS game-basically it's a corridor crawler (one of the biggest knocks against DOOM 3).

Even so, the darkness makes it easy to get lost-so you can imagine how frustrating it might be if the environment was wide-open. Perhaps, a map would cure this, but altering the format that Monolith chose would change the pace of the game. By forcing you down a linear path, Monolith gets to decide exactly when you're gonna get spooked, jumped by psychos, and in general, crap yourself. However, keep in mind that a game like Condemned probably doesn't have much replay value-there is certainly no multiplayer mode.

Condemned: Criminal Origins is going to satisfy a lot of Xbox 360 owners. It's got great looks (even in darkness) and an interesting investigative spin. The hand-to-hand combat is a welcome change from the usual guns-blazing FPS experience-and it really works. Again, there's nothing about this title that screams "innovation," but I recommend it as one of the first games you should rent or buy (with the intention to trade-in) when the Xbox 360 launches next month.

UPDATE

In response to Master Mischief's comment, that is, what do I mean by "innovation," let me say a few words... It seems like a number of readers (or at least the one's that choose to comment) are getting frustrated with my concerns (and others') that the initial Xbox 360 lineup will feature games that really don't offer anything new (that is, innovative) in terms of gameplay in their respective genres. I don't think that "scratching Wario's armpits or patting a dog with the stylus on a touchscreen" is the only way to be innovative. The concern is, that if all developers are doing is polishing graphics, adding textures, and smoothing framerates then essentially, we're playing the same games we've been playing for the past 4-5 years or so. That's not fun to me. It's boring.

The truth is I've been crawling through corridors for more than a decade. I appreciate it when developers make an effort to add something new to that experience-it doesn't always work (e.g. Breakdown), but that's the risk. I think one direction that FPS titles can head is towards a greater sense of immersion. What would be innovative, for example, would be if I could will my character through a barrier comprised of a ragged couch and some planks. I know that according to the physical abilities of my video game character, he should be able to get through that barrier, but he can't. This simple element detracts from my gaming experience and is a crutch that developers have used since the early 90's to create the illusion that the space I'm playing in is bigger than a maze of narrow corridors-but after years of playing this same format, that illusion has worn thin.

I just don't understand those of you that want to settle. Why are you so content with playing the same game again and again? Why are you unwilling to be critical-to demand that developers take risks? These aren't buzz words I'm using. This isn't a ploy to convince you not to buy the Xbox 360 and all of its launch titles. I'm telling you what I came away with after playing the Xbox 360 for nearly 10 hours on Tuesday. I like Condemned, it's fun. Does it break boundaries in the genre? No. Is it wrong for me to point that out?

C'mon guys, why are you so eager to defend something you haven't played? Or rather, why are you so eager to defend something you have played-only it's been re-packaged and fed to you for another $60?