Condemned sort of attempts to be different but after a while it becomes apparent that yet again this is just another first person shooter to add to the list and nothing to get excited about.
Your character is a FBI agent and gets attacked during the first section of the game. The attacker steals your gun but leaves you alive. Soon after you are framed for murder. The rest of the game involves trying to work out the strange story behind it all. To do this you wander around deserted buildings searching for clues whilst occasionally beating up crazy, psychopathic lunatics who just want to kill people… including you. The clues are left lying around and need to be examined using CSI style forensic tools such as cameras that can see traces of blood, and specimen analysis gadgets. These do add a little bit of variety into the game, but as you find them and slowly unravel the weird story they don't exactly inspire you to fight on to get to the next clue.
The main styles used in fps games are running around blasting everything, sneaking around killing everything quietly, a combination of the two, and… well, that's about it. The thing is, you generally have a huge supply of guns. Little guns, big guns, larger guns, and BFG's as they are generally called, (what that stands for I couldn't possibly write here). However, Condemned doesn't have many guns at all. Most of the carnage is done by using bits of pipe, shovels, axes, planks, and other similar things that can be used to hit people with. This means plenty of close man on man combat. Woo hoo!! A refreshing slight change to the fps genre. "Woo hoo" quickly turns into "boo hoo" though. The fighting is awkward and blocking and hitting using whatever tool you currently have becomes repetitive. You do have a Taser gun which can electrocute bad guys but even that gets a bit dreary after a few uses.
The graphics are really good with dark, moody, atmospheric settings accompanied by sound effects which do the job but are far from spectacular. Nice graphics don't make up for the lack-lustre level design and slow pace though. As you wander around, (incredibly slowly), it starts to get a bit tiresome looking at similar scenery all the time, with uninteresting room after uninteresting room.
So, what starts out being a great game with a slightly different style to it turns into a rather drab affair. I may be repeating myself but this game is just too repetitive and should be condemned to the scrap heap.
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