Condemned: Criminal Origins (CCO) hopes to bring the survival horror genre to the Xbox 360 in a whole new light, and in dynamic light at that.
In CCO, you play Ethan Thomas, one of the FBI's greatest investigators. In time, however, you'll find that there are more special things to discover, and you're about to enter a world that lets that on like a ton of bricks. After investigating a murder, you end up on the chase of a serial killer, seeking how to find some answers to the strange murders and things going on in your quaint city.
CCO is a beautiful game in its lighting effects. Sadly, you wont see much of that. CCO is a dark game and appropiatly so. The darkness of course is one of the most used factors in survival horror, to the point that it's required. Graphically, the game does well, on things that you can interact with. Weapons and enemies and most of your surrondings are well smoothed out and those crazied junkies look vicious in the moon light, but closer examinations to the more details of the world look blotchy and tossed in. I'm still waiting for a game where it's all well pixilated.
In any case, the enemies in the game are smart, quite smart. They wont always run at you with whatever weapon they grab, which is any weapon you can you get as well by the way, though they may eventaully. They like to hide behind walls, duck behind obstacles, and kick your ass. Added to vicious melee combat, you get firearms, though you don't have extra ammo on you. Though you'll be wishing you did, this adds more horror to the game and I'm glad to have it. Added to the combat in the game, is forensics. You have several tools to find out more clues to your path. However, the forensics is usually short lived and not that innovated. Just point and click, really, but it's a nice sentiment to have, just not enough behind it.
The story line will keep you hooked into the end, which wont be long as the game is kind of short. However, I suppose there may be reason for that. By the end of the game, you wont get many questions answered and you'll feel like the game stopped half way through. The game wants you to play through again to unlock features to learn more about the story line they didn't tell you when you were playing. Replayability is great, in fact it's essential, but it doesn't need to be forced upon you like this.
Overall, the game is fun to play and very fun in the dark. However, the game falls short of its potential. Since there arn't that many great 360 games out there, I say pick this game up. This is a matter of circumstance that it gets that suggestion. Otherwise, I'd say rent it and then keep it if you want to know more.
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