Condemned: Criminal Origins

Solving the homeless problem, one pipe to the face at a time.

A while ago I picked up this title on steam for a few dollars and decided I would give it a go. It’s a bit dated, but I seldom care all that much about that, and I remember being intrigued by the game when it first came out, but for one reason or another, I never bought it.

Here is what Condemned is: A first person survival horror game.

Here is what Condemned is not: Fast paced.

There are things you simply cannot do in this game, such as move quickly. Seriously, you play as the world’s slowest moving FBI agent. He doesn’t look like he’s all that overweight, but maybe it’s because he’s carrying a bunch of crazy CSI forensic equipment around with him everywhere and maybe he just needs to lay off the donuts, hell I don’t know. You have a stamina bar, but your pace barely increases when you’re supposed to be running and despite how quickly it may sound like you’re climbing stairs, your actual speed remains the same, whether you’re using the so called ‘sprint’ button or not. In fact there are many places where you’ll simply exhaust your stamina bar without going any faster at all because of the terrain. It’s almost worthless.

Also adding to the annoyance are repetitive fetch quests for door opening weapons. You’ll need an axe to get through some doors and a crowbar or a sledgehammer to get through others. You can only carry one weapon at a time so have fun backtracking. Oh and it’s worth noting that sometimes there are gun safes you can pry open with crowbars and secret areas you can get into if you look around hard enough, though I didn’t discover them all.

My and my axe would like to have a word with you, door.

The plot, you ask? Well, ok....

Join Ethan and his slow, plodding, investigations into a serial killer. The guy we’re initially after is nicknamed: ‘the Matchmaker’ and he kills women and poses them with creepy looking mannequins after their death. Yeah that’s not disturbing at all. Also people are going crazy and violently attacking each other and birds are dying, like, all over the place. There may be a connection between the two.

For reasons I don’t entirely understand, you can collect dead, dying, and decomposed birds in every level. Usually there are about five or six of them hidden in various places. Sometimes you’ll use a fancy decomposition odor detecting device to get you close to one. Usually you won’t. In addition to his weird penchant for collecting dead birds, Ethan can also collect strange metal pieces that have no obvious meaning or significance whatsoever. There are usually about three per level. I suppose it’s just achievement fodder, but it’s like, weird man. Someone should really talk to the guy about it.

I can just see how well that conversation is gonna go.

“Ethan, why are you carrying around a large bag filled with dead bird carcasses and strange bits of metal?”

Ethan: “It’s all part of the investigation. Haven’t you heard? People are going craaaazy.”

Just...let the man collect his dead birds and back away, slowly. Make no threatening gestures.

Ethan is supposedly one of the FBI’s top investigators and as such, he gets all of the coolest CSI type toys. A good chunk of the game is devoted to using these forensic tools and luckily for us, it manages to do this fairly well for the most part.

You have a black light thingamajig that reveals bloodstains and organic matter and a weird green laser thing that illuminates uh...trace forensic evidence I think? I was able to use it to spot fingerprints and handprints and something being dragged along the floor at least. You also have your handy dandy digital camera which you use to photograph the evidence and send it back to the lab and then there’s the decomp odor detecting device which I already mentioned and lastly, you have a handheld DNA analyzer that you can use to take blood and tissue samples without actually y’know, taking blood and tissue samples. It’s all done digitally, man. The FBI has tech that’s like, totally out there.

Hmm, hmm...collecting evidence.

Ok, now that I look at this stuff, it seems like someone watched a few too many CSI episodes.

Honestly, if you don’t think too much about it, you can role-play a forensic investigator just fine in this game. All the neat toys work and the data is sent instantly back to your contact at the lab who has access to a futuristic database that can get you a response on a DNA test in under five minutes and can positively ID someone by their fingerprints in less than thirty seconds. Ok, just try to ignore this stuff. The real thing takes way more time and is way less fun...also you’d probably need evidence bags.

Moving on.

The only real problem from using this stuff gameplay wise, occurs when you’re happily trying to follow a trail of forensic evidence using the black light and some crazy hobo hops out and smashes in your head with a two-by-four before you can get your weapon ready. You’re defenseless when you’re investigating stuff and instead of just hitting the attack button and readying your weapon to attack, you have to first put away the forensic tool and then get your weapon out. The game will ignore all other input, no matter how you mash the buttons frantically. Can’t just drop the tool and defend myself, oh no. That would make too much sense. Gotta put this thing away while you attack me...hum de d um...hold on a sec please...gonna just pull out my weapon and...whoops, went and got myself killed. Darn.

More than one of my deaths has come from hidden ambushes by crazies while I was happily trying to investigate trace evidence of some old crime or following a washed out blood trail. There was much indignation and shaking of fists at my computer screen when this happened.

Remember kiddies, Agent Ethan says, “Clear the area first and then investigate.”

Thank you Agent Ethan. No, no, I don’t want one of your dead birds. You can just put that away please.

Where was I?

Ah yes, the combat. As Agent Ethan neglected to bring any spare clips with him for his handgun when he went to investigate a possible serial killing in a dangerous part of town, you are limited to the number of bullets in your initial clip, which you can check by hitting the ‘r’ button. You can also switch from shooting to a melee attack where you smack dudes upside the head with the butt of your pistol. I would not recommend doing that. Once you run out of ammo, just drop the gun and grab something else.

I has a gun! But not for long, ohhh noooo. Not for long at ALL.

Shooting mechanics are fairly straightforward, but challenging, especially if you play the whole game without a crosshair, like I did. Oh, and no iron sights or aiming down the barrel of the gun for you Call of Duty/Battlefield fans. Just wait till your target gets close and shoot em. It works, but there aren’t very many guns in the game and you can’t replenish your ammo by retrieving ammo from other people’s discarded weapons. Being a trained FBI agent and all, Ethan apparently has no idea how to reload his weapon. Just drop what you got and check what they got. Oh and no carrying a gun and a melee weapon. That would just be plain greedy.

There’s even an achievement you can get by playing through the whole game using only melee weapons, but I wouldn’t recommend going for it.

You see, though it involves much of the game, melee combat in Condemned is one of the most annoying aspects of the game. Watch and be amazed as your opponents hop, leap, spin, and twirl like grotesque ballerinas while wielding a variety of deadly implements in one or both hands. Marvel at enemies that can dual wield, block, and perform deadly combos, one attack leading into another in a chain of lethality surpassed only by the sheer ugliness of your foes.

Ok, it’s your turn now. Pick up that pipe! Now swing! Ok, you missed or he blocked you. Take his counterattack in the face like the chump you are and try again. Alright, you hit him, but he spun around and smacked you immediately after. Ok, try kicking him now. Not close enough. Alright, now two of his friends are attacking you from behind. Too bad you didn’t see them.

Die.

Ok, it’s time to reload. What went wrong? You weren’t being enough of a bastard. This time, pull out every dirty trick in the book and try again.

You see, you can’t combo at all. You can’t jump. You can barely avoid enemy attacks when you see them coming. You can block, but the enemy can see you blocking and will wait for you to drop your guard or fake an attack so you’ll block stupidly when they’re doing nothing, which will then leave you vulnerable to them cracking your skull open. They will attack you from behind. They will ambush you. They will pop up out of the shadows and gun you down before you even know they’re there. They will grab you and headbutt you, making the whole screen shaky and blurry for a few seconds after you break their grip on your face.

So what can you do to counter all of this? Just be mean. I mean really mean. Is that guy unarmed and trying to pull a makeshift weapon off the wall? Smash his head in before he arms himself. Is that dude hiding badly behind a pillar waiting to ambush you with a pipe? Shoot him. Are there more than one of them coming at you? Get them close to each other and they’ll hit each other and start fighting one another. Attack people from behind while they fight someone else. Don’t drop loaded guns. They will grab them and shoot you in the face.

My favorite weapon in the game is the air taser. Zap your enemies before they get to you and grab their weapon out of their hands while they’re reeling from the charge. Finish them off before they re-arm themselves. Remember, don’t drop loaded guns. You will drop whatever you have when you disarm someone. It is very unpleasant to have that person pick up your shotgun and shoot you in the face at point blank range. This may have happened to me once. There may have been a whole lot of cursing at the screen.

I should note here that the game is rather bloody and violent. No combat dismemberment, but it’s quite disgusting in other ways. Players be warned. It earns its rating.

Also, this is yet another game where the player has severely limited ammo and the AI does not. They can all reload their guns and fire away at you from the darkness for hours. It’s quite aggravating, but if you time it right you can hop out and kill them while they’re reloading and get a fully loaded weapon, so that’s a plus.

Who are these ubiquitous madmen and why are they trying to kill you? I don’t know. It’s never adequately explained. I think it has something to do with the birds dying all over the city. I...I really have no idea. You’ll fight crazy homeless people and crazy bloodstained maniacs helping serial killers. You’ll fight what appear to be mole people under the subway system and large, angry masked slasher dudes that look like they escaped from a Friday the 13th movie. You’ll fight dual wielding ninja guys with contraptions stuck to their heads that look like they came straight out of one of the SAW movies. I honestly don’t know if any of these enemies are supernatural or if Ethan’s just going crazy throughout the events of the game.

He starts to hallucinate as the game progresses. Barriers suddenly vanish out of his way and obstacles appear out of nowhere. Shadows attack you and poof into nothingness after you defeat them. Whole areas will appear that shimmer like lightning and spawn relentless enemies, only to disappear once you’ve cleared the area of your foes.

Is that a window, floating in midair above me while I climb up out of a swimming pool into a...forest, maybe? I have NO clue what is happening anymore.

Ethan’s ‘instincts’ will tell him when there’s forensic evidence of a crime nearby. And by crime we mean something other than the aggressive ‘self defense’ measures we use to severely deplete the city’s bloodthirsty homeless population. Sometimes he even has visions of the crimes being committed. These visions cause such a strain on him that he occasionally throws up after them. And of course, we can’t forget the birds dying everywhere.

BIIIIIRRRRDDS!!!

The birds, man. The birds.

For the majority of the game I had no idea what was going on. It started out as a routine investigation of a crime scene. I got split up from my partner and then a bunch of crazy hobos jumped me. Some dude disarms me in a cutscene and uses my gun to kill two cops.

Great.

This happens very early on and the remainder of the game you have to dodge the cops and the FBI while battling it out with the crazy folks that are apparently causing riots all over the city. You have to try and clear your name and catch the real killer. That particular theme has been done before of course, but there’s so much other stuff going on that it doesn’t feel cliché. I enjoyed uncovering the mystery, though the ending left me rather confused. I never figured out what was driving people mad. I never figured out why they were attacking me everywhere. I never even understood who the final enemy in the game was or why I had to fight him.

IT'S YOU...wait, who are you again? Why are we fighting? I don't understand any of this.

I never found out why the birds were dying.

*Twitch*

I looked for the sequel, but I think it’s only on consoles. No PC port or anything, so it’ll have to wait I guess.

If I had to rate the game I would give it a solid 7.5/10. If you have a hankering for slower paced survival horror games and can put up with an often frustrating melee combat system, then I would definitely recommend the game. The music and atmosphere are solid and the game is creepy without being too scary for those who are easily frightened. Of course, I am a hardened survival horror gamer, so you should probably take that into account. The game only managed to frighten me a few times, but the story was memorable and the voice acting was good.

I really wish I knew what the hell was going on with those birds though.