Condemned: Criminal Origins
Date: Thursday, April 27 @ 14:11:42 EDT
Topic: FPS reviews


After doing a review on Call of Cthulhu, I thought I'd register on this site, as I was looking forward to this game more and I'm not as disappointed with this one.

GRAPHICS

This uses the FEAR Engine so you can be sure it looks shithot. The lighting and shadows are evident most with swinging ceiling lights. This time it isn't so fucking dark in the game, but dark enough to give it the mood without walking into a wall like a blind whore, you have an infinite flashlight powered by nuclear batteries, which is handy.
Unlike FEAR it doesn't have modern locations or weapons, so I feel the FEAR Engine is wasted and not showing off particle effects of automatic spam gunfire or loads of objects getting thrown about in a dense office, there are more furniture in Counterstrike than in this game.
Textures are fucking great, you can see the whites of their eyes and scars on their faces (a bit glossy sometimes like they've been having oral sex and rubbing pussy juice over their face) and the rest are beggars with dirt all over their face but the locations lack objects and movable shit like chairs/tables etc, pretty empty. The models are great but the environment apart from the walls suck. Even small objects look like freebies you get with happy meals, the kind of toys parents use as a STFU device for their kids, pointless shit placed there just to fill in the space.
But it runs great you won't need a high-end system for this, but not looking good as Doom 3 or Quake 4 where an ATI 9800 series card would be just sufficient enough to render a HellKnight's dick. A one-off look though as the locations aren't varied enough, an abandoned residential building, abandoned subway, abandoned shopping mall reusing the same textures from the first map...you get the idea.
While you'd have to be a complete moron to get lost in this game I don't know ANY town in ANY country where residential or commercial buildings are designed as mazes. No wonder the shopping mall closed down and was abandoned, all the customers probably got lost trying to find the toilet and decided to fuck off to shit elsewhere. In fact all locations are fucked like the level designer must of thought he was designing another Pacman level. The level designer of this game must be an unemployed architect. Luckily another dark game, not a big deal unless you like to stare at things. The end of the shopping mall map is nice, misty effect with nice soft effects without being nigga black so you can make out shapes in the distance giving a spooky feel. They could of done much more with the FEAR Engine. The volumetric lighting is excellent when you play with light sources, but nothing special in another graphical effects apart from nice textures and usual FSAA shit.
But fuck! It is the FEAR Engine but why can't I blow limbs and arms off? The only visible model damage on enemies is patches of blood and your own hand-to-hand weapon stained with blood. Dead bodies look like men who have just died from a major nosebleed. I want to see bloody bullet holes where I shoot them or at least long cuts from my axe.

SOUND

They have the "Hmmm" sound and violin shrieking to add to the tension and shock moments. Not bad, not good either, just as common as Scream movies. They have spent a lot of time on sounds for this game, fucking hilarious the way enemies sound like Homer Simpson when you whack them on the head. Each weapon makes a different sound on impact and they really feel it. "Donk"...then its "DOH, OWWW, UGH, OUCH"..."GRRR" or a 2x4 piece of wood "tock" should you or him get hit. You hear heavy breathing and heaving sounds as you or them muster your strength to swing weapons. So when you're playing a quiet atmospheric game, these weapons sound like a bomb has just gone off. The shotgun is even louder compared to other noise in the game.
The enemies cough and squeal in pain, then express the aggressive "ARGHGHHHH" as they charge at you. If this were a town where everyone has lost their mind, you'd expect more verbal feedback than a dog. How about "Bitch I'm gonna fuck you up", or "RAPE is coming your way, bend over and let me stick my cock in you", also "Your momma is fat!" would be a good humour. A bit more words out their mouth would be nice rather than just grunting. There are sounds of windows as you break them, objects falling over with a "thud" sound but too hollow like the objects have no density. About as dense as the level designer's head. Some distant sounds to warn you of trouble, coughs of enemies hiding behind corners, objects falling over by themselves years after the building has been empty to try and make you shit yourself. Water droplets and ambience noise from gas pipes and electric wires. So it creates that horror feel which is just as well because visually it doesn't do so that well.

GAMEPLAY

Okay this game is repetitive as Sega games, you rarely find a gun, only like every 30 mins whether it be a shotgun with only 2-4 shells or a pistol with 5 bullets inside, so you pretty much make damn sure you get a single headshot not to waste but 90% of the time you have to use pieces of wood, pull out the gas pipe, sledgehammers or fire axes mounted on the wall to pull off and use. So the main actions you'll be doing is bashing people's skulls in with various objects.
It IS Manhunt style but with less gore and in First-person view. You can hit them while they're on the ground and sometimes you'll be lucky to get them on their knees so their head sways like a palm tree much like getting ready for a Mortal Kombat execution. Its fun for a while but wears off, you fucking shove your face into theirs and it fills up your monitor with their nose like you're just about to French kiss them then get to slam their head into pate onto the floor or twist their neck.
What the fuck is with the model physics in the game, okay when you blast someone at close range or hit them with something large as a sledgehammer you'd expect them to fly a bit. They simply dissolve onto the ground like the way Obi-Wan died in Star wars melting with no bones, they die like the way I throw down my underwear just as I'm about to fuck my local whore called Jenny. She does great oral and allows me to anal, she offers a "no condom" service but that usually costs extra, the bitch. Basically they just fall over like duck targets. Why can't I blow off their limbs, FEAR Engine allows this but it isn't implemented in the game! I want to hit their arm off or blow their leg off so they hop towards me.
When they charge, you can't run from them except avoid them with your agility rather than your speed. Sometimes if one of them accidentally hits his friend, they start fighting with each other! So yea get them in an closed space and they start bashing each other, either join in for fun or wait for the last man standing, sometimes help them beat a big guy so you can stamp on the little shits remaining. There is no AI, they either hide waiting for you or run in a direct path towards you without care that you have a shotgun and they have a pipe. Biggest fuckup is when you're walking around with a flashlight and 4 metres away they see you.... no they're retarded as well as insane, they fucking hide behind the corner with their leg and arm sticking out. Its like a kids game of hide and seek "Oh he is 4 metres away he won't see me, I'll hide behind this wall but leave my arm out waving for him to see me"..."ERRRR I could spit on you at this range and I actually fucking saw you 10 mins ago". You can stun gun them then snatch their weapon right out of their hand and every time they either run away to find something else to rape you with or just strangle you. When you first start playing you'll be amused how easily you can steal their weapon, they kind of look down and upset like you've just stolen their girlfriend, think for a while then get angry. This game has more challenge of how many times you can do this to the same person.
People have gone crazy in the town so you do get to kill women, leet! But where are the kids!??! There are kids in a town right, I want to hit a kid with a shovel or perform a neck breaker. Only ONE scary moment in this game, which sucks as all the other attempts fail miserably. I admit they fucking got me on that time because I stopped beating off to have a smoke while playing so I was caught off-guard, all the cupboards in the game have medikits usually but when a woman which looks like The Ring comes bursting out at close range with a shovel, that’s a good one. Now I'll go back to beating off k thx.
Every now and then you have to investigate a crime scene, you use some special gadget to trace smells or DNA sampling, blood splatter shit like in CSI Miami, fucking boring don't know why I mentioned it. Slows down the game but better they just do it automatically and progress the story as I don't want to think much like the exciting puzzles which involve finding the right tool to get past an obstacle or hit levers.
You're also really shit at fighting, because since you've mastered the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Advanced Unarmed Combat Techniques Course, you've also been trained by Duke Nukem to fight with only your right foot sticking in the air hoping the odour will kill them and swinging objects side to side. I'm not expecting 256 combo attack moves but something like FEAR's unarmed fighting would be good SINCE the game IS mostly hand-to-hand combat.

STORYLINE

You're an FBI agent investigating a murder. But the killer manages to steal your gun and frame you for murder. You've solved many famous cases before and the idea that someone took your gun to frame you sounds so ridiculous that the FBI and local Police force are after you also hunting you down. You're dealing with an Uber-Killer, one that stalks and kills other serial killers using their own MO methods.
But I haven't finished the game yet so there may be a twist at the end which I think it turns out that YOU'RE the killer but you decided to become insane to justify raping girls to avoid prison and enter a mental institution.

Fucking violently good game, but repetitive 7/10





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