Condemned 2 (Xbox 360) - PC and Console Games (Sega)

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Customer Reviews of Condemned 2 (Xbox 360)

I'm here to spend spend spend $$!!! as long as the price is right, just as good old brucie said!!!
Bradford, England
13th October 2008

Great game but not the best FPS
I must admit when i first started playing this game i loved it. As time passed i began to lose interest in the game. Not because of graphical or gameplay issues, just because of the storyline and limitations of weapons you can use in this.

I do recommend this to all those horror nuts out there who are looking for a scare but to all others i suggest you think before you buy.

Overall this isn't a MUST BUY, but is a worthy addition to your 360 collection.

john_glasgow1
Glasgow
10th September 2008

If you're a fan of the first don't get your hopes up...
Condemned : Criminal Origins has become something of a cult classic since its release in 2005 and I for one was greedily awaiting the follow up, Bloodshot, this year. Sadly, it wasn't worth the wait.

What made the original special was the tense, claustrophobic atmosphere which took it's lead from movies like Seven, Silence of the Lambs and Saw. Sure it had it's flaws. The combat system, especially the blocking, was very temperamental and the forensic investigation sections where little more than point and click exercises. Nevertheless, playing this game with the light off was a bone chilling and memorable experience. Who could forget the department store level when the mannequins silently surround you or having to take the close-up picture of the victim in the school locker only for him to return to life. It makes me wonder then why the developers chose such a different tact for the sequel.

Condemned 2 play much more like a traditional FPS and two of the levels in particular where assault rifles can be found every few minutes turn the game in to a poor mans Call of Duty. There are still some levels where hand-to-hand combat prevails but they are now so many options the whole process feels diluted. Ironically the poor combat system in the first game probably added to the experience as every foe you took on was a challenge.

The storyline for the second outing is, to be blunt, an absolute mess. Forget hunting down a serial killer this time. Now we are off to the sci-fi land of secret organisations and plots for world domination. Yawn. Is it just me or has the whole conspiracy theory that goes all the way to the president idea been done to death in recent years? And in the case of Condemned 2 it has been done much, much better. Oh, and why has Rosa from the original gone from being a squat, bespectacled women in her forties to a skinny model come actress?? I liked the original Rosa!

Don't get me wrong. This isn't a terrible game but with expectations being so high it has fallen some way short. I really do hope that the team behind the game see their folly and start Condemned 3 with Ethan Thomas waking up to discover that Condemned 2 was just a dream and he is back working the beat as an SCU agent tracking down another psychopath.

Low-Quality
London England
31st May 2008

Great single player, garbage multiplayer & not as scary as the first
The first Condemned game was one of the good games that not many people noticed in the first few year of the 360s lifespan. It was also one the scariest in terms of atmospheric uneasiness games I've played too , very few games have done that for me.

That alone warranted my great excitement when I heard a sequel was being made.

Unfortunately this game isn't as scary as the first for some reason ..... but it's still a great game none the less, although the general creepy, lonely and errie nature of the first has been replaced in favour of disgusting shock tactics and brutal aggressiveness ... which i personally think is a turn for the worse.

Never the less it's still a great single player experience even though it's short and not much replay value.
The multiplayer is pretty awful though which i wish was scrapped to be honest, if it meant the possibility of more levels added on the single player campaign , which is of very high quality.

Still worth a play ... one rent is all you need really .. not really much of a keeper, a short but sweet ... well shocking experience really. Actually I'm surprised this game isn't banned really, as some acts are pretty gruesomely gratuitous .... crushing a cheerleaders head in a vice comes to mind .. heh ....

bazza83

25th May 2008

Dissapointing
I was recommended this game and was told it was one of the better games on the xbox. But I have to say I am dissapointed.

The game looks AMAZING!!! It generates an oppressive atmosphere and the sound is also great. One thing though, its somwtimes SO dark that you can't see where you're going without turning the brightness right up.

However the downfall - and it is a HUGE downfall - is the combat system, which is BADLY flawed. Its really hard to fight in the first person view and when fighting multiple enemies its hard to know where you're being attacked from. Combinations are awkward to get right and if you don't parry a blow at exactly the right time you will find yourself on the receiveing end of a good beating. Its nearly impossible to evade enemies blows and fights often consist of hammering the buttons as fast as you can and hoping for a good outcome. The combat is also not very consistent. I hit one enemy twice and he stayed down, but the next enemy I beat up on for at LEAST five minutes and he still got up every time.

There are some really poor levels where it is not clear what, if anything, you have to do. I don't expect signposts stating; "Go here" but some clue as to what it is you're supposed to do would help.

I don't think the game lives up to the hype and the three stars I awarded it is being generous. But at least it is a compelling story that makes you want to keep playing. But overall it is a big dissapointment that could have been so much better.

gk_uk
UK
21st May 2008

Punch Drunk
The synopsis of this game sums it up pretty well, so instead of concentrating on the story, the change in the central character, the oppressive tone, the graphics, sound and atmosphere et al (all superb by the way), I thought it may be more useful to focus on something more fundamental - the gameplay.

I've been a gamer since 1976, and was a professional games correspondent for seven years, and so I like to think I know what makes a fun gaming experience. It always bothers me a little when people roll onto a bandwagon and praise a game unconditionally, often on the wave of pre-release marketing hype. Condemned 2 is such a case. It's almost as if, in the clamour to praise its graphics, it's gore and adult tone, people seem to ignore that the central mechanic - the melee combat - is badly flawed, to the point in places where it feels badly broken.

The number of times you lose fights, or pound an enemy (and it doesn't seem to matter what you're armed with) without them going down, only for them to spring back and unconvincingly beat you to death quickly begins to frustrate. First person isn't the best view for fighting games, as it relies on depth perception - something impossible to depict on the 2D surface of a TV. So, often you swing at an ememy you think you'll hit only to miss, or step back to a distance you think is safe, and get clobbered none the less.

You also get combos, which aside from being difficult to execute as the controls are possibly the worst laid out of any XBox game, enemies seem to be able to break without effort anyway. Your block move is only effective if timed precisely - if you don't, enemies can unleash a series of hits on you that often proves fatal (maybe this is my fault for selecting the hardest difficulty setting, as I always do, but "hard" should never equate to "unfair" or "broken").

The fact that enemies often jump behind you or sidestep, leading you to lose sight of them as they continue to hit you is another source of frustration - it could have been fixed by a simple lock-on system, but no...

Now I'm sure the "hardcore gamers" out there are chuntering that I'm a "noob", or that I should go play Cars Mater National or something and leave games like Condemned 2 to "real gamers" - but if you saw my Gamerscore and list of achievements they would quickly revise that (and no Avatar points in sight!)

I am basing my criticism of Condemned 2 on the fact that a game should at its heart be fun - challenging is fine, but as enemies spring from nowhere and kill you with a single blow, forcing you back to one of the often stingy checkpoints, it begins to feel like work. It becomes a memory test ("oh, the guy who killed me is around this corner, I'm ready for him now"), and when a game forces you to learn the level and enemy locations to progress through it and not succeed on your skill and reactions, then it doesn't feel fair either.

There are many questionable design problems with the levels, the positioning of enemy ambushes being just one. Another is the fact that often the game will try to make itself scarier by making the screen fill with grain, judders, darkness and blurs. It just doesn't work, and again frustrates, as it literally robs you of the clear vision you need to fight back. This becomes especially obvious when sonic creatures appear towards the end. Get caught by one, and you have almost no means of escape save random luck as the screen shudders violently and gives you little chance of getting your bearings and moving away to a safe place.

Now I'm sure that there are people who say that that's part of the "realism". If that's the case then they'd better be an alcoholic ex-detective prone to mental trauma and involved in supernatural investigations - if not, then how do they know? All I know is that it's a MacGuffin, and one that alienates me as a player.

One last quibble - the gunplay is actually quite good. Once the game is beaten you unlock the chance to play through it as a traditional FPS, which is great, and if you got a gold on the last level you also get inifinite reloads. But in standard mode, to force you into melee as often as possible, when you find ammunition you can only carry as much as your gun can hold, even when there are several boxes available. If we were trying to be truly realistic, I would have made a way the character could use his pockets and stuff them full of bullets!

Avoid if you don't like losing both randomly and often.

A NOTE ABOUT BUGS: These may be fixed with a patch in the future, but at several stages severe bugs hampered gameplay. During the final shootout in the lodge, I stepped backwards and fell through the floor into a grey void, dying in the process. During the bum fight arena setpiece, two of them actually merged into one hilarious eight-limbed thrashing mutant hobo; and during the final boss fight, if the sub-enemies attack each other Dorland appears to freeze and becomes invincible, forcing you to reset.