by: Dakota Grabowski

November 22, 2005

Condemned is a chilling game to play. Like I stated earlier, it doesn’t focus on cheap tricks like enemies jumping out of the dark to attack you to scare you. Rather, you’ll hear foot steps in the distance and look around diligently to find the source of the sound. Before you know it, you are actually being misled in the wrong direction as glass shatters and enemies spring forth ready to beat you down with an electric conduit. As you back up away from the enemy, another druggie jumps from the rafter pursuing you with a pump shotgun and it doesn’t end there. You’ll back yourself into some water as you fend the enemies off and notice dead bodies in the water. Think they’re dead? I think not, they rise from their comatose state and chase you down with their crowbar. Make no mistake about it, Condemned is a full out action FPS with hand to hand combat being focused on.

The hand to hand combat is excellent. The system is easy to figure out due to its simplicity. Do you want to evade the attackers and hit first or would you rather block and pick your best shots after they have taken theirs? There is a little more complexity to that. Each weapon has a rating attached to it to determine what the best for each situation is. The ratings include Damage, Reach, Speed and Defense. A few of the weapons do help you advance to the next part of the level so that has to be factored in too when picking up your weapons. Only weapon is available to Ethan’s use. If you feel that they should have provided you the ability to equip weapons rather than only picking one up, fear not, Ethan comes fully equipped with his Taser-gun that you can use 24/7. The taser comes to your aide when you need an open shot to the victims. Shock them with it and they’ll zapped for a brief moment to allow you to whack them aside the head with the shovel you bear in your hands.



The fighting does become redundant at times but like wise you’ll yearn for more fighting when you hit a dry spot when you back track through a level to find a clue you missed. With the fighting, I generally wanted more but to have it mixed up a bit. Instead of using the same weapon over and over again, why not allow them to carry some hand knives or pick up that stool standing next to them to bash over my head? Hell, why can’t I do that with all the violence portrayed before my own eyes. Half way through, news weapons stop showing up and you’ll be stuck with using what is already available. My personal favorite has to be either the sledgehammer or fire axe. Both have a great reach, pack a great punch but lack the speed. Both also help you advance in the level as you smash off locks with the hammer and bust through doors with the axe.

The guns in Condemned have limited use so you’ll have to make every shot count. Pick up a shotgun; you’ll only have five or more bullets to use. After that, it’s useless and you’ll want to throw it down since it will take ‘weapon damage’ and break into pieces after a few good hits. You’ll find revolvers, sawed off shotguns, Colt .45s and a few other guns to use but none of them are full with ammo to have Ethan go on a killing spree. I often avoided picking up the guns since it was much more enjoyable beating the living hell out of the junkies that I fought rather then shooting them dead. With fighting them, I had the opportunity to knock them to their knees and snap their neck. With a gun, I couldn’t do that. When the druggie falls to his knees, you have four options to choose from. Do you want to snap his neck? What about slamming his face into your knee? You could just punch him in the face to knock some teeth out or even head but him. These four actions ante up the action enough for the first few hours as you kill them in different methods.