Condemned 2 (Xbox 360)

There are also challenges to complete plus a fight arena against bots to test your mettle, you can also go online and do a variety of bone crunching deathmatches against opponents on Xbox Live to see who the biggest/baddest bum fighter around town might be. Complete with all the moves and weapons, even bricks for humiliating defeats.

Condemned 2 is certainly a step in the right direction, but, there are some problems. The graphics are nice and the new look Ethan is pretty rough and ready. The voice has changed between games, so it’s not the same actor, yet the new actor has a lot of video game credits to his name and pulls off our hard-bitten hero to a T. The hand to hand combat is smoother, but there’s still the issue of the system being a pain to use against more than a handful of opponents, the quick-time combat events are annoying since you can trigger them accidentally and if you’re not quite ready for one you can make a mistake that’ll cost you your health.

Health regenerates up to the nearest block fortunately and the game is a bit more generous in places with those medkits. For the first half of the game it’s a really old friend, it reminds you of Condemned only it’s like the developers listened to the wails of the fans and created a CSI style investigation system to match the flawless terror that the first provided, then, it dips into superhuman magic land for the last part and the visceral frighteners of the first part are blown away by the fact that you are a superhuman powerhouse.

Graphically, it’s a gorgeous game. It has the right lighting, shadows, ambience, slick design and level creation of the first game with solid animations and excellent combat moves that are just as bone crunching to look at. The sound is married perfectly to all of these and the weapons don’t sound like pop-guns, the hand to hand combat sounds are meaty and they provide a sense of gritty realism to the game’s audio. The rest of the voice cast are decent enough, the dialogue remains pretty solid and the delivery is good.

If only Monolith hadn’t of trodden the route they did for the last part of the game, I’d have given this a much higher score. But I’m going to stick to my guns and give it the one I decided on. What elevates the game above the usual run of the mill style FPS are the little touches, the investigation scenes, the tools that you can use at any time and the interaction with your environment, even from Ethan sliding by a pair of broken chairs against a crumbling wall to get to the next part of the level.

There’s a great set piece in level two, where you have to get to the lower floor. The quicktime style event returns, but it’s simple and usually involves a quick tap of the A button to get out of trouble. You’re not expecting it and that’s what the game should have been through the last part, unfortunately, since you become empowered later on, all feelings of terror and challenge slip away since you know you can pretty much deal with anything the game has to throw at you and you stop being scared.

It is still a good game, just not a great one.