Gaining notoriety for all the right reasons (this is a horror game after all) when it was first shown at this year’s E3 show in Los Angeles, Sega’s first Xbox 360 release caused uproar amongst the national press. The game’s depiction of violence and criminality pushed the limits of acceptance, no one had seen a man’s face get battered with such brutal realism in a videogame before. Not since GTA had the national press found itself so fearful. Here was a game that looked real, fed gamers gruesome images of first-person thuggery and to all intents and purposes put players – children (who’s thinking of the children?) – in the position of a serial killer. “How far can this sickness go? How real do games need to get before we outlaw this filth… ban it, ban it all!”

Well, those were the cries coming from the ill-informed mainstream press about a game they didn’t understand, on a console they hadn’t taken the time to read up on. Sure, Condemned is a violent, graphic and unsettling game that uses the Xbox 360 to create believable situations. But it’s no different from a movie like, say, Silence Of The Lambs, and that sucker won Oscars.

The game, which initially at least, feels like no other adventure you will have played is a third-person horror FPS with elements of Silent Hill, bits of Doom 3 and portions of Myst. From the outset, this game intends to shock you. Beginning at a crime scene that should be safe and secure, weird things begin to happen. Noises unsettle the cops at the scene, a man is seen scurrying around the rooftops and the crime itself is a bizarre mixture of something from The House Of Wax and Se7en. Two bodies are positioned having dinner, one a manikin and the other a tortured corpse. In the game’s bump-mapped, high-def, eerie torchlight this looks horribly real. Combined with the shouts and gunshots from other rooms in the office block, the game sets out on a genuinely unstable path.

Within this first unhinged opening you will become acclimatised to your weapons and gadgets. Obviously, the first thing you need to do is batter the men in boiler suits trying to make a break from the crime scene. The triggers control attack and defence, whilst the new shoulder buttons toggle the use of a weapon – a gun with no ammo can be used as a club – and blast an enemy with the stun gun. All too soon you’ll realise that those Michael Myers wannabes making a break for it aren’t your usual videogame fodder. These criminals will weigh you up in much the same way as you’ll gauge them, if they see you have a gun they are likely to make a run for cover. More so, and something quite disconcerting in a videogame, you will see them actively look for better melee weapons to hit you with. It’s not uncommon to corner a foe and watch him judge your weapon strength, glance at his own paltry looking stick, throw it down, rip a cabinet door off its frame and then lunge at you. These villains think. They judge you and the situation and then react. This one element of the game will have you on edge like no other before it, for the first hour or so anyway. You can never enter a room knowing what the enemy will do and so nothing is a given.

Of course, eventually the slugging will begin and the AI steps up a gear further still. They will block and parry melee attacks and when disarmed these freaks will lunge at you for a Berzerker Attack, in which they will grapple you and chew on your face – juggling the analogue sticks will break you free of their grasp. One unusual trait that you don’t often see in a game is the AI character dummying a blow; they will often raise a bar to slug you, then pull back at the last minute before following up with a quicker but weaker hit. You will usually find yourself trying to block what looks like an attack, leaving you vulnerable to the follow-up strike.

After spending some time in the game’s grasp you will begin to develop particular combinations of attacks for each enemy type, proving this is just a game after all. The smaller enemies can be taken down with a strike from a hammer or piping, the larger sledgehammer wielding butchers will need to be subdued with a stun gun, and whilst dazed, steal their hammer and give it back to them smack in the face.

Condemned presents its first-person melee violence in high-def graphico- vision. Every blow is bloodier than the last and every strike from a nailembedded piece of 4x4 feels realistically solid. Your enemies will react to hits with visceral appeal, doubling up at blows to the body and losing teeth with every smack to the mouth. After a few seconds of pounding, the screen will be awash with blood. Seriously, it’s everywhere. Your crowbar is caked in the stuff, the walls and floor are dripping with it, and the poor goon on the receiving end of your justice is a mess of cuts, seeping wounds and missing teeth. With an enemy out for the count you can move in for the final blow by using the D-pad; will you deliver a punch to the face or snap the neck of the bloody, gurgling corpse to be?

This brutal combat system is made all the more realistic due to the nature of playing in first-person. When you smash an enemy’s face into a locker you’re right there, your hands are performing the act. By placing you in the game world from this perspective and developing the story around your actions as situations unfold, this creates a very real experience. In fact, the last game to attempt this was Namco’s Breakdown, which unlike Condemned had a uniquely Anime world to explore, losing the sense of immersion that Monolith has created here.

More important than the directness of the combat, is probably the structuring of the story. Again, everything plays out in first-person and the plot evolves via your actions – we won’t divulge the story or its twists, only to say this game puts you in the mind of a serial killer. Each level has a set of clues to the serial killer’s true identity. You, as the hero Agent Ethan Thomas, need to gather them using a set of FBI tools. For example, a UV light will show body fluids, and then using the sampler you can gather DNA. The selection of tools is automatic, but using them is manual – so zooming and snapping with the digital camera takes a degree of skill.

More than just using this cluegathering exercise to progress the story, Monolith has spotted an opportunity to mess with your head. A number of levels require you to follow the trail of clues using either the UV light or infrared camera. Following the trail of blood in a screen imbued with the green glow from the video camera is a genuinely freaky exercise. As we followed the grim, bloody drag marks winding through the corridors of an abandoned department store, surrounded by manikins, muffled screams and shuffling in the shadows, we were totally immersed and ready to jump at the first sign of danger. Which we did, and so will you.

In fact, shocks are what Condemned is all about; sharp, violent shocks. Whether it’s those from real assailants, such as entering a room of statuesque manikins and discovering one of them suddenly lunges at you, or those from your character’s mind, you will physically jump. This illustrates the playfulness of this game. As the plot evolves you will, as your character does, begin to question what is and isn’t real. Like a fist-heavy Frank Black (from Chris Carter’s Millennium) Condemned’s hero has the handy knack of putting himself in the shoes of the killer. By being in or around a scene where violence has occurred, Agent Thomas can visualise what went down. This leads to scenes of torture and extreme violence, in some cases Thomas sees images of himself killing colleagues in amongst the mutilations.

Not content to throw gruesome CSI scenes our way as you hunt the serial killers, Condemned mixes in random flashes of weirdness to make you jump. Until the closing credits you’re not quite sure whether these are in Thomas’ mind or actually happening. Bodies will float above your head, an empty swimming pool will fill with blood-covered freaks dropping from imaginary skylights who will begin hunting you, and most oddly of all, the cubicle doors of an empty school toilet will tear themselves from their hinges and begin flying around the room. It’s all a bit ‘spooky’.

So, Condemned gets kudos for creative AI enemies and brutal fight scenes. But keen readers would have noticed we only said this game is ‘initially’ different to play. This is because all too soon a routine sets in. A routine of entering a room, killing enemies, finding the right weapon to unlock the next door – keys aren’t used here, instead axes smash some doors while spades and crowbars are used to levy locks – and collecting story clues. If you discover an axe there will be a door that needs breaking down nearby. That old chestnut ‘the last enemy has the key’ also rears its head. In one of the later levels you will need an axe to break a stair rail to free a piano, only there is no axe available. However, a bunch of killers flood in through the windows, and the last one you kill holds the axe you need.

So, whilst keys have been done away with, the formula still remains the same – find the level exit and kill everyone on the way to this goal. It’s an overly simple premise that kind of jars with the development Monolith has put into the AI and combat physics. Also, it’s a formula that can become repetitive towards the game’s final scenes as you step-and-repeat the same attack and defend patterns against the overly similar enemies you’ve been battering for the last five hours – oh, didn’t we mention that? That’s how long it takes to complete Condemned. It’s a short adventure, saved somewhat by the collectables (or achievements as they’re known in the game) found hidden in the levels. Finding six dead birds, three pieces of unusual metal or discovering hidden Xbox 360 consoles rewards you with unlockable content and Gamer Points to boost your Xbox Live score. There are two endings to experience, dependent on a moral choice to be made at the game’s conclusion, and in all honesty repetition would set in all too quickly if the game were any longer.

This isn’t to say that Condemned is a particularly dull game – in fact the AI, physics and storytelling are all excellently executed. Actually, without such attention to detail, Condemned would have been a distinctly average game. As it is, this is a game that needs to be experienced just to test yourself against the inventive AI. It’s fun, atmospheric and in some ways different without ever really being overly original. Perhaps Monolith is saving its truly original ideas for the sequel?

Ian Dean