$20 Game of the Week: Condemned (PC, Xbox 360)

A while back when I featured Silent Hill 4 in this column, I expressed my desire to see an actual FPS Silent Hill game. The fear factor, the atmosphere, and the fact that anything you run into can kill you would make it a unique experience more than any other survival horror or FPS game. Sega’s Condemned, one of the first games announced for the Xbox 360 and one of the system’s best launch titles, is a great example of what such a game would look like. Not only that, it’s a fine game on its own merits as well.

Okay, to call this a first person shooter is a bit misleading. You’ll use guns, but you’re not gonna find ammo lying around to pick up. You’ll have to rely on 2 X 4 wooden planks, pipes, bars, and whatever else you can find. You have to improvise if you want to stand a chance against the deranged freaks you’ll meet. You’re also going to have to put your mind to use as well. This is a cerebral experience, and you need not approach this as your garden-variety blast-a-thon and expect to succeed.

You play as FBI agent Ethan Hunt, a crime scene investigator. You are tasked with hunting down some of the city’s most dangerous serial killers. Recently, you’re having a run of bad luck and dead ends during investigations. A typical investigation quickly leads to things quickly spiraling out of control, and you must work to find the guilty party and clear your name. You’ll use your forensic tools a lot here, as you analyze evidence, take DNA samples, and search for finger prints. The tools you use are pre-selected at various points. This is slightly disappointing, as the game tends to slightly hold your hand in some aspects. Fortunately this makes the game no less gripping, and it’s an interesting alternative to finding files and written notes to find information. The game’s more chilling parts revolve around Ethan’s “hidden intuition”. At various points in the game, things go black and white, and you’ll experience events that happened from the past, be they from the perspective from the killer or the victim. It’s nothing supernatural, or at least that’s what Monolith tells us. It’s right up there with the shift to otherworld in the Silent Hill games, although only shorter.

The only bad part about the game is its length. It can be completed in a week, and other than going back to collect the rest of the achievement points, there is no real reason to go back and play this game again once you beat it. However, its worth checking out just for the cinematic experience. It’s definitely something we don’t usually see in gaming. With a movie planned, and a sequel coming out next year, there is no better time to check out the original.