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| Is it too late to bump this one? by Schadenfreude 02/24/2007, 9:03pm PST | ||||
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I guess I already did anyway...
Lizard_King wrote: I will have to differ here. I just finished the PC version and enjoyed it immensely. It's sort of odd to play a first-person game where you're mostly limited to close-hand combat, but I found the system to work unexpectedly well and had no problem getting used to it within minutes. More importantly, this limitation forces you to be on edge at all times and, adding that to the creepy flashlight-lit visuals and the soundscape, the game ends up being one of the top-3 scariest games I've ever played (the other two being Silent Hill 1 and 3, in case you're wondering). I especially liked how the game goes back and forth about whether you're just chasing a serial killer or you're facing some sort of supernatural threat. There are a lot of scripted scenes where things turn crazy and 90% of the time they managed to catch me off-guard and either made me jump badly or made my skin crawl. To be honest, most of these events resemble a little too much the ones in FEAR, but I find Condemned to be way more effective when it comes to scare. Also, the AI is something to be commended. Sort of. The thing is, if you pay close attention, you will notice that the enemies have like 5 or 6 different behavior patterns and they just seem to choose them at random. However, not counting the moments when they run away in the middle of a fight and "hide" like 20 feet away in plain sight, as if they were expecting to ambush you with that (WTF?), for the most part they actually look like they're being rather smart at fighting. My only complaints would be that the combat interface could use some variety (you have FOUR different moves to finish a stunned enemy but only ONE hitting movement ??? --the hitting animation changes depending on the direction you're moving, but it's just a cosmetic change) and that the whole forensic aspect is ruined by the fact it's all pretty much done for you --the game even chooses the right forensic tool in every situation, you have no saying in that. What could've been a nice, original type of puzzle becomes something that's so stupidly simplistic you can't help but feeling they're treating you like a moron. And if you care about the story, I found it odd that it is a somewhat Lynchesque bizarre where you need to unlock a lot of bonus documents in order to even begin to understand what the hell was that all about, and on the other hand your character is astonishingly stupid and he needs to have every single thing that happens spelled out for him, which most of the times results in characters over-explaining some really simple things, which just feels dumb. Oh, and there are a couple enemies that can take up to 5 shotgun blasts to the face at point blank. That's REALLY stupid. If you don't want me killing your boss monster with one hit, don't leave a shotgun in the vicinity, dumbass. All in all, as a fan of horror games I loved the incredibly effective atmosphere. Like I said, it's been a while since a game doesn't give me the creeps like this one did. I found myself actually scared of investigating certain areas. There's a level in an abandoned department store with a bunch of mannequins scattered here and there that REALLY got to me, especially when some of them start moving O_O And the controls -albeit simplistic- are smooth and effective enough to get me to go ahead and play the entire thing through all over again once I was done. In a way, Condemned reminds me of The Suffering, as both are equally effective at delivering creepy atmosphere and enjoyable gameplay, two things I rarely see coming together. And by the way, it runs like a hot knife through butter with all things maxed up on a GeForce 7300GT and a Sempron 2300+ -not precisely a high-end PC- which is always nice. |
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