Developer Monolith’s relentless effort to create a pant-soiling experience is something to be admired by all. Perhaps underrated and neglected, 2005’s Condemned proved that it was the crème de la crème for a horror experience in first person. You know the scariest thing about Condemned? Hardly anyone played it; it was a fairly neglected Xbox 360 launch title, and featured little replay value with it’s lack of multiplayer or reasons to go through the story-centric FPS again, but was critically and fan acclaimed regardless. Condemned forced players to use everyday melee objects (or their fists), found in environments, over guns – which were a scarce, but very powerful resource. Beating down homicidal hobos may sound closer to hilarious than frightful, but just a few hours into Condemned’s layers of atmosphere and subliminal supernatural elements showed it was anything but that.  

Condemned 2 takes full advantage of the first person view. Motion blurs as you turn, you become disoriented from blows, and sometimes the difference between hallucination and real will seem unclear to you. A horror experience depends on the atmosphere it creates, and with Condemned 2, there lies a masterpiece of terror. The graphics on their own are very impressive – there is a distinct aesthetic to all characters in Condemned 2, dividing it from the average dark and grimy look of some titles in the genre. Although the game is oftentimes very dark, this is not constant. Immersive crime scene investigations and a variety of locales, such as a winter lodge or museum, keep things fresh. The violence is as visceral as it gets – just what you’d expect in a game with first person brawling. Faces deform from attacks, and you can almost see the struggle in your foes eyes when you go in for a grappling finisher; one of my favorites is knocking them to the ground, where Ethan puts his hand over their face and slowly snaps their neck. On a closer inspect, some animations are poor, contradicting to the fine physics and polish the rest of Condemned 2 presents. Although no longer a 360 exclusive, Condemned 2 can stand at the frontline with the best of the eye candy for the platform.

Condemned 2’s sound is satisfying, yet unforgiving enough to make you regret not bringing an extra pair of pants. The minimalist soundtrack only reveals itself in white-knuckle moments of suspense or violence, allowing you to absorb the ambience of the world around you… preferably with a surround system, but any kind of sound setup will be enough. With virtually no way for the game to hold your hand in alerting you to the presence of enemies, sound is your best preemptive weapon; whether it is the hoarse breathing of a chain-fisted freak just down a pitch black corridor, or the sound of creatures writhing about below floorboards at your feet, at times you’ll be wishing you didn’t hear that.

Protagonist Ethan Thomas takes center role again… more or less. Not only is the voice actor different, but his plight from guilty to innocent from the first game has left him a wandering man, out of the SCU, and drinking himself to a hallucinogenic stupor. To call his behavior and new look as something like “emo”, would be too common and condensing, wouldn’t it? Let’s go with brooding, yes, a very brooding Ethan Thomas. He’s called upon again by his former unit to try and understand what’s really making the city so crazy, one of several mysteries left unfinished by the end of the first Condemned. The change in his character is hard for me to understand – why take a somewhat distinct character and transform him into a commonplace anti-hero? Once you can overlook this, you’ll find there’s a fair bit of plot going on, with a narrative and presentation rarely seen in games beyond even first person. Sadly, the pace turns to a downhill battle in this department.

Returning fans will be happy to know that Condemned 2’s melee system is above and beyond what the first game featured. Rather than swing, swing, block… now you can parry, do chain attacks, and smash faces through, oh, say a brick wall. Combat is highly entertaining and engrossing when you aren’t using guns. Every melee weapon you come across has its own stats and uses. Some are great for keeping fast-hitting enemies at a distance, others are durable enough for lots of blocking. The variety of these speak for themselves, because I find it hard enough to decide if I should smackdown bums with a toilet seat or douse them in alcohol and set them on fire. Firearms show up more frequently – enough where by the end of the game, I could go through an entire level with an assault rifle. The problem is that having a gun takes so much away from Condemned’s experience, especially when you can kill enemies with an easily-obtained headshot at virtually any range. The guns are here, but other than high damage, they certainly don’t feel that real.  Using alcohol to balance your aim with firearms was an entertaining touch though.

Forensic investigation has returned, with some welcome changes. Most of the investigations are entirely optional objectives, and the quizzes that follow can be fun, although without much consequence. It encourages players to really examine the crime scene and find what questions are really relevant, what to really look for, and et cetera. This gives an otherwise linear game a breath of fresh air, while further approaching the story and tying up loose ends.

Sadly, although Condemned 2 starts on some very high notes, it peaks about halfway through the game… and eats itself from within, although not in the literal, edge-of-your-seat way you might expect. I’ll neglect to spoil much, but most elements of the supernatural disappear completely, and many of the secrets behind the violence engulfing Ethan’s city were better left speculated than explained. The biggest secret is probably the most disappointing, at least on a scale of ridiculousness. Unfortunately this manifests itself during the last legs of the game, where you need to use "it"  to survive. Every time I used it, I couldn’t help but laugh, hoping it was just another hallucination, but alas. Add to being able to get hold of a firearm every other checkpoint, and the game essentially turned into everything that it tried to stand apart from. Really now…

Condemned 2 does offer some more incentive to keep playing after you wrap everything up, thanks to the multiplayer and instant-action maps. The multiplayer is a direct result of the possibilities presented in the first game, which included no such thing. However now that the opportunity is here… maybe it was better left alone in the first place. You have to applaud Monolith for trying, with a gametype forcing one side to hide a human head of “evidence” from the opposing team. The end result for all game types is just imbalanced death match most of the time. For eight people, through Xbox Live or System-Link, it may grab your attention for a little while, but don’t hold your breath. The instant action modes offer unique challenges throughout the games levels. Most objectives range from using only a certain weapon on foes, to defeating so many in the allotted time. Sadly, these have little to do with the story.  

As a sequel, Condemned 2 is a success in every sense, improving upon it’s predecessor in both technical and gameplay areas. Monolith even went far enough to add multiplayer, for better or worse. Though it tries to weave a story full of horror and mystery once more, it falls into stereotypical pitfalls (see: ancient cult) for both its storytelling and genre, leaving you to wonder, as the credits roll, what the last few hours really should have been. Getting to that point, however, is fun above all else, and just a few hours of Condemned 2 will be enough to set it apart from a generation of first person games to avoid being clumped with.