I have a confession to make: a video game up to this point has never scared me. I’ve tried turning off my lights and turning up the surround sound. I have tried making myself really tired, drinking a lot of caffeine, and playing F.E.A.R, Resident Evil 4, or even Condemned: Criminal origins - games that are meant to scare you. But nothing. Sure, I’ve had a few jumps or shocks here and there, but nothing that made me look over each shoulder to make sure nothing is creeping up on me. It may sound sadistic, but I would like to find a game that scares me to a point of actually having to pause the game and take a breather. Through countless years of waiting, I am happy to say that I have found that game, and it is Condemned 2: Bloodshot.

Condemned 2: Bloodshot is the sequel to widely selling Condemned: Criminal Origins, a launch title for the Xbox 360 some time ago. Condemned: Criminal Origins was a good game, and one that was very close to that scare point I talked about earlier, but unfortunately never reached it. In this sequel, you are Ex-agent Ethan Thomas, trying to solve the mystery of several murders and these devices that make meth-addicted enemies act weird - it’s not like they’d act weird normally, or anything.

Condemned 2: Bloodshot focuses on utilizing first person perspective to an extreme that hasn’t been done before. The ability to squeeze through tight corners, crawl under obstacles, climb ladders while watching your hands do the work in front of you, or melee fighting with your hands, feet, blunt objects, and firearms, adds up for such a unique and quite realistic experience. If you are a fan of gore, what else could be more satisfying than finishing off a guy and watching his painful expression on his face first hand? Nothing. The simple but intuitive combat system is very easy to pick up and you will be figuring out combos in no time. As you weaken an enemy and he falls to his feet, you have the ability to pick him up and complete an environment finishing move, where any object or obstacle that has a newly appeared skull on it is interactive. Most of them consist of bashing his head into a TV or pipe, but it is still very satisfying.



Throughout the beautiful but partially linear level design, you will encounter countless enemies and the occasional dead body, where you have to pull out your forensic tools and discover what happened. Any fans of CSI or even the Saw movies will get excited here, as a menu pops up on screen and you can report back to the headquarters how the crime was committed. You can describe their clothing, wounds, blood patterns, or almost any other option of how a body handled. Did he crawl? Was he dragged? The options are up to you and if you actually look hard enough, you will get a high score since the game grades you on how accurate your description is. This is obviously evolved from the first of the Condemned series, but it seems as if it has been overhauled because we haven’t seen anything like this in a game before.

The character models and movements are very realistic and smooth, including when you are being attacked or when you are attacking an enemy. Don’t look in that mirror! Several times when looking in a mirror someone will run up behind and attack you - this happens throughout the game and seems to make your heart beat each time. It’s a very nice touch which adds to the scare count and the overall experience.



Occasionally you will encounter televisions with a bad reception, and to fix that problem you have to use the thumbstick you have to bend the antenna into a place to get a reasonable picture. This allows you to watch small movies that help progress the storyline, or give you a tip on how to solve a puzzle. Also when interacting with objects or friendlies, you will have to press the “activity” button in a limited amount of time to successfully progress the event.

This time around a multiplayer portion has been added, which takes the screams online. Here we have the standard deathmatch with a few variants and also “Crime Scene” where one team one team tries to keep away some evidence from the other, who uses their forensic tools to try and figure out the crime. Multiplayer works well, but unfortunately lacks the umph that the singleplayer has, and unfortunately will be hard to pry you away from COD 4 or Rainbow Six Vegas: 2.

So what makes this game fun while utterly scaring the crap out of you? Well, for a mainly melee based combat game, the intensity seems to never stop because of the perfect amount of enemies that are thrown at you. These fast fights are separated by the Forensic observation scenes, and the basic but interesting story will keep your attention grasped. Sega seems to have found a format that works. Condemned 2: Bloodshot is indeed a bloodbath with the right amount of first person formula to please any fan of the genre.

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