Y’all Better Axe Some Bodies

June 13, 2008 12:46 am Sir Haxington Games for Fun, Gaming

Condemned: Criminal Origins (C:CO) came out about three years ago and was one of those games I just never got around to playing until now. I’ve been hearing good things about Condemned 2, so I figure I’d play C:CO first.

I didn’t really feel a strong dislike or like for the game. Overall, the experience was pretty average, punctuated by a few “Oh, cool” and a few “What were they thinking?” moments. I was impressed how Monolith pulled off a mainly a melee combat game (pretty uncommon as far as first person games go) by making the environment feel very interactive. You’re able to pull various types of pipes and electrical conduits from the walls, rip doors off lockers and even take the blade from a paper cutter to use as weapons. I was constantly searching around the world for better weapons to use and loved comparing weapon stats. However, you’re practically spoon feed the game at every turn, which detracts from the immersion.

Gun use is heavily downplayed; you’ll only be able to take out a few enemies before you run out of ammo and will have to start scrounging for a piece of rebar. I’m sure this is by design as firearms take enemies down fast and are a rare find. You are also equipped with a taser most of the time which recharges after a few seconds after being fired. Tasering enemies usually makes them drop their weapons, or at least allows you to walk up and disarm them.

The level design in C:CO is almost entirely linear, which doesn’t work well with the clue finding gameplay. You’re supposed to search for various pieces of evidence in order to advance the story, but they’re practically handed to you. Once you enter a “clue” room, you’ll witness a cut-scene that shows you the story behind the evidence you’re about to discover. A prompt then comes up letting you know a clue is nearby. The evidence is almost always right in front of you and requires you to simply point and it and press right trigger. The whole experience felt too gamey and was too simple. The gadget art, animations and effects were well done though.

I thought the ninth level stood out above the rest, as it wasn’t nearly as linear as the rest of the game. It’s too bad this level came so late in the game. The setting takes place in an abandoned (everything in the game is abandoned) house in a rural town. The level design here is totally open; find four clues in any order you want as you roam around the house. Enemies will attack you as you enter new areas. I wish C:CO would have had more levels like this, and I hope Condemned 2 uses more of this style of level design.

Now that I think about it, the game just felt too linear and spoon fed in general, which is why I get this feeling of “averageness” from it. There’s other sections of the game that require you to use an axe to break down a door, a sledgehammer to bust open a lock, and so on. However, all these mechanics feel exactly the same. The door prompts you with “An axe is required” when you go near it and the axe is almost very close by. Once you acquire and use the axe, you get lerped into place and have to do the same two-swing animation combo on the door each time. Each axe-able door looks exactly the same throughout the game. However, you can’t just swing the axe and break down the door- you have to place yourself in just the right spot in order to get lerped and start the sequence. During this mechanic, the camera is forced to animate, and I generally hate camera control being taken away from the player in instances where it makes sense I should still retain control. Maybe its simply a matter of the games age. Maybe in Condemned 2 they have physics on the breakable door objects and maybe you don’t have to get lerped into place? In any case, the whole experience begs the question “Why do I have to use an axe on the door? Why not this perfectly capable sledgehammer?”

The AI felt pretty smart overall and most of the combat was intense (the combat did become stale for me about 3/4 of the way into the game), but C:CO suffers from the ninja AI problem I wrote about a while back as there’s little to no animation blending between AI states. This makes the combat more hectic, but sometimes annoying. The AI also also looked unpolished due to their ninja-ness. It was cool when the AI would find a weapon and rip it from the wall though. I love seeing AI doing actions the player is able to do. In general, the AI felt samey throughout the game; there weren’t enough enemy variants and most of the different enemy types came later in the game. The AI pretty much all have the same animation set and react the same when attacked.

Also, I hope Monolith ditched the strangle ability enemies use when they have no weapon and get near you. God, that was frustrating.

I didn’t really get the story. It takes the off-ramp into paranormal land which isn’t really explained, plus the ending didn’t make a lot of sense to me. I’m guessing they’re saving the sense-making for the sequel. At least the voice acting isn’t terrible.

Graphically, C:CO holds up decently but the model detail, shaders, and texture resolution are showing their age. C:CO also has a weird art style to me; all the characters are extremely bulky and wide with tiny heads. Rosa, one of the female agents has pretty much the same body model as you do which just made the game feel off. There’s also a weird distortion on the camera. Maybe Monolith had the FOV turned way up? The distortion is especially noticeable if you’re looking at objects in your peripheral vision.

I heard a lot of complaints about the player speed, but I can’t see moving around any faster in those cramped, cluttered environments. Plus, it keeps the creepy vibe going. The only thing that bothered me about movement was the third-person-body-controlling-the-first-person-camera sense I got. When you’d stop movement, the camera would jostle around a bit. The Darkness had this problem as well, although it’s not as bad in C:CO.

At the end of the day, C:CO was a decent game with lots of room for improvement. I can’t wait to play Condemned 2 and see if Monolith made those improvements.