Condmened 2 as a sequel has some great ideas, but they are executed rather poorly.
Gameplay:
Some of the elements from the first game remain intact - the brutal, visceral hand-to-hand combat returns, with added layers of depth and complexity. This time, you can string together combos with hooks, straight punches, blocks and kicks, to create damage multiplyers. This was intended to give the player a feeling for fighting for his life on the streets. The problem is that the system is too complex and unwieldy, even for Condemned veterans. It responds fairly well, but with alot of action on the screen, sometimes the games' framerate will chug, causing one of your button presses to be delayed, or ignored altogether, cancelling your combo. This doesn't happen often, but when it does, it adds unnesecary frustration as you can find yourself dying over and over in crowded sections of the game. Another factor is that during combat, you are faced frequently with multiple opponents. One hit during a combo, and you're back to square one. Most importantly, there are no combos or gameplay elements for fighting mutliple opponents - only frusrtation and repitition. The scares here are also skin-deep. Whereas Condemned part 1 haunted your psyche with lighting tricks and ambient noises, Condemned 2 drowns in horror-cliche overkill. Overly dark areas intended to add to the terror only lend confusion and frustration to the combat and enviromental puzzles. The idea of wearing a gas-mask while traversing a burning doll-house may have sounded creepy on paper, but here it just feels doesn't carry much weight.
This time, guns play a much more prominent role in the action. The aiming and gunplay feel essentially the same as they did in Condemned 1 -passable, but lacking the polish and fluidity of a full shooter. Not only are there more types, but from an upgrade recieved early in the game, you can holster a fully loaded gun to use at any time. Guns are very powerful here. And plentiful. And a problem with creating a survival horror game with lots of powerful weapons is obvious - the player no longer feels adversity. Certain sections of the game I cruised through with a fully-loaded assault rifle on my back that I never even had to use - the ammo for my main weapon - a lever rifle, was so plentiful. Which brings me to another curiosity - the game's difficulty, and pacing. The beginning of Condemned 2 is definitely the hardest part of the game, and you will die often. You are often faced with multiple enemies (which I mentioned above is poorly handled here) in rooms that are pitch black. There are also a few early bosses that are frustrating, and require quite a bit of patience from the player very, very early in the game. This is in stark contrast to the last half of the game, where you will rarely retry levels.
Graphics:
Graphically, Condemned 2 is generally very impressive. The enviroments are quite diverse, detailed, and entertaining. Forrests, Cargo Ships, Hospitals, and Libraries are just a sampling of what's here. The developers realized they couldn't create another game of nothing but dilapidated urban enviroments, and they succeed. Kudos to the art department. The character models don't fare so well - during the cinematics in particular, the characters look wooden and move robotically. After the cinematic grace of games like Mass Effect and Bioshock, terrible character models should be a thing of the past. Another worthy mention is the motion blurring - used to absolute excess here to create confusion for the player in certain situations.
Sound:
Condemned 2 sounds great. Enemies talk to you as you fight them, insult you if you run away, and scream when you kill them. The music is good, but sparse, filled with lots of cello and violin. The voice acting is a mixed bag - Ethan Thomas is good, Rosa is so-so, and the rest of the characters range from average to quite poor. It's hard to be scared of a villian who sounds as corny and rediculous as some do here.
PROS: Great graphics and sound, atmosphere, mature theme, occasionally scary.
CONS: Hand-to-hand combat frustrations, uneven difficulty, worthless mutiplayer, terrible storyline, weak ending.
Condemned 2 is a flawed but sometimes enjoyable effort, if you have the patience, and a love for the survival horror genre, you may want to check it out. Otherwise, this certainly won't make the wait for Resident Evil 5 any easier.