Condemned 2 is a vast improvement on the original, but fails in many ways to keep the eerie atmosphere of the first.
((some spoilers follow.))
This is where Condemned 2 fails. The hallucinations are still there, but they take the form of a black covered world vaguely reminiscent of Silent Hill's otherworld, where a joker faced 'alcohol demon' torments you. It seems a bit convoluted and silly. Furthermore, the hallucination sequences are nowhere near as natural or terrifying as they were in the first, this time seeming forced and out of place. The plot is explained far too much, and the last fifth of the game is entirely too sci-fi for a survival horror, seeming more like the game decided to entirely depart from the previous effort and start channeling F.E.A.R. and Half Life 2.
What made Condemned such a great game was, you didn't know what was going on, it was just urban decay. Hell, for all you knew, everybody was going nuts, just like you. No explanation, and that's what made it so creepy. But in Bloodshot, they force the plot in an unpleasantly campy direction, and give entirely too much form to the relatively formless masterpiece Condemned was. By limiting the hallucinations and overdefining the plot with bad sci-fi, it felt like seeing the Matrix Reloaded after watching the Matrix. Too much fantasy, not enough believability was what killed the creepy.
Still, that's not to say the game isn't scary. It's terrifying. It's a great game, with a number of flaws. But what it does get right is done spot on.
The plot for the first part of the game is rather well done, despite my complaints, featuring our once sane and functional protagonist Ethan Thomas. He's now gone entirely down the drain, and is a violent, psychotic alcoholic. In the first sequence he beats a guy into a pulp because of a random hallucination. He's a worn down alcoholic who looks more like one of the hobos you end up fighting than an ex cop. Still, he's got his edge, and more so. Living on the streets for that long means he's gotten better at fighting, and that's definitely obvious. Where in the last game, Ethan was a fair fighter, in this game, he's a killing machine. The fighting system, while occasionally overly complicated, is amazingly badass. You can throw weapons, do environmental kills, break bones, and do any number of horrible things to those who get in your way. The only bad part about the combat is the weapons seem to degrade a bit too quickly. Sure, a brick will eventually shatter if smashed against someone's head enough times, but some of the weapons seemed a tad bit too frail. Another thing that they did very well, that I was sad to see wasn't used more, was the CSI aspect. In this, while inspecting a scene, you are asked a series of questions pertaining to how the victim died, what happened, etc. It's much more detailed and analytical than the first, and adds some cool puzzles.
Another thing I felt was done very well the early atmosphere. While not so much a hallucinatory trip to WTFsville, the feeling that the city has gone to ultraviolent hell is very real. You wade your way through riots, have to deal with psychotic looters in a museum, and even make your way through a meth house full of crazed junkies. Happytown, this is not. The eerie dream sequences, while frustrating and very difficult to see in, (think Doom 3 level darkness), are fairly interesting and unnerving, but still seem a bit forced and overdone. The key to the terror of Condemned 1 were scenes that left you screaming, "Oh my god, did you just see that? I could have sworn I just saw a shadowy thing run by..." and the like. Condemned 2 has fully immersive hallucinatory environments, but by doing so it ruins some of the terror by making it less fleeting and more boring.
The graphics are a definite improvement, which was good. There are also a good number of skins, enough so that you rarely see the same enemy twice, and even if you do, you're too busy fighting them off to get a good look at them. The music is also improved, having an melancholy violin solo that occasionally strikes up at appropriate times, and the sound is beautiful.
Where this game shines the most, I feel, is the combat. While somewhat complicated as I said earlier, it feels real. It's intense, unnerving, and brutally horrific. It feels real, and it's not something that you want to do too much of, as it tends to be fairly deadly. Thankfully there is the option of self recharging health to some extent, but it only moves up to the nearest health bar.
Another thing that I felt was a welcome addition was the end level achievements. If you did well enough on a level, you got an item, and the better you did, the better the item. A bronze medal would give you a tazer with one batter, a silver one with two batteries, and a gold one with three batteries, stuff like that. That way it rewarded good gameplay and investigation, while not seeming silly and petty.
Where this game ultimately fails is the final fifth of the game, which seems like it's out of some strange science fiction. You fight trash golems on a boat with a magnet crane. You end up fighting against cultist marines with assault rifles in what seems like a scene from F.E.A.R. You end up on a tower that looks like it's out of Half Life 2, and you find a room that looks like Silent Hill meets the GlaDOS chamber. It feels convoluted, forced, and overall very silly, and sadly ruined the game for me on a lot of levels. They tried to push the story a bit too hard, and ended up failing. What made Condemned 1 so amazing was the excellent storytelling through minimalistic story exposition and confusion. Condemned 2 failed on that miserably. The one redeeming factor is the reappearance of a horrifically scarred Serial Killer X, the extremely nasty murderer from the first game who shot himself in the face/you shot in the face at the end of the game, depending on how you played it. He is much more terrifying this time around, and sadly, the game goes on to explore the cult instead of focusing on SKX, whose antic have gone from horrifically disturbing to appalling war crimes against the homeless. In a particularly memorable scene, you discover his lair, and find a half dozen homeless people attached to torture devices, and those you are able to free only go on to attack you in their horrifically disturbed state. That was good, and very creepy, but sadly SKX wasn't used more.
Even so, I'm hesitant to say I didn't like the game. I had an immense amount of fun playing it, and it was good to go back to that world, even if it didn't feel the same. There will always be a soft spot in my heart for the hobo beat-fest that is Condemned. And all in all, it's a great game. It just wasn't the first game, and if you go in expecting more of the same, you're bound to be disappointed. Still, the combat rocks, the graphics are really improved, and it has some genuinely scary scenes, and ultimately, it's worth it.