Hard-boiled-cranked-up-creepy-bone-crushing... hell, how shall I describe this one?
GAMEPLAY:
Really, really aggressive and unbelievable intense gaming experience. CONDEMNED mixes up well-known genres and adds some freshly, undepleted elements as well: Just like survival-sledgehammer-to-head-combat and crime scene investigation. Your enemies are quiet fuuked up psychotic fellas who live in the "maggot infested dumbs", doing their time murdering each other. Whenever you encounter one of these hoody- or tramp-style folks, they engage in a furios manner by grabbing anything that can be used as a weapon (just like you do) to beat the shiat out of you while they improvise, using their high-end AI.
GRAPHICS:
Awsome. Every effort has been made to drag you right into these creepy and terrifying scenery: Trash all over the place, dark lighting contrasted by lerky real-time shadowing and rounded up with a decent bloom effect (optional). Hand-to-hand combat is crafted with amazingly real combat animations and squeezy detail, just like enemies spitting their teeth out, after beeing hit by your ripped-off papercutter-blade. There are also 4 finishing moves: neck breaking, slam, headbash and a ultra-violant straight-in-the-face-smash with your bare hands. Hitting and getting hit is supremely simulated by some bloody screen scattering and every visual effect is implemented just to push the atmosphere to "I think i just shiat myself"-levels.
SOUND:
The music raises the bar for this genre: Understriking each moment you struggle trough this nightmare with heart-pounding, absolutely creepy "music" or noises. The sound effects when your weapons connect are just so realistic that it's disturbing you actually like it. Anyway, The sound can get glitchy whith old drivers or unsupported onboard cards.
ALL-IN-ALL:
If you prefer fighting in videogames and if you CAN seperate a game from real-life and don't count yourself to the faint of heart or the cowardly, then get this jewel, turn up your sound, your graphics and just enjoy this uforgettable (but short) ride into a world of pure darkness and violance.
MINOR-MINUS-POINTS:
- short pleasure
- hardware-hog
- some brutal-scenes are a bit over the top (even for me :D
- repetitive level design and lack of environmental diversity