Brevity
12-30-2005, 01:16 PM
BREVITY’s Condemned Review:
I write this since even though this is a demo for free XBL now, many of you still have not played it got picked it up yet. You should! I don’t mean for this to be chief a comparison to F.E.A.R. (henceforth known to seen in this review as simple FEAR), I use it where it helps.
Story:
No need to spoil it for you by revealing the story but I will say that it is better than the story in FEAR. Now this is just a matter of opinion but I thought FEAR did a bad job and drawing connected and viable plot lines. At times I didn’t understand what I was doing or what others in the story were doing but in Condemned I never felt like that. In part that’s due to good story telling and in part it is due to the game not being all that long and the story not being all that complicated. Oh sure it is a somewhat complex story with a couple of neat plot twists but nothing you have not seen in films or on TV before.
Game play:
Here is something Condemned does way better than FEAR did, overall game play was very spooky and well it was not as frustrating. Tell me if this didn’t happen to you in FEAR more than once. You hear the scary music that denotes something scary going on around you or your vision changes or you hear a noise or whatever but you miss the big “scary moment” because you were looking the wrong way. OMG did that happen to me a whole lot in that game. I was not half as taken in by that game as I could have been because I was just pissed that I missed something cool. At times I would even go back and replay a part just to see what I missed. lol
Well in Condemned primarily through the use of your detective tools and clever scenario mapping and map layout that really never happens. I recall thinking when I was playing HL2, FEAR, DIII how you could make the game so much more frightening by simply inconspicuously pointing the character in the direction that you placed your secret surprise event. Well in this game they do just that and better than its been done before.
In FEAR I got so tired of going through the same basic levels of office buildings but in Condemned you do get a change of scenery that adds to the fun of the game. Though I really did wish you got more fun gun weapons. But I guess that’s the FPS addict in me thinking that with every new game I get some new gun to try out. I did have fun with Condemned’s combat system. I can tell you I NEVER mastered the blocking, in truth I don’t know that I blocked a single hit the whole game. Lol
FEAR as little to no replay value and it takes about 10 hours to beat it. I think if you tried to find every piece of metal, TV, bird, then it would take way longer. I could easily see someone beating it in 8 or… maybe less. Its just not a long game. I don’t fault it to much for that because though I did want the fun to go on I thought they didn’t draw out the story so much so that it became a bore. I guess if it were possible they could have gone into another stage of two with you chasing after someone or trying to find someone for answers. But I don’t know how much more fun and flavor they could have added to the game with a few more levels of the same thing going on. I bet they could have thought up some new ways to scare us though.
I have never played one of those CSI game, in truth I have never watched a full CSI show or any of its type on TV. Not that I have anything against them I just never got around to watching one. But they aspect of this game where you “investigate” crime scenes was fun and I liked how they worked that into the game. I thought it added that extra thing that the game needed to really make it that much more fun.
Controls are good but I really missed having a crouch, jump, and some kind of cover command where I could fire from cover. To be honest you really don’t get a chance to shoot a gun much; when you do by chance find one you are lucky if it has 6 shots in it. I had several times where I shot someone twice (fairly close) with a 12 gauge and the dude still beat me down. I thought it was a blessing that your flashlight never seemed to run out of batteries.
A.I.:
I felt I should say something about the super AI in this game. I played FEAR right after playing DIII and HL2 at that time I could not believe how much better it was than the two other games. I tossed a grenade into a room and people busted out windows to get away from it. They jumped off small ledges and found cover or created cover. They asked each other where I was located and found me and reported back to others.
When I started Condemned I didn’t expect it to have that level of AI. But sure enough it was there. AI hid from me, sought me out, and team killed me many times. Now it was not perfect. Often a NPC would shoot his full shotgun into a wall I was near and never move to get a good shot in on me. But the idea is that many of these vagrants are drug addicts in the game and come on how smart are people when they are all drugged up? So I found it easy to forgive any AI mishaps and blame it on the enemy being a drug head.
Graphics and Sound:
I thought the graphics were trash. I thought that this whole game would not look much different at all if it were made for the Xbox. Nothing really stood out as being special about the graphics in this game. In fact it made me sick to see the main characters face and hands because they looked so poor. Especially his hands, they couldn’t have been shinier and more manikin like themselves.
The sound in this game was no less amazing than FEAR. I thought they did a great job with ambient sounds and scary music. My son 5 was watching me play (unknown to me) but there was this scary music that was really fast paced and just before I went into another room it stopped abruptly and for me it was a little unnerving for him it was utterly terrifying, he ran out of the room and never did come back to watch until I put in Kameo. Lol
Multi-player:
If you didn’t know there is none.
Over all:
I would give Condemned a 8. This game was more fun than COD2, or Kameo for me. I really loved it. I thought it was awesome that the team that made FEAR did such a good job on this game too.
8 being:
-1 For length. The game did not feel wrong being so short; never did I feel rushed through the plot but any time a game is this short I wonder why I didn’t just rent it. I think games should be longer than this one was.
-1 For graphics. I thought the character models and especially the hands sucked.
-1 +1 For not having some kind of multi player aspect. I really don’t think EVERY game needs this but I can think of lots of ways this game could have benefited from having it. Though after playing so many games that had some multi player aspect that was done half@ssed I can truly say that if your gonna rush it don’t put it in to begin with and I cant fault this game for not having it.
I write this since even though this is a demo for free XBL now, many of you still have not played it got picked it up yet. You should! I don’t mean for this to be chief a comparison to F.E.A.R. (henceforth known to seen in this review as simple FEAR), I use it where it helps.
Story:
No need to spoil it for you by revealing the story but I will say that it is better than the story in FEAR. Now this is just a matter of opinion but I thought FEAR did a bad job and drawing connected and viable plot lines. At times I didn’t understand what I was doing or what others in the story were doing but in Condemned I never felt like that. In part that’s due to good story telling and in part it is due to the game not being all that long and the story not being all that complicated. Oh sure it is a somewhat complex story with a couple of neat plot twists but nothing you have not seen in films or on TV before.
Game play:
Here is something Condemned does way better than FEAR did, overall game play was very spooky and well it was not as frustrating. Tell me if this didn’t happen to you in FEAR more than once. You hear the scary music that denotes something scary going on around you or your vision changes or you hear a noise or whatever but you miss the big “scary moment” because you were looking the wrong way. OMG did that happen to me a whole lot in that game. I was not half as taken in by that game as I could have been because I was just pissed that I missed something cool. At times I would even go back and replay a part just to see what I missed. lol
Well in Condemned primarily through the use of your detective tools and clever scenario mapping and map layout that really never happens. I recall thinking when I was playing HL2, FEAR, DIII how you could make the game so much more frightening by simply inconspicuously pointing the character in the direction that you placed your secret surprise event. Well in this game they do just that and better than its been done before.
In FEAR I got so tired of going through the same basic levels of office buildings but in Condemned you do get a change of scenery that adds to the fun of the game. Though I really did wish you got more fun gun weapons. But I guess that’s the FPS addict in me thinking that with every new game I get some new gun to try out. I did have fun with Condemned’s combat system. I can tell you I NEVER mastered the blocking, in truth I don’t know that I blocked a single hit the whole game. Lol
FEAR as little to no replay value and it takes about 10 hours to beat it. I think if you tried to find every piece of metal, TV, bird, then it would take way longer. I could easily see someone beating it in 8 or… maybe less. Its just not a long game. I don’t fault it to much for that because though I did want the fun to go on I thought they didn’t draw out the story so much so that it became a bore. I guess if it were possible they could have gone into another stage of two with you chasing after someone or trying to find someone for answers. But I don’t know how much more fun and flavor they could have added to the game with a few more levels of the same thing going on. I bet they could have thought up some new ways to scare us though.
I have never played one of those CSI game, in truth I have never watched a full CSI show or any of its type on TV. Not that I have anything against them I just never got around to watching one. But they aspect of this game where you “investigate” crime scenes was fun and I liked how they worked that into the game. I thought it added that extra thing that the game needed to really make it that much more fun.
Controls are good but I really missed having a crouch, jump, and some kind of cover command where I could fire from cover. To be honest you really don’t get a chance to shoot a gun much; when you do by chance find one you are lucky if it has 6 shots in it. I had several times where I shot someone twice (fairly close) with a 12 gauge and the dude still beat me down. I thought it was a blessing that your flashlight never seemed to run out of batteries.
A.I.:
I felt I should say something about the super AI in this game. I played FEAR right after playing DIII and HL2 at that time I could not believe how much better it was than the two other games. I tossed a grenade into a room and people busted out windows to get away from it. They jumped off small ledges and found cover or created cover. They asked each other where I was located and found me and reported back to others.
When I started Condemned I didn’t expect it to have that level of AI. But sure enough it was there. AI hid from me, sought me out, and team killed me many times. Now it was not perfect. Often a NPC would shoot his full shotgun into a wall I was near and never move to get a good shot in on me. But the idea is that many of these vagrants are drug addicts in the game and come on how smart are people when they are all drugged up? So I found it easy to forgive any AI mishaps and blame it on the enemy being a drug head.
Graphics and Sound:
I thought the graphics were trash. I thought that this whole game would not look much different at all if it were made for the Xbox. Nothing really stood out as being special about the graphics in this game. In fact it made me sick to see the main characters face and hands because they looked so poor. Especially his hands, they couldn’t have been shinier and more manikin like themselves.
The sound in this game was no less amazing than FEAR. I thought they did a great job with ambient sounds and scary music. My son 5 was watching me play (unknown to me) but there was this scary music that was really fast paced and just before I went into another room it stopped abruptly and for me it was a little unnerving for him it was utterly terrifying, he ran out of the room and never did come back to watch until I put in Kameo. Lol
Multi-player:
If you didn’t know there is none.
Over all:
I would give Condemned a 8. This game was more fun than COD2, or Kameo for me. I really loved it. I thought it was awesome that the team that made FEAR did such a good job on this game too.
8 being:
-1 For length. The game did not feel wrong being so short; never did I feel rushed through the plot but any time a game is this short I wonder why I didn’t just rent it. I think games should be longer than this one was.
-1 For graphics. I thought the character models and especially the hands sucked.
-1 +1 For not having some kind of multi player aspect. I really don’t think EVERY game needs this but I can think of lots of ways this game could have benefited from having it. Though after playing so many games that had some multi player aspect that was done half@ssed I can truly say that if your gonna rush it don’t put it in to begin with and I cant fault this game for not having it.