To be honest, when I started playing Condemned: Criminal Origins all I could think was that the graphics were poor, the character movement sluggish and the scripted appearance of enemies left me less scared and more bored. When I thought more after completing this game I realized that this game came out at launch in 2005 and that perhaps my expectations were not quite fair, especially when I consider that the computer that I was running at that time was a Pentium III 733 Mhz which by today's standard runs quite sluggishly as well. The story behind the game while not fully explained due to the fact of an impending sequel, was certainly a proper setting of a horror game, that of an FBI agent tracking a serial killer who in turn is systematically killing other serial killers with their own methods. The graphics as a result tend toward the dark and gloomy to set the mood and sometimes disturbing upon game revelations (the guy in the locker at the school especially). The variety of weapons, was interesting as you could more often than not grab a weapon from your environment not just claim defeated enemies' weapons, or set up weapons caches. While I did experience a few of the glitches that apparently still exist for this game I was able to load a previously saved game and it took care of the glitch, however if you are not one to save often this can lead to frustration at having to possibly replay the better portion of the chapter you are in. As to any lasting appeal of this game, I wouldn't be a fair judge as I played through on easy to get all the achievements which were not dependent on difficulty to get all but one achievement and then replayed four chapters that unlocked the final. I can say that I have no intention of replaying this game, not because it was bad but more because I know what to expect other than a change in difficulty and I would rather move on to another game.
I've seen various articles where people talk about most difficult achievements and most memorable achievements so like a lemming here are mine:
Funny ones: Big Boom! Big Bada Boom! - Army of Two - I just like the reference to The Fifth Element, I can hear Milla Jovovich as Leeloo say that exact phrase in my head. Double Decap Latte - Dark Sector - Made me think two heads are better than one. All of the Fight Night Round 3 achievements - Cheats off and go to town bag-tagging and watching the faces of your opponents. My Brother is an Italian Plumber - Borderlands - Curbstomp like Mario
Ones I'm glad I'll never have to repeat: War Hardened - Call of Duty 2 - They should change the tag on Veteran from You Won't Survive to You'll Want to Smash Your TV With Your Controller. Mile High Club - Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare - Only took about 200 tries to get this one. Orb Hunter - Crackdown - I missed one orb and spent a few hours figuring out which one - fun times. Completed Act 4 on Insane - Gears of War - General RAAM was not fun on Insane The Bladder of Steel Award - Rock Band 2 - Non stop set list in about 4 hours
Yes I know, Call of Duty: Black Ops has become one of the highest selling games of all time. I give credit to Activision for milking this particular cash cow which seems to be make a shooter with a decent multiplayer experience slap Call of Duty on it and it will sell millions of copies. Having said that, I did enjoy this game and the extras like the arcade and zombies mode, especially the White House level with the video of Kennedy, Nixon and Castro at the start. What left me wanting were the little things. Similar to World at War I can't say that I enjoyed when a computer controlled character would try to take cover right where I was taking cover and thus shoved me out of the way, as the player shouldn't I get priority? As for the idea of cover, other popular titles have come up with a cover scheme for the game besides crouching so that if you want to "pray and spray" you don't have to expose yourself which on Veteran in this game, when you become a bullet magnet, might be nice. Another pet peeve was the instructions of what the objective was to get to the next checkpoint on some missions. The one that stands out is the Khe Sanh mission. I had to go online to figure out what specifically I had to do to light the barrels of napalm. Woods yells out to light the napalm but I never figured that out from the gameplay. Even when I paused the game to check the objective, all it said was Defend Khe Sanh. Brilliant, maybe next time say something about barrels in the objective, or make the barrels really stand out by making them shiny like other key objects in the game. I know I'm not alone since many of the comments on the youtube videos indicated other players were becoming as frustrated as I was. It comes down to the little things that make the difference. I realize I'm a dinosaur in that I enjoy that single player element more often than the multiplayer and that the focus on games like this has been shifted to the multiplayer portion of the game but please make an effort to clean up the details especially when you have made other titles in the same series with similar problems.
Just when you might start to think that all I can write about is how I don't like certain aspects of a game, I really enjoyed Brotherhood. I have played both of the first two games and have liked the progression of the series. I can't say I understand how certain critics could say that the second entry of the series was that much better than the first as I enjoyed the original Assassin's Creed and my interest in the series carried over from the first game. Now that the third installment has been released, it feels like Ubisoft has found a happy medium of the gameplay elements that have been introduced to date. I especially enjoyed having a team of assassins to recruit and send on various missions to raise their experience levels and earn some extra money, or simply have them help Ezio with his missions. The reintroduction of looking for a large number of flags was interesting, I'm sure some people found this to be tedious but to me it was another goal to reach and at the same time helped me explore Rome and familiarize myself somewhat to the layout of the streets and buildings when escapes became necessary. As for the multiplayer introduction, I can't say I lean one way or the other mostly because I tend to shy away from online play in most games. I have tried it for this game and hunting your target while being hunted yourself surrounded by crowds of computer generated characters makes for some interesting moments. Simply tracking down enemies on maps with nothing but your team vs their team, while certainly popular is definitely not original. Ubisoft has come up with a multiplayer format which to me seems unique. Well done Ubisoft and keep the Easter eggs and free items from Uplay coming
I really like Borderlands but what 2k Games has done with this DLC is sure to frustrate other gamers the way it has frustrated me. What has happened is that the collection achievements are tied to randomly generated items, which in and of itself is annoying since the drop rate is so low for some of the items from what I have experienced and read about on various websites. DLC add-ons should add to the experience of playing a game not diminish it.
As much as this game was fun to play, there were times where the AI seemed more like AS - Artificial Stupidity. I realize that programming for these games a most likely rather complex, but a command to hold should have had the computer controlled character get to cover. Too often it seemed the AI controlled character would stop in the open and open fire. Yes this draws attention but survivability is low, good if you're after the Healer achievement, but not so good when you have to go get your downed partner and make yourself a target. I can only say that having a human controlled second character is highly recommended.
P.S. Congratulations to the people who have The Beast achievement for this game. I've played through the campaign on Normal and Contractor and then did some collectible clean up and have just under 3000 kills. Why you would want to keep playing the campaign over and over to get this is beyond me. Sure I like to get as many achievements as I can in a game but the time required to get this 50 point achievement seems a bit too much. I might go for it down the road but certainly not now.
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