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There have been many games over the years that have tried to scare us gamers, a fashion sparked by Alone in the Dark. It has only been a few developers however, that have managed to cause players to break into a cold sweat. Capcom is the main developer that you may associate with the words ‘survival horror,’ but you may be surprised to hear that there are other developer’s such as Monolith out competing for the horror crown.
Monolith are a company that has enjoyed mixed success, with titles full of tension like Aliens Versus Predator 2, to bland disappointments like The Matrix Online. The Monolith stable is a varied one. Recently though the company has provided some very thrilling and different games, and one such piece of software is Condemned.
Condemned was released on the X-box 360 as a launch title, but has also found a home on the PC. And while it received a small amount of success on the 360, many PC gamers ignored it. And I think this is a shame, as it is one of the scariest games you may ever play.
The premise is simple, you are in control of Agent Thomas who has been assigned to a special crimes unit in order to stop a wave of murders. Trouble ensues though, when our Hero is at a crime scene and a suspect grabs his gun later using it to kill two police officers. The rest of the game is spent battling through a city full of drugged up hobo’s in order to discover who this suspect is, whilst trying to evade the police who believe Agent Thomas is guilty of killing his comrades.
The description of the plot sounds very fast paced and action packed, but the style of game play isn’t. It’s slow and thoughtful, and some of the effects that have been implemented in the graphics are reminiscent of the film Seven. Entering the scene of a murder will cause the colour to wash from the screen giving it the look of a film shot on 8mm. In fact the whole game smacks of Seven, especially with the game play element that involves collecting evidence. One such example is when the player has to utilise a UV light in order to find passages of a poem secretly painted onto walls, and then decipher them. If Seven were to be turned into a game, then this would be it.
Unfortunately, these attempts to build tension can be off putting for some. The game character walks very slowly, and even when he is running it is only possible to do so for brief periods of time. I assume this was designed to make players a bit more fearful of what might happen to them in confined spaces where the option to retreat is often difficult and compulsory. And it does work for most of the game, however if you keep dying at a particular part and have to retread the same ground repeatedly at such a slow pace, boredom can set in. Even without having to retread ground this slow pace can feel tedious, especially on the easier level setting where it is possible to blast through without much thought to health.
The evidence collection can also be frustrating. Especially when trying to focus the camera perfectly on the item that has to be photographed. Evidence collection was quite a nice idea, and one that had the opportunity to offer some really juicy complex puzzles, but here it mainly consists of scanning a room for a gob of green stuff before being able to move on.
The combat system is not going to be everyone’s cup of tea either, because although the game is viewed from the first person perspective, Monolith have opted for more melee based weapons rather than more genre traditional pistols and shotguns. Fire arms do make an appearance but when you find them, they seldom have more than a few rounds. Most of the games weapons derive from every day objects, things such as wooden planks, pipes and signs that can be torn off of the wall and swung at opponents.
I feel that the weapons and combat work tremendously well in creating a terrifying environment within the game, as the gamer can only carry one weapon at a time alongside their Tazer. Tactical decisions therefore have to be made, do players take the shotgun that only has two rounds left or the clothes pole, so as not to have to worry about accuracy. It is also petrifying to see a junky charge towards you, after viciously ripping a gas pipe from the wall to wield as a weapon.
The combat can be incredibly brutal too, if an enemy has been stunned and knocked to their knees, the player can walk over them and choose from a few finishing moves that involve breaking the foes neck or head butting him.
While the game Condemned does not contain any ground braking game play techniques and is considered too slow and boring by some gamers, it is still one of the scariest games on the market. No other title can create a sense of fear and dread at the progression to a new area, and I am certainly not going to be able to look at shop dummies again for a long time. The artificial intelligence is very impressive, and on the harder difficulty levels, it is possible to engage in bouts with an enemy for some time before you finally manage to take them down.
If you are looking for a game to play in the middle of the night with a torch that will keep your underpants soiled with the essence of fear, then this is definitely the game that you have been waiting for. However if you are looking for a ground breaking FPS, then I suggest you look elsewhere, as this does not have the colour, pace and variety of Quake 4.
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