Condemned: Criminal Origins is a first-person psychological horror game by Monolith, renown for kickstarting the F.E.A.R. franchise, where the player takes the role of Ethan Thomas, an FBI agent who gets framed by a serial killer for killing his colleagues during a crime investigation. This sets motion for the events that are to follow in which Ethan, guided by his only trustworthy ally who believes he was not behind the killings, has to hunt down the real serial killer. In the meantime, Ethan also begins noticing the sudden increase in some very peculiar events that occur around him and to almost every person he meets.

As a survival horror, Condemned: Criminal Origins is a “beautiful” experience. What I mean by that is that the game focuses more on eerie atmosphere and enigmas reminiscent of games like Penumbra. No overuse of cheap jump scares and excessive gory imagery. For me, this is what I always wanted in a horror game which in recent years Frictional Games have always successfully provided for my fix. But even when the game ends up using these tropes for one or two occasions, they are well placed in the game and not overstay their welcome. Sure, the game also throws in a few supernatural elements, which I do not want spoil for obvious reasons, into the mix later on that make the experience even more petrifying. Frankly, there are quite a number of things which Condemned: Criminal Origins nails perfectly, and one of them is certainly the stellar audio design. The moment you hear all that tromping upstairs or around you, you truly start believing you could bend a steel pipe by how tense your butt cheeks are. I am not joking when I am saying that I occasionally pondered whether the real name of this game should have been Condemned: The Ferret Tromping. Likewise, the great soundtrack compliments the atmosphere and fits with the tone of the game. You can feel the cold shivers running down your spine. Bloody violins.

When not wetting your pants like a sissy, Condemned’s gameplay is mostly all about melee encounters. Even though you can use a few firearms, their ammunition limitation makes them only worthwhile and effective in the short term. I suppose the best firearm is the taser as it can momentarily stun your enemies, giving you a window of opportunity to either steal their weapons or take an effortless shot at them, but it is useless against boss fights. Instead, you will be spending the majority of the time with melee objects such as pipes, planks, sledgehammers, axes, crowbars and many more, smacking your opponents to death. Whilst the melee combat might not feel exactly like in Chivalry: Medieval Warfare in terms of variety of moves, every swing has a “weight” to it. Thereby every miss you make can decide whether you will stay alive any longer. Now each weapon in the game has its own benefits and downsides. Some can deal more damage but are slower to manoeuvre and others deal less damage but are swifter. Honestly, the melee combat is perhaps amongst the best aspects of this game as it makes you think and move tactically. It feels satisfying too.

For a horror game, I think the AI in here is exceptional. Most of the human enemies will try to play hide and seek rather than simply attacking the player the moment they are spotted. Moreover, they do not just hide in one spot; they constantly switch their positions. This makes encounters unpredictable and always different in each playthrough. Naturally, there are a couple of scripted moments designed specifically to scare the player in the game, but thankfully these are very few.

In terms of graphical fidelity, the game shows its age quite clearly. There is no denying in saying that it feels visually “consolised” as the textures do look all muddy and the excessive bloom (when turned on) reminds me of games on a Xbox 360 from 2006. But in terms of art direction, it does a good job on the various designs of the enemies you can come across and the environments that almost feel like you actually visited them in real life. Additionally, the second half of the game, from a level design stand point, is much better and scarier.

Of course, the game is not without its fair share of problems. First off, there are sections in the game which require you to take down some sort of a obstacle like a (wooden) door to advance to the next area. Being in the possession of an axe most of the time, at least in my case, one would think that would suffice. But you thought wrong as the game explicitly tells the player that it requires a specific weapon, like a sledgehammer, to take it down instead. This leads to going back and doing a couple of fetch-quests looking for the right item. Plus, you cannot guess what item will require next time. Luckily, the aforementioned item generally tends to be nearby. Now, my main gripe with this is the simple fact that it is purely stupid. I have an axe, why cannot I take it down? Why do I need a different weapon which has pretty much an identical function as an axe in the game’s context?

Then there is Ethan’s walking pace and stamina. The game gives the player the ability to sprint, but only lasts as long as “running” from one end of the room to the next. It is not even running; it is a very slow jog. You see, it totally makes sense walking slowly in the more atmospheric segments of the game where you are in a pitch dark environment holding your melee weapon and a flashlight in hopes that nothing will startle you, but there are many occasions where that is not necessary -- such as when you have to backtrack in areas which you have already cleared out. This can be rather irritating when you are forced by the game to walk so slowly. It feels like the developers were somehow scared that people would sprint their way through the game, breaking the immersion they tried to achieve.

The next issue which I am about to discuss is not too serious, but the forensics investigations in this game are sadly meaningless since you are always told where and what to search for. Take your scanning equipment, focalise it on the object you want to analyse, press click and presto you are the greatest forensics specialist in the world. Personally, I strongly believe this is where the game missed its biggest opportunity to deepen its gameplay. Not only that, but it could have made you feel almost like a detective, looking for clues and making deductions.

Being a very linear game is not an excuse for the repetitive gameplay. The melee combat is definitely fun and rewarding, but after a few hours you will realise that smacking people’s heads and balls is what you will be doing almost the entirety of the game. It can get tiresome after a while due to the lack of variety. Because of that, the level design can also feel a bit too claustrophobic at times with its very narrow corridors and awful FOV. See, this is where a more complex and appealing forensics mechanic could have been handy to bring some proper variety.

And lastly, while the game’s story starts out very promising, leaving the player with many questions and interpretations, it falls flat right towards the end. You can already smell the Indigo Prophecy stench from miles away, and that is one nightmare I try to not remember. The approach of “show, do not tell” which is adopted in the first three quarters of the game is well executed, because you know, a mystery is ruined the moment you bluntly explain it, but the ending kind of ruins most of that. I even think the last scene of the game nullified your entire journey.

In conclusion, Condemned: Criminal Origins ticks all the boxes for a solid psychological survival horror game. Despite some questionable design choices and a rather abysmal ending, it is singlehandedly one of the scariest experiences out there, and I am not saying that lightly. Clocking around 6-8 hours, I would say that it has about the right length, so if you like horror games, pick this one up.

Condemned: Criminal Origins is a first-person psychological horror game by Monolith, renown for kickstarting the F.E.A.R. franchise, where the player takes the role of Ethan Thomas, an FBI agent who gets framed by a serial killer for killing his colleagues during a crime investigation. This sets motion for the events that are to follow in which Ethan, guided by his only trustworthy ally who believes he was not behind the killings, has to hunt down the real serial killer. In the meantime, Ethan also begins noticing the sudden increase in some very peculiar events that occur around him and to almost every person he meets. As a survival horror, Condemned: Criminal Origins is a “beautiful” experience. What I mean by that is that the game focuses more on eerie atmosphere and enigmas reminiscent of games like Penumbra. No overuse of cheap jump scares and excessive gory imagery. For me, this is what I always wanted in a horror game which in recent years Frictional Games have always successfully provided for my fix. But even when the game ends up using these tropes for one or two occasions, they are well placed in the game and not overstay their welcome. Sure, the game also throws in a few supernatural elements, which I do not want spoil for obvious reasons, into the mix later on that make the experience even more petrifying. Frankly, there are quite a number of things which Condemned: Criminal Origins nails perfectly, and one of them is certainly the stellar audio design. The moment you hear all that tromping upstairs or around you, you truly start believing you could bend a steel pipe by how tense your butt cheeks are. I am not joking when I am saying that I occasionally pondered whether the real name of this game should have been Condemned: The Ferret Tromping. Likewise, the great soundtrack compliments the atmosphere and fits with the tone of the game. You can feel the cold shivers running down your spine. Bloody violins. When not wetting your pants like a sissy, Condemned’s gameplay is mostly all about melee encounters. Even though you can use a few firearms, their ammunition limitation makes them only worthwhile and effective in the short term. I suppose the best firearm is the taser as it can momentarily stun your enemies, giving you a window of opportunity to either steal their weapons or take an effortless shot at them, but it is useless against boss fights. Instead, you will be spending the majority of the time with melee objects such as pipes, planks, sledgehammers, axes, crowbars and many more, smacking your opponents to death. Whilst the melee combat might not feel exactly like in Chivalry: Medieval Warfare in terms of variety of moves, every swing has a “weight” to it. Thereby every miss you make can decide whether you will stay alive any longer. Now each weapon in the game has its own benefits and downsides. Some can deal more damage but are slower to manoeuvre and others deal less damage but are swifter. Honestly, the melee combat is perhaps amongst the best aspects of this game as it makes you think and move tactically. It feels satisfying too. For a horror game, I think the AI in here is exceptional. Most of the human enemies will try to play hide and seek rather than simply attacking the player the moment they are spotted. Moreover, they do not just hide in one spot; they constantly switch their positions. This makes encounters unpredictable and always different in each playthrough. Naturally, there are a couple of scripted moments designed specifically to scare the player in the game, but thankfully these are very few. In terms of graphical fidelity, the game shows its age quite clearly. There is no denying in saying that it feels visually “consolised” as the textures do look all muddy and the excessive bloom (when turned on) reminds me of games on a Xbox 360 from 2006. But in terms of art direction, it does a good job on the various designs of the enemies you can come across and the environments that almost feel like you actually visited them in real life. Additionally, the second half of the game, from a level design stand point, is much better and scarier. Of course, the game is not without its fair share of problems. First off, there are sections in the game which require you to take down some sort of a obstacle like a (wooden) door to advance to the next area. Being in the possession of an axe most of the time, at least in my case, one would think that would suffice. But you thought wrong as the game explicitly tells the player that it requires a specific weapon, like a sledgehammer, to take it down instead. This leads to going back and doing a couple of fetch-quests looking for the right item. Plus, you cannot guess what item will require next time. Luckily, the aforementioned item generally tends to be nearby. Now, my main gripe with this is the simple fact that it is purely stupid. I have an axe, why cannot I take it down? Why do I need a different weapon which has pretty much an identical function as an axe in the game’s context? Then there is Ethan’s walking pace and stamina. The game gives the player the ability to sprint, but only lasts as long as “running” from one end of the room to the next. It is not even running; it is a very slow jog. You see, it totally makes sense walking slowly in the more atmospheric segments of the game where you are in a pitch dark environment holding your melee weapon and a flashlight in hopes that nothing will startle you, but there are many occasions where that is not necessary -- such as when you have to backtrack in areas which you have already cleared out. This can be rather irritating when you are forced by the game to walk so slowly. It feels like the developers were somehow scared that people would sprint their way through the game, breaking the immersion they tried to achieve. The next issue which I am about to discuss is not too serious, but the forensics investigations in this game are sadly meaningless since you are always told where and what to search for. Take your scanning equipment, focalise it on the object you want to analyse, press click and presto you are the greatest forensics specialist in the world. Personally, I strongly believe this is where the game missed its biggest opportunity to deepen its gameplay. Not only that, but it could have made you feel almost like a detective, looking for clues and making deductions. Being a very linear game is not an excuse for the repetitive gameplay. The melee combat is definitely fun and rewarding, but after a few hours you will realise that smacking people’s heads and balls is what you will be doing almost the entirety of the game. It can get tiresome after a while due to the lack of variety. Because of that, the level design can also feel a bit too claustrophobic at times with its very narrow corridors and awful FOV. See, this is where a more complex and appealing forensics mechanic could have been handy to bring some proper variety. And lastly, while the game’s story starts out very promising, leaving the player with many questions and interpretations, it falls flat right towards the end. You can already smell the Indigo Prophecy stench from miles away, and that is one nightmare I try to not remember. The approach of “show, do not tell” which is adopted in the first three quarters of the game is well executed, because you know, a mystery is ruined the moment you bluntly explain it, but the ending kind of ruins most of that. I even think the last scene of the game nullified your entire journey. In conclusion, Condemned: Criminal Origins ticks all the boxes for a solid psychological survival horror game. Despite some questionable design choices and a rather abysmal ending, it is singlehandedly one of the scariest experiences out there, and I am not saying that lightly. Clocking around 6-8 hours, I would say that it has about the right length, so if you like horror games, pick this one up.