Condemned: Criminal Origins – 360 – Preview

Getting my
hands on a Xbox 360 controller in the Sega booth, I felt the kind of woozy
thrill you get when you first lay your hands on something the outside world is
yet to experience.  I was touching something new and the game that was displayed
up on the plasma screen was but a small taste of what the system can do
visually.  Condemned: Criminal Origins, a first-person shooter game that
might just be available at the launch of Microsoft’s new system is already
showing great promise in the visual department but when it comes to the action
that I experienced wasn’t bad at all.

As a FBI
agent on the trail of a vicious serial killer, you dare to step into the darkest
corners of a city infested with deranged killers ready to tear you apart.  Its
dark tone makes the world like a decaying cesspool and while your job is to
collect evidence along the way it is also to survive or be killed.  “Don’t think
Resident Evil,” Associate PR manager Ethan Einhorn said.  “Think
Silence of the Lambs or the movie Seven.”  And playing through the
game’s demo, you’ll see how this one will certainly be just as shocking as those
thrillers.

The demo
starts in a dilapidated building with the interior looking as though it rotted
away with time.  You’re armed with an evidence collecting kit and nothing else
because in this game just about everything is a weapon.  My first encounter was
with a savage hobo that, judging by his snarl and his wanting to break a gym
locker door on my head, isn’t interested in spare change.  Grabbing a rusted
pipe from off the ground I begin to pummel him over the head, sending the
enraged madman to the ground.  When he gets up, he’s even madder than before and
it isn’t until I block one of his blows with my other arm and send my pipe down
on his head that he doesn’t get back up again.  Oh, it doesn’t end there.

Going
outside, police officers are shooting other enraged thugs and a police
helicopter is circling overhead.  I turn in time to see another hobo attack a
mean-looking thug and the pair fight to the death right before me.  When the
hobo is killed, the thug turns his attention on me and that’s when I discover
the tazer.  Using my tazer I zap my foe, his limbs suddenly twitching violently
and realistically as the blue electrical volts fry him.  He drops, his body
crumpled naturally thanks to the Havok 3.0 physics engine. 

Then more
thugs come jumping off the fence in front of me, one of them wielding a gun.  In
my haste to move away, I pick up a 2X4 with rusted nails.  It’s the perfect
weapon because it quickly makes short work of the armed thug, sending him to the
filthy ground.  I then kick him, finishing him off and turning my attention to
the other thug.

Control-wise the game feels good, although the framerate isn’t as steady as we’d
like it to be.  Secondly, the enemy AI still has a long way to go seeing as how
some of the ones I’ve encountered get stuck in certain places.  Still, with the
Xbox 360 launch still a long way from now, there’s plenty of time to see to
these things.

Visually,
Condemned sports some seriously gorgeous lighting effects, fantastic
textures and lots of detail that makes everything from environments to
characters look so life-like.  There are still some clipping issues. I knocked
one enemy with a pipe and his head was stuck to the wall.  The bodies also
disappear without a trace.

Yes it
looks good and yes the game is actually a lot of fun but it still has a few
things to work out before it becomes one of the launch titles gamers are going
to want to have among their new collection.

For All E3 2005 Previews