Criminal Origins 2 Bloodshot

Designing a sequel to Condemned Criminal Origins that is more disturbing, nastier, and creepier than the original must be tough. The bar was already set so low that it would be like beating a Trinidad champion to a limbo contest in deep mud. Bloodshot, Criminal Origins 2 doesn’t succeed at this task… despite ample grime and gore, it isn’t quite the unsanitary anti-fastidious nightmare like its predecessor managed to be. But Bloodshot does make new advances in other areas, making the continuation of Mr. Ethan Thomas’s downward spiral a must-play for any horror enthusiast… or just anyone who’s dreamed of beating up crack addicts with rebars and broken toilet seats.

First Impressions by Tanx
Video Game Reviews by a Very Busy Math Teacher

Game: Condemned: Criminal Origins 2: Bloodshot
Platform: XBOX 360
Played For: 12 hours



Mr. Thomas isn’t looking so good as the second installment in this classy series lurches into action. Depressed, randomly violent, alcoholic and in need of constant shots of whiskey to keep the jitters away, Ethan’s out of a job and on the streets where his psychotically delusional lifestyle helps him to fit in. I could swear that Ethan had darker skin in the first game… he may even have had some Latino descent… but now he’s a pasty white caricature of the “ruggedly handsome” stereotypical hero cop, as if destroying his kidneys with alcohol somehow led him down the Michael Jackson whitification path. Regardless, for some reason Ethan’s still got an ally in his old SCU (serial crimes unit) in the suddenly slim and younger forensic lab technician Rosa. So when Ethan’s old mentor Van Horn and the first game’s nemesis Serial Killer X start acting up, our hero is given a carte-blanche once again to inflict massive bodily harm on practically everyone he meets until the current murder investigation is complete.

I was very impressed by the new forensic analysis mini-game in Bloodshot. Expanded from the original, you are now occasionally tasked with determining a cause of death, making an ID on a body or other CSI activities. You do this by selecting best answers from various multiple choice description lists, and then entering your set of responses for evaluation. Many of the puzzles would involve an obvious response, or a slightly more accurate correct response that required more attention to local detail… I wish more games had such a well-implemented, interesting investigatory system built in.

Condemned 2 also gets kudos for a couple of truly terrifying sequences, most notably one that takes place in a ranger station somewhere in a frozen tundra outside of town. I won’t spoil it for you, but I found this bit worth the price of admission alone… a great build-up assisted by the best creepy sound effects that I’ve heard in a game since Thief and System Shock 2, followed by a very effective total panic run-for-your-life heart-pounding sequence… well done, Monolith Games!

But other than the one bit mentioned above, I found the environments and story a lot less effective in this game than in the first one. The levels had a bit of a random feel, with a lot of fantasy elements that jarred with the gritty realism of the trash-strewn tenement buildings that made this franchise what it is. Exploding kamikaze dolls, zombie magician girls and a protracted battle in a museum where everyone is using broadswords and other ancient weapons… things were way too silly to take seriously, and without gravity the mood the game was looking for slips away. I liked the enemies in Condemned 1, because even the nastiest of them were close enough to human parameters that you could wonder if people really could live in such messed up, horrific circumstances. Too much in this game plainly made no sense whatsoever.

As the game heads towards its conclusion you end up ditching your improvised weapons for gun combat, which was no where near as fun as slugging things out with whatever you could pick off the walls. I liked some of the ideas behind who the enemies were and what they were about, but again the implementation was off, asking the player to accept way too much and in too grand a scale. In a way Bloodshot has Hollywood blockbuster syndrome, losing its patience for building dramatic tension and instead siding with epic reveals, big explosions and, alas, super-powers.

I’d rather stick with my trusty old electrical conduit bludgeon.

Will I play it more: unfortunately the game is Fiancée repellent… so no.