I am SO sorry for creating this

***CONDEMNED 1 & 2 SPOILERS***

Last night I completed Condemned 2 for the 360. I had been meaning to get a copy for a while now as I’ve such fond memories of the first game. My buddy and I sat down and completed Condemned 1 in a single night. I have a glorious gaming memory of that night; you know the ones, those personal achievements or amazing moments that we live for as gamers. We think back on them and smile.

So many rich memories of Condemned, from us both going somewhat mad from the high stress and terrifying moments, when the guy leaps up from running down the stairs, laughing at the poor storytelling and horrific voice acting, that time we got up to the high school level and the game glitched resulting in all game textures being black and I somehow, after like 2 hours managed to get through the level in complete blackness while fighting invisible enemies. When the stress got too high around the climax in the old house so we pretended to be Joe Pesci from Casino getting fuckin’ furious that all these ‘mick bastards’ were breaking into our house and the little crawly guys that we coined clickety clackety crabs. What a wonderful time. SO we got a hold of Condemned 2 and set out to do the exact same thing.

In Condemned 2 you play as the alcoholic Ethan Thomas, as apposed to the old sober Ethan Thomas, Ethan is now a ex-homicide detective with a major chip on his shoulder and schizophrenia from the events of the first game (You tracked a serial killer and everyone in the city had gone mad and… you… you defeat a super kung fu demon thing by ripping out his spine? But turns out it was all a death cult or something… I dunno! The story was stupid ok!). It’s a melee fps game, a very difficult and rare genre but somehow Condemned does it right. The hand to hand combat and melee environmental weapons are awesome, really visceral. This is complimented by great audio and fantastic animation. To sum up this game I would call it a ‘Bum Fight Simulation’, and it is glorious! But somewhere along the way the game starts to fumble and trip over its poorly written pages of script. Why?! Why do you need to tamper with my bum fighting by adding all this stupid paranormal/dark magic stuff? My buddy and I found ourselves blaming a guy called ‘Chad’ during these moments. A made up employee of the company that we could blame for any absurd moment that showed up.

Employee: Hey Chad, look this ending doesn’t make sense man.
Chad: Well… Half Life 2… Just do that.

The ending really is the same ending to Half Life 2. The CSI bum fighting game grounded in realism turns into a magic/horror/thriller/sci-fi game. So it’s a fun game, the combat and game play is awesome, but then Chad got his hands on it and tried to add an absurd story and absurd game play moments built on this absurd story and you get a delicious cake with way to much whipped cream on top… absurd whipped cream.

I’m going to do a blog soon focusing on this event, when a perfectly good game is destroyed through unnecessary story. In the mean time go beat up some bums, it’s awesome.

Oh and from this moment on, any stupid/bad decisions or moments in video games is because of Chad.

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