Game Journal: Condemned

THIS POST CONSISTS ENTIRELY OF GAMEPLAY AND STORY SPOILERS

I had heard that the blocking was borked going in. Now I know it first hand. The problem is that every weapon has basically the same block animation, but different blocking stats. So sometimes a block with a fire axe works, but mostly it doesn't, and it doesn't seem to have much, if anything, to do with my actions. It's more like there's just a percentage chance a block will work, and with a big weapon like a sledgehammer or fire axe, it's about 20%. It might be that the block on the big weapons only works at the very end of the animation, but that means the lead time is so long you'll already be hit by the time the block is up. But this is all moot because the whole point of blocking is to get your opponent off balance for a follow up hit, but the big weapons are so slow that the enemy has recovered by the time it's possible to follow up.

So stick to the lighter weapons, you say. What, and take more damage? Half the time, when you hit a guy, he does a counter attack. About half the time, this is an instant counter which, even with the lightest weapon I've used (the board with bolts in it), isn't blockable. Add in the somewhat unpredictable timing of enemy attacks, and how much longer it takes to make a guy go down with a weaker weapon, I generally take less damage just wading in with an axe, soaking up the hits.

Back in the day (Batman for the NES) we use to call this "the contingency plan". Just take the hit and get on with it. When the contingency plan becomes the safest plan, the risk / reward balance is upside down and the game design has failed. You could argue that the idea behind Condemned was that the player is always supposed to be taking hits to make the combat seem more vicious, but that's a failure as well, because I know there's always a med kit close by. There has to be if you're going to get injured in every fight. The design betrays itself.

It's still fun to taser guys and do the finishing moves. But outside of those cheap thrills and some cheap scares, the game doesn't offer much. The story falls squarely into the poorly written hard-boiled noir category along with Dead to Rights and Max Payne. At least Max Payne's writing was so deliberately awful it was campy. Condemned is just dull. And the environments are already beginning to feel painfully repetitive two hours into the game. And on top of all that, they added a collectathon where you're supposed to collect dead birds and license plates for some unspecified reward. Even that part of the game discourages the player. I collected five out of six birds in a level and got a bronze medal.

As much as this game discourages player participation, I'm kind of interested to see how it plays out. Could it possibly improve? That would be nice. Could it possibly have any more horrible game design choices to reveal? That would be impressive.