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To take on the criminal menace, Ethan is forced to improvise. While you start off with a fully loaded handgun that might fool you into thinking this is a first-person shooter, you'll soon learn that there is no ammunition to be found lying about anywhere in this game. After you run out of rounds, you can pistol-whip your opponents or reach for the nearest pipe, crowbar, or 2x4 with some rusty nails protruding to take upside the head of the hobo threat. At first this feels a bit like the sword-slashing in Oblivion, but attacking and blocking demands timing, which forces you to anticipate your opponent's moves. Your opponents will dance around, fake you out, hide, and sneak up on you, keeping you constantly on your feet. Condemned also has a way of breeding a real paranoia with enemies that run off altogether, or make their presence known and disappear, leaving you ever unsure that you're really alone.
The combat is visceral, exciting, and highly polished, and it's a good thing, because there's not much more to the gameplay here. There will be points where Ethan must use his forensic tools to investigate clues and gather evidence, but Condemned holds player's hands through this process at all times, rendering it more of a story-telling device than a significant gameplay element. Indeed Condemned never aspires to be anything more than a corridor-crawling action game, which is no crime in and of itself.
My biggest gripe is the missed opportunity to create more interactive environments. Interaction with your surroundings is very rigid and scripted. Certain weapons can be used to gain entry to other areas (for example, a fire axe can break down certain doors), but only when the game prompts the player with the option (like with an icon that says "Use Fire Axe"), rendering it a basic lock and key system. There will be places where players are likewise prompted with the option to move some furniture around, or hop over an obstruction, but then there are other seemingly identical situations where the option isn't there. Some real dynamic ability to move stuff around and affect the surrounding environment (say moving a desk to block a door, or using the sledgehammer to take out a decaying wall) would have fit in perfectly with the action-oriented gameplay, but unfortunately Monolith dropped the ball here.
But what Condemned does, it does very well. The gritty atmosphere, the tense paranoia, and the absolutely brutal combat are all top-notch. The amazingly creepy environments that wowed on the 360 are just as impressive here, and the FPS-style keyboard and mouse control scheme fits the action perfectly. Some might not be satisfied by the story, which ends darkly and ambiguously in the classic horror tradition. Some might wish there was more real detective work to do. But those that came for the thrills and the screams will find one of the scariest and most intense game experiences out there.
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