|
|
14 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Punch Drunk, 21 May 2008
Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars
The synopsis of this game sums it up pretty well, so instead of concentrating on the story, the change in the central character, the oppressive tone, the graphics, sound and atmosphere et al (all superb by the way), I thought it may be more useful to focus on something more fundamental - the gameplay.
I've been a gamer since 1976, and was a professional games correspondent for seven years, and so I like to think I know what makes a fun gaming experience. It always bothers me a little when people roll onto a bandwagon and praise a game unconditionally, often on the wave of pre-release marketing hype. Condemned 2 is such a case. It's almost as if, in the clamour to praise its graphics, it's gore and adult tone, people seem to ignore that the central mechanic - the melee combat - is badly flawed, to the point in places where it feels badly broken.
The number of times you lose fights, or pound an enemy (and it doesn't seem to matter what you're armed with) without them going down, only for them to spring back and unconvincingly beat you to death quickly begins to frustrate. First person isn't the best view for fighting games, as it relies on depth perception - something impossible to depict on the 2D surface of a TV. So, often you swing at an ememy you think you'll hit only to miss, or step back to a distance you think is safe, and get clobbered none the less.
You also get combos, which aside from being difficult to execute as the controls are possibly the worst laid out of any XBox game, enemies seem to be able to break without effort anyway. Your block move is only effective if timed precisely - if you don't, enemies can unleash a series of hits on you that often proves fatal (maybe this is my fault for selecting the hardest difficulty setting, as I always do, but "hard" should never equate to "unfair" or "broken").
The fact that enemies often jump behind you or sidestep, leading you to lose sight of them as they continue to hit you is another source of frustration - it could have been fixed by a simple lock-on system, but no...
Now I'm sure the "hardcore gamers" out there are chuntering that I'm a "noob", or that I should go play Cars Mater National or something and leave games like Condemned 2 to "real gamers" - but if you saw my Gamerscore and list of achievements they would quickly revise that (and no Avatar points in sight!)
I am basing my criticism of Condemned 2 on the fact that a game should at its heart be fun - challenging is fine, but as enemies spring from nowhere and kill you with a single blow, forcing you back to one of the often stingy checkpoints, it begins to feel like work. It becomes a memory test ("oh, the guy who killed me is around this corner, I'm ready for him now"), and when a game forces you to learn the level and enemy locations to progress through it and not succeed on your skill and reactions, then it doesn't feel fair either.
There are many questionable design problems with the levels, the positioning of enemy ambushes being just one. Another is the fact that often the game will try to make itself scarier by making the screen fill with grain, judders, darkness and blurs. It just doesn't work, and again frustrates, as it literally robs you of the clear vision you need to fight back. This becomes especially obvious when sonic creatures appear towards the end. Get caught by one, and you have almost no means of escape save random luck as the screen shudders violently and gives you little chance of getting your bearings and moving away to a safe place.
Now I'm sure that there are people who say that that's part of the "realism". If that's the case then they'd better be an alcoholic ex-detective prone to mental trauma and involved in supernatural investigations - if not, then how do they know? All I know is that it's a MacGuffin, and one that alienates me as a player.
One last quibble - the gunplay is actually quite good. Once the game is beaten you unlock the chance to play through it as a traditional FPS, which is great, and if you got a gold on the last level you also get inifinite reloads. But in standard mode, to force you into melee as often as possible, when you find ammunition you can only carry as much as your gun can hold, even when there are several boxes available. If we were trying to be truly realistic, I would have made a way the character could use his pockets and stuff them full of bullets!
Avoid if you don't like losing both randomly and often.
A NOTE ABOUT BUGS: These may be fixed with a patch in the future, but at several stages severe bugs hampered gameplay. During the final shootout in the lodge, I stepped backwards and fell through the floor into a grey void, dying in the process. During the bum fight arena setpiece, two of them actually merged into one hilarious eight-limbed thrashing mutant hobo; and during the final boss fight, if the sub-enemies attack each other Dorland appears to freeze and becomes invincible, forcing you to reset.
|
Suitable for 18 years and over. Not for sale to persons under age 18. By placing an order for this product, you declare that you are 18 years of age or over.
With an Amazon.co.uk Gift Certificate, you can get them what they want (even if you don't know what that is). 
Amazon Home