You'll spend a little time enjoying the horrors (fights) of life on the street before you're re-hired by the FBI, who apparently have no qualms recruiting a seven foot tall bungalow of a homeless man with missing fingers and who reeks of whisky. In fierce Metro City, protagonist Ethan Thomas's life has fallen apart and he's gone from FBI Agent to tramp, which should please anyone who ever compared the original game to a bumfighting sim. So now we can all be snug in the knowledge that Condemned 2 is definitely coming, let's talk about what it's bringing.Ĭondemned 2 picks up a little after where Criminal Origins left off. If a red flag comes up we're going to address it, we're not going to get to the end and have some big media blow-up." Whatever we do we're running by the certification people. I don't think we have the same kind of worry as a game like Manhunt. "But if you were to play it you'd see that there's nothing really mean-spirited about what we're doing, and there's almost a hint of humour about what we do. "I know if you took down bullet points of what you saw in the game it'd sound horrible", the Monolith rep said. Is Monolith worried about getting banned after what happened to Rockstar? Not in the slightest. "It's a toilet!" One of the lead developers at Monolith told us, with a wry smile. This time around, as one of 40 environment kills, you'll be able to get a tramp in a choke hold, drag him over to a filthy toilet, drown him in the bowl and smash his head on the rim. And since hyperviolence was about the only target the first game got a bullseye on, the plan is to take that to the next level. Put like that, maybe you'll be happy to hear it's taking another swing at it, intent on hitting all the targets the first game missed. Monolith imagined the whole thing wrapped up in an overly dark and real underworld with the most gritty and tactile combat in modern gaming, and wanted Criminal Origins to be the first game in a grand and in-depth series. It wanted to make a first person brawler, something we'd only been able to glimpse in The Chronicles of Riddick the year before, and it wanted ithe action punctuated with CSI puzzling sections. Monolith only had 15 months to throw it together, not to mention no prior experience of developing on the 360, yet despite it all it was being ambitious. The narrative never quite managed to make two more interesting characters than 'The Locker Door' and 'The Tramp's Face'.īut you should feel sorry for Condemned, if you can find it in that shrivelled, raisin-like heart of yours. You probably won't remember the story either, since towards the end of the game the plot collapsed like so much dunked digestive. Chances are if you have a memory of the original Condemned: Criminal Origins it'll be a hazy thing consisting mainly of beating tramps to death with locker doors.