Condemned: Criminal Origins Was a Horror Milestone – Lost in Time

In this episode of Lost in Time, Colin Munch reminisces on Condemned: Criminal Origins, one of the grimiest horror games of the ’00s.

For more, check out our previous Lost in Time videos on Lost Odyssey and Blue Dragon

Condemned: Criminal Origins Was a Horror Milestone – Transcript

In the ‘90s and early 2000s, you couldn’t swing your wallet chain around a GameStop without knocking over dozens of video games based on blockbuster movies. Movie games made a lot of sense: see the movie, then steer horrifying polygon nightmare versions of movie stars through recreations of the movie’s action set pieces. Most movie games were nothing more than marketing, and they were usually pretty bad. Sometimes, you’d get Spider-Man 2, but most of the time, you’d get Fight Club.

Movie tie-in games were the world champions of “games your grandma got you for Christmas.” I rushed to my college girlfriend’s place the day after Christmas 2006 to play their brand new Wii, only to discover with horror the only game they had was Ice Age 2: The Meltdown (a pretty appropriate subtitle, considering my reaction). Thank Santa for Wii Sports as a pack-in!

The reputation of movie tie-in games got so bad, studios mostly stopped making them, but that doesn’t mean video games “based on movies” died out.

There is no Condemned: Criminal Origins: The Movie, but the game’s inspirations are obvious. Players control Ethan Thomas, an FBI crime scene investigator tracking a serial killer who poses his victims in grotesque tableaux, like in Thomas Harris’ trilogy of novels about Hannibal Lecter, immortalized in the films Manhunter, The Silence of the Lambs, and Hannibal. (And Red Dragon but don’t watch Red Dragon. Probably don’t want Hannibal either but it does feature Ray Liotta eating his own brain, so, do what you like with that info. And I mean the movie Hannibal, not the TV show Hannibal, which is awesome, and actually has a lot of Condemned-style murder tableaux.)

Anyway, Ethan analyzes these escape room murder setups with a suite of tools, like a UV light, a chemical sniffer, and a digital camera. I wouldn’t call these puzzles, exactly — you always equip exactly what you need when you need it — but it’s a fun, interactive spin on the forensic science craze popularized by CSI, and CSI: Miami, and CSI: New York, and CSI: Vegas and CSI: Cyber? which I just heard about for the first time exactly one minute ago, and starred James Van Der Beek. Good for him.

But Condemned’s biggest influence is clear right off the game’s opening titles. The lo-fi, experimental film-style opening credits sequence, with its eerie, industrial soundtrack, is an obvious homage to the movie Se7en, David Fincher’s grimecore masterpiece about two Detectives hunting a serial killer obsessed with the seven deadly sins. 

You spend most of the game in derelict locations, like an abandoned apartment building, a subway station, and in one of the most terrifying levels ever, a mannequin-infested shopping mall. Condemned is set in the fictional city of Metro, which is soaked in crime, violence, addiction, and poverty. Its dark and dirty East Coast design could easily be the same city as Se7en‘s anonymous nightmare metropolis.

The suffering denizens of Metro aren’t just there for colour. Condemned features an innovative, and pretty unique even now, first-person melee combat system. Ethan can use 2x4s, fire axes, and even power conduits and pipes ripped out of walls to fight the various junkies and unfortunates occupying the buildings you travel through.

Let’s get this out of the way: Condemned does not paint a flattering portrait of the unhoused. Their aggression is explained by the game’s story, but every single person you meet suffering from poverty in this game is a slavering, homicidal maniac hellbent on beating you to death with their bare hands or whatever they have lying around. It’s pretty grim. There is a lot of potential for satire and social commentary in the story of an unhinged FBI agent tearing through legions of people below the poverty line in an attempt to save himself. But Condemned is not interested in exploring these topics. Instead, Ethan’s enemies are just nameless video game goons, there to be smashed, sliced, chopped, and tased.

Condemned may not have much to say about urban decay or poverty, but its setting does create an oppressive atmosphere reminiscent of Silent Hill 3. The enemies you fight have the same AI used in developer Monolith’s prior game, FEAR, which featured soldiers who used squad tactics. Condemned‘s enemies aren’t as organized, but they’ll hide behind cover, sneak around to flank you, and use feints to mess up your timing. When you’re fighting two or three of them at once, each with a different improvised weapon, all snarling and cursing you while you scramble through a maze-like old apartment building, it gets pretty intense. 

And then there’s the department store level. The game has used the ol’ creepy mannequin trick before, but this level is full of them and sometimes, out of the corner of your eye, you’ll swear you see one move from one display to the other. I won’t spoil the surprises, but it’s worth playing Condemned just to get to this level. It’s an underrated masterpiece of horror game design.

Condemned‘s story never reaches the heights of its influences — there’s no psychological battle of wills like in Manhunter, the cutscenes are well-directed for a 2005 video game but definitely not David Fincher-quality, and the villain doesn’t deserve to have his liver eaten by Hannibal Lecter, but Monolith has always been dedicated to stories that complement their gameplay. This was evident from the start, with the 90s horror B-movie-inspired FPS Blood to the recent Shadow of Mordor series, and “game about beating dudes with pipes and 2x4s inspired by Se7en” is a pretty good elevator pitch.

Let’s talk a bit more about that combat system. Yes, there are guns, but you can’t pick up extra ammo, so once you’re out, you’re out. In a nice touch, Ethan actually checks the chamber to see how many shots he has left. Enemies can use guns too, and you’ll often face a gun-toting enemy when you only have melee. This forces you to use cover and try to get your enemy to waste his shots on you. You also have Ethan’s taser to stun enemies, letting you rush up and grab the weapon right out of their hands. Other defensive options include a kick to knock enemies off balance or interrupt their attacks, and a well-timed block results in a satisfying reaction from your attacker. Enemies are pretty vocal, too, upping the intimidation factor, and delivering some effective feedback. The only thing missing is the ability to throw weapons and options for fighting bare-handed, both of which were added in the sequel.

Monolith went on to make Condemned 2: Bloodshot, which improves the gameplay but ruins the story, though it does feature a level where you’re chased through a hunting lodge by an angry grizzly bear, so it’s pretty good. You can play Condemned on Xbox with backward compatibility or on PC if you’re willing to jump through some hoops. Condemned is worth experiencing, especially if you enjoy other first-person horror games, like Amnesia or Alien: Isolation, or are interested in first-person combat that’s more reactive than Skyrim. With Halloween around the corner, it’s worth taking a trip to the rotten core of an American city, and your own psyche, with Condemned: Criminal Origins.