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I finished Condemned 2: Bloodshot recently, and while it has some excellent moments (*that* Bear scene 
), it butchers a lot of what I liked about the first game. Especially how the Condemned world is portrayed.
), it butchers a lot of what I liked about the first game. Especially how the Condemned world is portrayed.
Mind you, some of this is "what I wish Condemned were" vs. what it is, but I enjoy the idea that the decay and violence in the first game is indicative of this societal freefall that no one is able to stop.
At some point near the end of Criminal Origins, it suggests that there's a "cult" responsible, and Bloodshot focuses *entirely* on this idea. I pretty much dislike this direction. I believe the idea that CO's society is unraveling and no one knows why to be much more unnerving.
In Criminal Origins, Thomas is just some random FBI-style forensics agent, and it's very clear he's a well meaning person trapped in a world that is far more brutal than reasoning can explain. Bloodshot makes him an incredibly insufferable, edgy asshole.
I find it vastly more compelling that Thomas in CO is initially one of few ordinary people left in the world hopelessly trying to hold up a pillar in a house that is rapidly crumbling.
After he's framed, Ethan fights the vagrants using their own crude, improvised methods; the boards and pipes torn from the walls both literally and metaphorically accelerates the world further into collapse. Violence begets violence.
So yeah - that Bloodshot basically tosses all that rather fascinating depiction of its fictional world for "uh, it's all because a cult and like - they can shout like the Dovakin lol" is deeply disappointed. Oh well lol
I definitely don't hate Bloodshot, but I am drawn to this depiction of urban decay in Criminal Origins and FEAR that you rarely see in games. It's not post-apocalypse, but it's instead like - a lens into what the years preceding the apocalypse would look like in their universe.
