Condemned: Criminal Origins was ahead of its time. This first-person shooter/homeless people bludgeoning simulator was a launch title for the Xbox 360 from Monolith Studios and combined brutal combat, terrifying exploration, and a surprisingly tense mystery at the centre of its narrative to create an experience that remains a treat to revisit even today.

You play as Ethan Thomas, an SCU agent accustomed to horrific crime scenes, dealing with twisted psychopaths as part of his daily life across a city that seems like a very unpleasant place. It appears to exist in perpetual darkness, with nobody on the streets except for hostile addicts and weird creepy monsters eager to end our lives, even as we’re simply going about our daily commute. Such is life in the world of Condemned.

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I first played Condemned as a kid, and while much of its writing and character development feels juvenile today, back then it was unlike anything I’d seen before. You seldom had guns or friends to fight alongside you, instead slowly walking through abandoned buildings and morbid subway stations in search of clues, praying that a stranger wouldn’t emerge from the shadows with a baseball bat in hand ready to destroy you. So many environments were shrouded in complete darkness, with your limited torch providing just enough light to stumble through the dark. Even today, few games play with claustrophobia quite so effectively.

Condemned

While I might be misremembering, if I recall there is a supernatural force causing people in this city to act strangely, aggressively seeking to kill all those they come across. This means that individuals unfortunate enough to call these disparate locations home would jump upon our protagonist without hesitation, forcing us to find whatever weapons we can in order to defend ourselves. This meant pulling pipes from walls, fishing pieces of wood out of bins, or praying that stray firearms found on corpses would hold even a single bullet for us to use.

Condemned made you feel desperate in a way that few games do, unflinchingly violent in its combat encounters without ever feeling gratuitous. There are moments of silence too, with Ethan often communicating with fellow agents over the phone to piece together the truth behind a murder he was framed for. As a wanted man, the lack of safety across the game world is only further emphasized because nobody, not even your friends, can be trusted.

You’d also take pictures of crime scenes or use fanciful gadgets to uncover fingerprints and clues, all while praying someone isn’t encroaching upon your position as this all goes on. It isn’t uncommon for brief snippets of tranquillity to be interrupted by a gaggle of enemies ready to throw down, forcing you to leave behind a puzzle for a deathmatch that might be your last. The sequel would improve upon many of these elements, but exchanged the semi-realistic atmosphere and setting for a deeper journey into the supernatural that often verged on the campy. It was a weaker game, and not remembered nearly as fondly.

Condemned

Whenever I think back on Condemned, I can’t help but picture it in the modern landscape, and exactly what blockbusters it would take after or build upon. To me, its exploration and intimate combat always shone brightest, as did the few meaningful relationships made with its cast of characters. Its world was small yet focused, and each new level felt like a piece of a wider picture we were forging together in our minds. Having to take advantage of your environment by scavenging weapons and unearthing specific secrets and collectibles also helped it feel more alive. In many ways, it felt like an immersive sim.

Arkane’s Prey, Dishonored 2, and Deathloop are three of the best games in recent memory. Everything about their aesthetic and design feel purposeful, like you can exist within their worlds and behave in a way that feels contextually accurate to how a real person inside its fiction might operate. Apartments in Dishonored would be filled with coins to pilfer and books to read, all of which fleshed out the game’s mythology in ways that impact how the coming narrative is digested. Prey’s abandoned space station continually hinted at the believable hustle and bustle of those who used to call this place home, with nothing left behind but corpses and memories. Deathloop is more of a straight shooter, but even so it feels so intricately detailed and deliberate in everything it does.

Condemned

Mechanically, each level was a playground of possibilities. You can complete two of these games without harming a single soul if you’re savvy enough, using the environment and mechanics to your advantage to craft a play style that matches your personality. The replay value was immeasurable because the player’s hand was never held beyond a few expectant tutorials. While loading screens would often split apart maps, Talos One and Karnaca felt like living, breathing places that would continue to exist long after we put the controller down.

Condemned felt like that too, so if it ever resurfaces in a reboot or unexpected sequel, I’d love for it to double down on its immersive sim qualities to stand alongside its beloved contemporaries. Monolith could perhaps tone down the murder of homeless people in exchange for a greater focus on investigating crime scenes, or approaching each new level with a mixture of stealth and violence as you decide exactly how to handle every situation. There is no right or wrong way to progress, and even the original Condemned understood that to an extent. You were a law enforcement officer, but your moral place in society and what it meant to be an apparent person of justice was clouded, and thematically I’d love to see that explored given the modern political landscape. There is so much potential here, and thinking about it only saddens me that so few games like this have ever existed.

Condemned

If you haven’t played it before, Condemned: Criminal Origins is backward compatible on Xbox One and Xbox Series consoles right now. This isn’t a paid promotion or a review disclaimer, I just really like the game.

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