As a launch title for the Xbox 360, Condemned: Criminal Origins had some lofty expectations to meet in 2005. A bastion for the advent of high-definition console gaming, Monolith Studios released a game that took advantage of next-gen hardware to deliver a brutally intimate horror game that remains unique to this day, combining bone-crunching melee combat with elements of psychological horror and murder mysteries. Many questions were left purposefully unanswered by the end of Criminal Origins, like who were those mysterious creatures with metal embedded in their bodies? What’s the deal with our protagonist’s blacked-out medical history? Was all the chaos in the city nothing more than our imagination or something beyond our understanding?
Three years later, Condemned 2: Bloodshot would hit store shelves, releasing on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 instead of arriving on PC. Developed with the sole intention of directly addressing critiques of the first game, namely in its detective investigations and simple melee combat, Bloodshot stands above its predecessor in terms of punching things and playing Blue’s Clues with crime scenes. But, with an intense change in both art and story direction, does Bloodshot ultimately suffer as a whole in comparison?
Taking place approximately a year after the events of Criminal Origins, we find ourselves in the shoes of Ethan Thomas once more. Just like the city around him, he’s not doing too well. After proving his innocence, he seemingly distanced himself from the Serial Crime Unit (SCU), turning to a life of homelessness. His hair is noticeably disheveled. His skin is pale and pallid, with dark bags under his eyes. After turning to the bottle to cope with what he witnessed in the Serial Killer X (SKX) investigation, his view on life has taken a significant downturn. But things aren’t all bad. Despite downing enough booze to induce delirium tremens, he’s somehow cut like a professional wrestler while looking ten years younger. It’s as if he’s a different character entirely — which we’ll come back to in a bit.
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Whereas Criminal Origins saw Thomas fighting for his life while trying to clear his name, Bloodshot puts him on the offensive. Malcolm Vanhorn, the uncle of Leland Vanhorn (aka SKX), has seemingly gone missing. All that’s left of him prior to this disappearance is one last desperate phone call meant for Thomas himself. Unfortunately, Thomas was too busy in a dive bar, punching someone’s head into gruel after downing a few shots. Rosa of the SCU, both Thomas’ former partner and his forensic evidence analyst, personally seek him out in order to locate Malcolm Vanhorn. In a matter of hours, Thomas is once again thrown into a world of head-punching and crime-solving. Unbeknownst to him is that Malcolm Vanhorn is only a small piece of a much wider puzzle. A series of startling revelations will challenge Thomas’ perception of reality, leaving him to wonder if the city really is going mad — or if something else is pulling the strings behind the scenes.
Remember how I said Criminal Origins leaves a lot unanswered? Well, Bloodshot gives answers. They’re not great.
Bloodshot feels like it suffers from the “rule of cool.” There’s a lot of kooky stuff that, in a vacuum, is interesting. At one point, Thomas ventures through an abandoned doll factory, fighting sentient exploding doll monsters before fending off a supernatural woman with a “lollipop saw.” At another point, Thomas ventures into a remote winter cabin before being chased throughout the entire building by a rabid bear. Thomas even ends up in a kind of supernatural fight club, wherein frenzied drug addicts clash against electrified fencing and rebar spikes. But what happens when you stitch these events into a single narrative? Especially when they happen back-to-back?
There’s a cohesiveness that feels missing from Condemned 2: Bloodshot when compared to Criminal Origins. The first game saw its supernatural elements being purposefully understated, only revealed through level transitions at first and then slowly incorporated into the story as tensions escalated. The focus was, first and foremost, catching SKX. But weird things had a way of creeping into the main story from the background. By the time of the game’s climax, all hell breaks loose, accompanying a nightmarish escapade across burning farmland. In Bloodshot, its pacing feels like getting peppered with buckshot, in comparison. Every level has some bizarre, unique thing attached to it, and while that’s great for replaying each one individually, the pacing overall feels a lot weaker as a result.
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Yes, levels are now individually accessible after they’ve been completed once, and there’s a reason for that: rankings. You’re now judged for your performance in each level based on your ability to find collectibles, correctly solve investigations, and your ability to complete side objectives. You’re rewarded for your efforts, with better rewards tied to higher-tier rankings. The most basic rewards are given at the bronze tier, and the best of the best are given at the gold tier, with silver being a compromise between the two. These rewards are only available in subsequent levels, meaning you can’t bring an upgrade from level five into level one.
The most significant contributors to your rank will easily be the revamped investigations. Instead of existing solely to shake up the game’s intense pacing with some quieter moments, investigations have much more agency than they did previously. It’s on you to figure out how people died, how to stitch various clues together, what questions to ask when probing for information, and so on. It is an absolute improvement over the first game, forcing you to utilize the various forensic tools in your inventory to achieve the highest scores. Failing to do your due diligence can result in missing helpful hints, potential warnings of what’s to come, and even some minor plot details. Some of them can even be genuinely challenging, forcing you to examine your surroundings carefully for any tiny detail you can find.
Otherwise, you’ll be hunting for collectibles in a similar fashion to Criminal Origins, with concept art and other rewards tied to unlocking achievements. Whereas you’d be looking for bird corpses and pieces of metal previously, Condemned 2: Bloodshot now has you hunting down televisions and radios, giving some decent set dressing and some minor background details. Other than those, you’ll be hunting down sonic emitters. These devices emit an ear-piercing noise that continually damages Thomas if he gets too close. Because of their positioning, you’ll often have to throw a weapon at them or shoot them with a gun in order to dispose of them.
This leads us into the combat of Bloodshot, and oh boy, there is a lot to unpack. Combat has seen a significant overhaul in several key areas, drastically altering how you approach fights and how to fight effectively.
For starters, Thomas is no longer vulnerable when he isn’t carrying a blunt object. After living on the streets for a while, Thomas finally learned how to make a fist, making hand-to-hand combat a viable option if you’re without a weapon. Instead of a single swing, you can now access defined “left” and “right” attacks, wherein Thomas will punch or swing in the appropriate direction. The kick makes a return, albeit with some reduced utility, and hook attacks have also been introduced. Because of these additions, your base damage has been reduced significantly in order to emphasize the usage of combos.
Combos are a necessity in getting through the game’s more challenging encounters. By chaining specific hits together without getting hit yourself, your final blow will often have a unique modifier attached to it: most increase your damage, some disarm an enemy, and others can inflict a temporary stun. The finishing moves from Criminal Origins also make a comeback, with environmental kills being given a considerable focus. It’s a deliberate shift away from the kind of plodding, practical combat found throughout Criminal Origins, and the faster pace feels appropriate when considering the sequel’s bleaker atmosphere. But this overhaul also introduces some questionable additions.
While you won’t have to drop a favorite weapon in favor of grabbing another to get through an obstacle, weapons now have durability limits. You can only knock out so many teeth before your blunt stick or piece of rebar shatters into nothing, meaning you’ll have to scramble for a replacement or opt to use those bony nubs at the ends of your arms. Weapons feel more disposable in comparison to the first game. You felt safe holding a stick in Criminal Origins, but in Bloodshot, you’re more likely to toss your weapon into someone’s head instead of clinging onto it for dear life.
Oh, and guns. Remember how those were rare? How did just a single enemy with a firearm dramatically change a fight? Well, guns are everywhere now. Entire levels are devoted to just shooting things, and as a result, ammo can be refilled from guns similar to the one you’re carrying. An upgrade later in the game allows you to holster a gun — any gun, if you got a gold rank — for use later on. Aiming down your sights is also a thing you can do now, though Thomas’s alcoholism makes his aim sway back and forth. Drinking booze scattered throughout a level temporarily cures it, but you’ll rarely find yourself in a situation where it’s necessary. Besides these changes, guns work pretty much the same as in Criminal Origins. It doesn’t take much to put an enemy down with gunfire; the same goes for you. Employing similar tactics utilized in Criminal Origins will typically get you through Bloodshot‘s many, many gunfights.
Combat in Condemned 2: Bloodshot is just more difficult in general. Enemies move faster than ever before, they hit much harder, and there are way, way more of them. They might even be a little too aggressive. You’ll often find yourself fighting the urge to finish a combo simply because of an enemy’s tendency to throw out a counterattack immediately. A new mechanic that deals massive damage through a series of quick time events often breaks the flow of every fight whenever it comes up as well, and from the millisecond the animation finishes, you’re able to take damage without getting your bearings back. Sure, it’s brutal, but it’s also really obnoxious.
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Enemy variety is thankfully improved to complement the intricate combat: most levels will typically have unique enemies you won’t find elsewhere, with the most prominent example being the Museum level. What happens when a bunch of vagrants breaks into a medieval exhibit? Apparently, the most difficult series of encounters in the game, as each of the medieval swords and axes being swung can kill you in just three hits. New enemy types are also introduced wholesale, including giant musclebound fist-fighters who can punch through walls and tactical armored agents. Every new enemy type also has its own set of animations, counterattacks, and attack speeds. However, some of the game’s later enemies get a little too “out there” in terms of clashing with the surrounding atmosphere.
And that’s another major contention in Bloodshot: the atmosphere. As stated, Criminal Origins kept its otherworldly elements in the background, slowly ratcheting them up as the investigation intensified. In Bloodshot, things are wild from the word “go,” with most of the first level being a horrific hallucination involving giant piles of tar-like goo, emaciated tar creatures, fleshy sacks hanging from ceilings, and some of the most heinous visual effects in a horror game. People gave Doom 3 a hard time because of how dark it is, but I found myself subconsciously squinting in Bloodshot with how pitch-black some things get. It just goes way too overboard.
That’s arguably the biggest issue with Bloodshot: it goes overboard. The game’s first two levels, minus that extended hallucination, feel like an appropriate escalation from Criminal Origins. Dirty alleyways, an abandoned hotel, mysterious figures in loose hoodies, and blood-stained vandals behind every corner all felt in line with the escalating craziness that had been going on in the background of Criminal Origins. But after this, you’re going into the doll factory; you fight a monstrous screaming guy dressed up like a knight in the museum; you run from a bear; you gun down mysterious tactical agents. There’s so much going on that seemingly conflicts with each other in terms of mood and atmosphere that it becomes hard to take seriously.
This can even be found in the game’s art direction. Criminal Origins was grimy and gross, but Bloodshot borders on being a cartoony graphic novel. The thugs you find throughout gradually devolve from looking like ordinary guys into being monstrous creatures, black ooze dripping from the holes in their faces if they’re not ripped up and stitched back together in grisly fashion. Even the main cast isn’t immune from these changes. Thomas barely looks like his old self in addition to no longer being voiced by Greg Grunberg, and instead of resembling a rugged hobo, he looks more like a devout nu-metal fan. Rosa somehow became 20 years younger as well, looking nothing like her original appearance in Criminal Origins, and a certain returning villain got the in-universe equivalent of a Balenciaga glow-up.
Spoiler alert going forward for a game that’s fifteen years old: SKX is very much alive and well, sans his cheek and lips after getting his head blown open. He also took up cross-fit in the year between games: he was roughly the same build, if not somewhat thinner, than Thomas in Criminal Origins. Now he looks more comfortable in a backwoods bodybuilding competition. While he was a vindictive vigilante in Criminal Origins, murdering serial killers using their own dastardly methods, he now murders alleged members of “the Oro” while conducting illicit experiments with various vandals in an effort to understand how the Oro function. He’s largely invisible throughout most of the game before making a single appearance in the Bowling Alley level. Afterward, he vanishes from the game entirely until a cliffhanger post-credit sequence.
Elephant in the room time: the Oro. Quite possibly the most divisive aspect of Bloodshot is the Oro, the newfound antagonists of the series going forward. Tall, emaciated, with nothing but whites in their eye-sockets and metal implements strewn throughout their bodies, the Oro is something positively otherworldly in a series that mainly focuses on grounded horror. They aren’t a new addition to the series — their presence in Criminal Origins has been thoroughly examined, though the only recognizance comes from the very end of the game. Malcolm Vanhorn only refers to them as “they” and believes their influence may be responsible for the uptick in violent crime plaguing the city. Rosa only mentions them as a “cult” during her brief questioning of Thomas in the final cut scene, and a dramatic screamer ending has Thomas’ face adorned with the same metal implements found in their grotesque visages.
But the problem is just how much of a presence the Oro have. The mystery is gone: they’re a mystical cult that thrives off of manipulating others. They’ve been around for three thousand years, they’ve permeated into just about every level of government in the country, they blow up people’s heads with their voices, and they monitor the entire city through a gigantic installation on an isolated peninsula ripped straight out of some cheesy ’80s science-fiction flick with jet-black electronic do-dads and gizmos and make-shift elevators and weird floating energy things and… It comes off as me just bluntly summarizing what they are, right?
You’d think that this information would be strewn throughout the majority of Bloodshot and that it would make sense, right? No — in the span of barely two hours, all this mess gets dumped on you as the game hurries to a bizarre conclusion. Thomas becomes a mythical “chosen one” destined to fight the Oro due to his heightened bone density and mysterious natural vocal cords that were blacked out of his medical records in Criminal Origins.
What? That’s what that build-up was for? That’s what those breadcrumbs were leading to?
That’s not even acknowledging all the other weird ingredients in the pot that make Bloodshot mindbogglingly odd compared to Criminal Origins. There are the Metal Junkies, giant golems made of scrap metal that wouldn’t look out of place in Final Fantasy. There’s Thomas’ scream ability that can blow up heads, which makes its grand appearance in a single level — the final one — with limited utility. You can unlock an FPS Mode once you beat the game, which gives you guns with unlimited ammo. There’s the Alcohol Demon, a literal physical embodiment of Thomas’ alcoholism that resembles Thomas wearing a knock-off Guy Fawkes mask, whom you fight later in the game to effectively “kill” Thomas’ alcoholism. An entire level lasts barely half an hour in an abandoned theater as you fight a magician’s extravagant assistants, tar monsters, and the teleporting magician himself.
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Oh, and the bear. Special mention has to be given to the bear, given that it’s arguably what people remember most from Bloodshot. Thomas finds himself alone in the abandoned Black Lake Lodge, surrounded by miles of snowy trees. After finding a severed limb and deducing that it’s coated in saliva, Thomas is chased by a giant, monstrous rabid bear. It’s the only situation in the game — in both games, actually — where you have no choice but to run, as the bear will instantly kill you when he gets too close. He rips up barricades, manages to clamber up a flight of stairs despite nearly falling through them, and is eventually blown up by Thomas with a well-placed shotgun blast, only never to be seen or even mentioned again. It’s a tense moment, but again, why is it here?
At least there’s some fan service for those who played the first game. A certain set of department store mannequins make a return for an isolated scare. You return to the abandoned school near the end of Criminal Origins with some dramatic changes, and several weapons from the original game return for use in the updated combat system.
Bloodshot’s last major additions are a multiplayer mode and the Bloodshot Fight Club, a series of single-player challenges with unique stipulations. The multiplayer mode, being dead for a decade now, may as well not be there and is not worth acknowledging further. The Bloodshot Fight Club isn’t terribly interesting in comparison: it’s primarily made up of “kill X enemies in Y time” challenges, with some forcing you to defend police officers, others focusing exclusively on the doll factory monsters, and one that allows you to experiment and practice with the game’s various weaponry and enemies. While the latter-most challenge is somewhat unique, the rest are pretty uneventful.
After all, is said and done, what really happened to Condemned 2: Bloodshot? Did it try to do way too much in just a single sequel? Is the inherent idea of a mass-manipulating cult just not a good fit for the gritty world the franchise created? Were there just too many ideas that needed some pruning? Or was it a last hurrah before the franchise would go into hibernation for fifteen years? While its gameplay improvements are welcomed, crafting an even-more intense experience for those who came off of Criminal Origins, its eclectic elements combined with some extreme shifts in direction may have ultimately done it in despite positive reception and moderate sales at its release.
A 2007 Q&A with IGN shines some light on the design philosophy behind Bloodshot. When asked specifically about new gameplay elements, lead game designer Frank Rooke had this to say:
“The most important gameplay element in Condemned 2: Bloodshot is not necessarily a single feature but a philosophy, a goal if you will, to add depth and variety to all facets of the game. This applies to combat, forensics, story, and other peripheral things the player can do.”
While that is specifically meant for the experience of playing Condemned 2: Bloodshot, it feels like it ties into everything the sequel attempts to accomplish as a whole. That same interview would see the team admitting they had to play it safe in designing Criminal Origins as a launch title. Having more experience in developing for that generation of consoles allowed them to push boundaries in more ways than one. It can be seen in just about everything: the more extensive scope of the story, the graphic overhaul, the lighting, visual effects, wider levels, taller levels, edginess, darkness, crazier action, crazier everything, and an ending so open you could fit a tank through it. Leaving the end product aside, seeing so much effort pushed into making something bigger and better than what came before is commendable.
Is Bloodshot still worth playing today? In a roundabout way, sure. The core of both Condemned games is still fun, and Bloodshot only takes things further when it’s not shoving firearms in your face. It’s certainly a more varied game than Criminal Origins, and even though its plot is laughable at points, it can certainly be enjoyed if you don’t take it too seriously. Besides, there still isn’t a whole lot like the Condemned games on the market, even a decade and a half after Bloodshot hit the scene.
There’s still some hope for a third game. The rights for Condemned as a property lie not with Sega or Microsoft but with Jace Hall, co-creator of the series and one of the founders of Monolith Studios. A 2015 Facebook post would announce his desire to shop ideas for a third game and that Condemned 3 could be made with no limitations and full empowerment for whoever decides to do it. It’s been eight years since that post with little to show for it, but compared to other abandoned properties, Condemned still has a fighting chance.
Condemned 2: Bloodshot is currently unavailable to play on modern consoles and PC and unavailable through backward compatibility. To legitimately play Condemned 2: Bloodshot, you’ll need a PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 and a grey-market copy of the game.
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