Oh, and just a curiosity worth mentioning – this is one of the first games I’ve seen that appeals exclusively to a widescreen audience, and there is literally no option I could find to turn the black bars off and have the game go full-screen. While this hardly made the game unplayable on my 19” Viewsonic CRT, it also made me subconsciously place an order for one of those fancy new Dell 2007 FPW LCD widescreen setups I’ve been meaning to purchase. Really, the average gamer probably will barely notice it after a few minutes, but like I said above, this may be a subjective point based on how easily immersed you can become in a game.

To close this off, I can honestly say that I’ve spent worse weekends than I have with Condemned . The way the storyline is presented through a mix of cutscenes, limited character interaction, and lots of nifty cell-phone dialogue actually did quite a good job of drawing me in, but it was the combat system that I stayed for. I also thought the segments where you had to pull out some manner of high-tech tool to take samples or photographs for later analysis were really nifty, though they were marred by the dumbing-down effect of having each tool automatically selected and big hint notices explicitly telling you when there were clues nearby.

As a plus for a console port, they even took the liberty of including a quick-save function, effectively issuing the middle finger to most other port developers out there and ultimately making Condemned: Criminal Origins a solid contender for the PC market. If you have the muscle to run it at high detail and don’t mind a good horror romp with a nice blend between difficulty, action, and storytelling, then this is one game that can definitely deliver, and is unquestionably “the best hobo-murdering sim of 2006”, as many call it. My only lasting question is if the game will ever get a sequel, as the storyline ending leaves quite a number of answered questions. Perhaps E3 will tell…