The forensic investigation element was little more than an adventure in instruction following, scarcely more fulfilling than clicking an 'ok' button. But getting past all that, it was not without its issues. You could almost feel the impact going up your arm as you whacked clouds of blood and broken teeth from the gobs of the down-trodden. It's a rare first-person game that emphasizes melee combat and an even rarer one that implements it's so realistically, rather than in most FPSes, where you pretty much just hold down the attack button until everything in front of you breaks. The first Condemned was an underappreciated gem, featuring a stark portrayal of society's very lowest rung that filled my pants with unrelenting grit and terrified wee. By that I mean set loose in a succession of ruined buildings armed only with a bollard and a bladder full of Wild Irish Rose. As the one remaining competent individual on Earth, Ethan is reluctantly called back into action. And then there's the serial killer running around knocking off people who actually matter. Everyone below the C2 demographic has suddenly gone what is medically known as batshit bonkers and have taken to the streets to twat each other with sticks. But all is not well in Whatever-the-Hell-City-This-Is-Ville.
Since the intense teeth-splattering scream-fest that was Condemned, main character Ethan Thomas has gone to the Sam Fisher school of emo haircut transience and become a liquored-up broken bottle street fighter. Thankfully, the guilt is assuaged this time around by the main character himself being homeless rather than a squeaky clean federal agent, thus making the action seem more like a series of entertaining bum fights than a class war. So I admit to feeling a bit guilty about looking forward to Sega's newest working class bludgeoning simulator, but maybe it's possible to worry too much about this sort of thing (while you're caving in a teenage runaway's skull with a bit of old pipe). On the one hand, they're obviously all tragic victims of an uncaring society, but on the other hand they're also tragic victims who smell and shout at me in the street. Being British, middle class, and whiter than a snowman with a bukakke fetish, I'm no stranger to cultural guilt and have ambivalent feelings towards the homeless.
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