Condemned: The Best Survival Horror Game of the Generation

  With Halloween on the horizon and a new entry in the ultrapopular Resident Evil set to release soon, people have horror games on the brain.  Unfortunately the pickings have been pretty slim for console owners this generation; the Dead Space games are great, but the overabundance of ammo and focus on action and jump scares take it just out of what I'm comfortable classifying as a "true" horror game.  The aforementioned new breed of Resident Evils are certainly fun to play, but are light on the scares as well.  Deadly Premonition is... something else entirely.  The Walking Dead episodic titles are amazing zombie games, but there's made in the classic adventure style which makes you wonder why you read about adventure gaming being dead but don't hear too much about the decline of survival horror.  Even my personal favorite horror series, Silent Hill, has had two lackluster by-the-numbers releases recently.

  The PC has had a slightly better track record with games like Amnesia and Slender (which I haven't personally had a chance to play yet, but I've heard great things).  The October issue of Game Informer has a feature on some interesting looking PC and Mac horror games, but on the console front why does everything seem so quiet?

   I started racking my brain trying to think of the last time I played a game on a console that really scared me, and all I could come up with was Condemned: Criminal Origins.  It was a 360 launch title and I remember playing the game in a room full of friends as we cackled at the brutal melee combat and super realistic (at the time) visuals, and I also remember playing the game by myself afterward with the lights off, letting the imposing atmosphere and malicious sense of doom the permeates the entire game get the better of me and being genuinely excited for what was sure to be a deluge of crap-your-pants scary games that would end up on the system.  Unfortunately I'm still waiting for the flood.

   So with an itch for screwing with my capture device and video editor still needing a scratch (reading The Filmmaker's Handbook on breaks at work will do that to you) and being curious if the game still holds up today, I popped it in and was surprised at how well Condemned holds up seven years after it's release.  Even though the graphics won't turn any heads now, the overall design of the game hasn't taken any hits.  It's still an unsettling trip into a nightmare world that rivals Silent Hill as one of the most unnerving games I've ever played.