Condemned: Criminal Origins

This is a really, really good game. One of those B tier games from a bygone era that experimented with things that games 20 years later would try to take credit for inventing.

It is worth remembering though, it was B tier then, and is B tier now. Everything is "Good" but not "Great". Combat is fun but repetitive, moving feels painfully slow, The story is actually really die-hard interesting right up until the near-ending where it becomes more like "...Really? That's how you chose to explain everything?"

Where Condemned shines is that they took something that most games take for granted, being the weapon selection, and made the WHOLE GAME all about it. You don't find keys, you need specific weapons to unlock/break down certain doors. Guns are rewards for finding secret areas but never overshadow melee weapons as your main implement (Though later they do in fact become what you use for a lot of the game).

I cannot stress enough how cool this is, imagine if a game made healthkits interesting by making 12 normally mundane healing items into the game's weapons, keys, storytellers, secret rewards, and enemy difficulty telegraphs all at once. The weapons in condemned are shape-shifted into actual tools, as opposed to only being items to make enemies stop hurting you like most games do. Unfortunately, while melee is meaty, it's tame on the visual damage side compared to modern titles.

The game has a very basic "Detective mode" with a suite of tools that are all fairly brainless to use, but still serve to give you little breaks from all of the slow-moving melee combat. The tools are fun, if finicky, to use.

Unfortunately, like so many greats from this era, this game needs outside fixes to run in a way that won't make you want to carve out your own eyeballs. Fixes exist in the guide section.

Should you try it? Is this game fun without nostalgia? I think so! I was actually gripped by it and played through it in a couple of sittings, I couldn't easily put it down. There was a thrill to it, the atmosphere and the lore, even just by the loading page blurbs, really made the whole world feel scary and lost.

As an aside, with butchers creek out and stirring up nostalgia for this game, I want to make it known that remaking this game and its sequel for modern machines and releasing it as a remastered set will essentially create a money printer. Millennials are coming to the age where we covet terrible old games we played, not just the halos or the call of duty's, but the just-ok-but-innovative games like this one. Condemned is a cult classic waiting to happen. Find all of the bad games we rented from blockbuster as kids and start the magic remake engine if you want an easy path to making lots of money.

It has really good suspense and eerie moments.

Every horror game should have a unlimited use taser.

No es un mal juego y es lo suficientemente corto y barato como para que no sea una carga demasiado grande el comprarlo, aun así no siento que el combate, atmósfera o historia valgan la pena. Probablemente valga mas la pena gastar un poco mas de dinero y comprar algún otro juego.

When I was a little boy I've played this on XBOX 360.

Rip Monolith. I wish we got a remastered version of this game before they were canned. This game from 2006ish is peak tho. The horror elements mixed with the serial killer hunting operation was just insane to experience. I can't speak more or I'll spoil the entire game. Do yourself a favor and play this gem. You should be able to force the game into 1080p, if not there has to be a mod out there for this game.

A really good thriller and horror atmosphere!
The only downside, some of the dudes in this game take bullet shots like mosquito bites.

If you have FPS problems, download the DirectInputFpsFix

The enemies that crawl around are terrifying!

don't know why it took me almost 20 years to give this a solid try, but this game is excellent. top notch atmosphere and solid gameplay and pacing

omg call my fav

played this when on Xbox. will always remember being able to take the blade off a paper cutter and use it as a weapon. Epic

most peaceful night in Detroit

10/10

outlast if mc wasn't a photographer

very underrated. deserves a proper remake or reboot.

rest in peace, monolith.

Masterpiece.

I can't get past the first 5 minutes of the game. It randomly slows down to 3-16 fps and crashes if you tab out. As soon as I bring out the investigation tool, it goes to 3 fps...

fire game

One time I'm grateful not having a partner because she'd be stone cold stunnered from the constant intensity of this unpredictable game of horrors

I have wanted to play this since it came out on xbox but couldn't play FPS on controller. It's nice to finally get to make it through this game, but I will say this game is inferior compared to other games of its time.

The game tells you the answer to almost every puzzle or tells you what tool to pull out to progress, takes away your taser at the end of the game so that if you've been using that as a strategy you're suddenly defenseless, and (ending spoilers) gives you a choice of shooting the dude or not, but gives you the same cut scene no matter what meaning the ending doesn't even really matter what you choose.

tl;dr: The game starts out promising but when it hits the landing it breaks both legs and then bites back at you to cause you pain. It's worth playing if you realize it's an inferior version of both F.E.A.R. and Silent Hill.

way too overrated. i'm not saying its bad but its kinda boring if your expecting a horror game with "brutal combat" its not here. the only reason i'm recommending this game is cause it kinda has some decent moments

yea

good scares good combat every encounter feels different

pretty much everything monoliths ever done has been superb. this is an oldy, but goody. not to mention exclusive as it comes. don't believe it ever launched anywhere other then pc, kinda like the witcher. rare indeed.

the sequels even better. fps /w batting practice. couple forensic sequences. fbi on the case, potential serial killer. dig? good? now go get em agent!

Great hobo beat-em-up sim. LoL but seriously this is a unique survival-horror FPS in that you aren't fighting monsters, you are fighting insane transients under the spell of some supernatural influence that is gradually spreading throughout the city. Since you are an FBI forensic specialist you are frequently called upon to use a series of contextual tools to solve puzzles and progress the story-- leading to one of the best if not the best jump scares in video game history. If you know you know.

Combat is melee focused and absolutely brutal-- swing, block, buy yourself some time with the taser. Enemies are smart and will use the environment to get the upper hand on you, often using feints to cause you to miss so they can get in a cheap hit. There are firearms, but you are only limited to what is in the clip. No reloading. I like this, as guns feel like temporary powerups that must be used carefully and sparingly. Handguns, shotguns, rifles, and sub-machine guns all make an appearance, and a clever (or lucky) player will trigger infighting between enemies.

The atmosphere here is the real star. The world of Condemned is bathed in an everlasting night. The environments feel gritty and abandoned, with the possibility of threats concealed in each shadow. This is one of the few shooters where the levels seem to get better as the game progresses, rather than tapering off as the developers lose Steam. You start our battling your way through back alleys and subway stations, moving on to a decrepit shopping mall, a fire-damaged public library rife with crackheads, a dilapidated elementary school and eventually a farmstead infested with fat rednecks and karate cultists.

My only beef would be that the ability to perform executions on stumbled enemies is completely performative; it doesn't provide health or anything like that, which would be very welcome in a game where every landed blow causes devastating trauma.

Condemned is a little gem of a horror thriller from one of the posthumous heavy-hitters of the genre, Monolith, may they rest in peace.

Very happy to find my childhood nightmare again 10/10 👍🏻

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Actually a great game with amazing graphics for its time and extremely fun gameplay. A Monolith classic and one of the best first-person horror games ever made.

ok la, i play through youtube walkthrough

amazing game play got rid of a pussy mechanic near the end homeless mario kart in a garbage dumpster
just needs 2 game patches and its perfect actually wish it got modding it deserves and for the love of god dont play the second one

A very original concept for an FPS Horror/Shooter.
Storytelling is unlike any other game and it keeps you wondering what is going to happen next.
It can be a bit rough around the edges and the graphics show their age, but if you are looking a unique and interesting horror/shooter definatly play this. It's a game worth remembering!

peak

Game didn't age like fine wine, but it's still pretty fun. Extremely slow movement though

Great game ahead of its time, it has some issues but is still worth playing.

Great classic, unfortunately the game needs a file to help prevent the fps from dropping in game. The link is from a discussion page on steam that explains it better and will show you how to do it: https://steamcommunity.com/app/4720/discussions/0/3828665650634062132/

Finally, a game that appeals to MY male fantasy (killing crackheads)

Great game, fantastic game, if you can get it working. A 20 year old game has no reason to be missing half of it's entire audio library. Condemned: Criminal Origins has existed on Steam for 20 years and collected revenue as an incomplete product.

Why is condemned 2 not released?

R.I.P Monolith Studios. This is one of the best, immersive and visceral horror games ever made.

R.I.P Monolith Productions... Gone but never forgotten.

1994 - 2025

R.I.P Monolith

Never in my life have i had more fun killing crackheads and homeless people

The biggest and best (selling) point about Condemned is its combat and setting. People scraping at walls and ripping pipes off to use to bludgeon each other to death onto a poorly lit, shit stained carpet floor in the tight cramped halls of an abandoned eroding building. You never get to see any of the normal, ordinary people trying to survive in this game. You don't even get a glimpse or an idea that they exist. But I find overall its definably mediocre. At every point during Condemned you kinda feel like you're playing a game, there's all these little game-isms like being forced to stand in place for a second so that a scare can get you, an overreliance on placed tools for level design and medkits strewn about all over and while these are fickle and tiny examples that kind of style makes up the entirety of Condemned like a cloud. On top of that the movement is a bit too slow, the non combat gameplay a bit dry and yadda dee yadda doo its ok. The whole game is ok. If you want that ugly, gross sickening pointless violence, I still think far cry 2 is the absolute pinnacle of this aesthetic. And If you want a similar to condemned game in everything but combat, I recommend you just go play F.E.A.R 1 instead, to me thats the peak of Monolith as a company. (Don't buy that stupid 50$ copy. get it on GOG and install the same patch you use to make this game runable) Sometimes I wonder if this game suffered from limited resources, and I think I walk away with not much of a feeling that I was glad I spent the 9 hours and 4 bucks I did on it. If you still want it, I think you'll enjoy it quite a lot. SIDE NOTES. "A cop must prove his innocence and to do so, you brutally beat to death a thousand homeless people with improvised weapons". The premise of this game is an insane look man. Insane. Two, Dont use the taser. Just dont. Three, The chief officer calls it Metro-City(fantastic work team) but the city is modeled after detroit. Dont even fuck around. Four, The future is now.

EDIT. rest in peace monolith. we'll miss you.

Always wanted to complete this game since xbox 360 era. Not worth playing in 2025. Only if you have sentimental memories as I do.

I don't know why this game is running at and gradually dropping from a normal fps to 4, but it sure it doing it.

would love to recommend it but the fps is so low
gonna get a refund sadly
prolly gonna find a xbox 360 disk of it later

i'm surprised how good this game is considering it was made in 2005. It isn't as scary as I thought it would be but still lots of fun.

This game is pretty underrated, i would recommend it.

It's a very unique horror experience with a challenging combat mechanics that were fun when you get the hang of it, It has a washed out look to it with bland colors but it still looked pretty good, the story was good but the length was short, except all of that i enjoyed it, 7/10

For the love of God port Condemned 2 to PC!

classic backlog 2000s game, havent got time to finished it... grab it and play!