Trailer, via CriterionDevil.
Condemned 2: Bloodshot Turns Forensics Into a Weapon
Condemned 2: Bloodshot is a 2008 first-person action and survival horror game for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Monolith Productions developed it and Sega published it. It came out in North America and Australia in March 2008, and in Europe the following month. It is a sequel to the 2005 game Condemned: Criminal Origins.
It was released as Condemned 2 in Europe and Australia.
Set eleven months after the first game, former FBI agent Ethan Thomas has become a violence-prone alcoholic plagued by hallucinations. Violence keeps escalating across the city of Metro, and riots break out among its vagrant population. Thomas’s former colleague Rosa pulls him back in to track down the missing Malcolm Vanhorn. He ends up at the center of a conspiracy, evading a powerful cult that wants him dead.
Ethan Thomas and the Serial Crimes Unit
Malcolm Vanhorn is missing, and Lt. Rosa convinces a reluctant Thomas to help find him. Narrowing Vanhorn’s last location to a derelict hotel, Serial Crimes Unit Director Ike Farrell sends Thomas, Cmdr. John Dorland, and Sgt. Pierce Le Rue to investigate.
They find Vanhorn’s mutilated body. Back at the SCU, Rosa finds the thoracic cavity exposed and the sternum missing. She notes Vanhorn had unusual vocal cords, and links this to Thomas’s chest x-ray in his personnel file, which would have shown his vocal cords if the area had not been redacted.
Mayor Rachel Mars’s body turns up at the Metro Museum, decapitated, parts of her skin peeled off, lumps of muscle torn from the bone. A piece of paper with a hand-drawn X lies near her.
Rosa points out that Leland Vanhorn’s body was never found. She speculates that he may not have died, and that Malcolm nursed him back to health until Leland killed him. Thomas also finds blood-stained pieces of metal that appear to have been ripped from Mars’s body.
Combat Built on Melee, Not Gunfire
Bloodshot is a psychological thriller with first-person shooter, survival horror, and action elements. The gameplay has two main components: combat and investigation. Combat is built primarily around melee. Firearms are available but relatively uncommon, though more prevalent than in the first game.
Players can find melee weapons lying out in the open, force them from the environment by pulling a pipe from a wall or snapping off a 2×4, or take them from an enemy. Enemies can acquire and use any weapon the player can, including firearms.
Each weapon has its own combination of damage, speed, and range stats. An axe may have higher damage and range than a pipe, but the pipe may be faster.
There are three classes of melee weapon:
- Light weapons — fast but weak: 2x4s, pipes, signs, electrical conduits, batons
- Heavy weapons — strong but slow: sledgehammers, baseball bats, shovels, crowbars, axes
- Exotic weapons — level-specific: prosthetic arms, gumball machines, exploding dolls, broadswords, antlers
Blocking is an essential component of the game mechanics, since the player can only take a few melee hits before dying. A successful block momentarily knocks an enemy off balance, giving the player a chance to attack. A quick-kick is available at all times, whether the player is unarmed, carrying a firearm, or carrying a melee weapon.
Forensic Tools and the Investigation Loop
Players crack open a new set of high-tech forensic tools to track killers and solve murders. Murders can be solved a number of different ways to keep players guessing throughout each suspenseful investigation.
Monolith looked closely at the reception of the first game, focusing on what was popular among fans and critics and what was not. The studio specifically set out to correct the two most frequently criticized elements of the original: the implementation of the forensic tools and the lack of depth in the melee mechanics. It also tried to enhance or expand every aspect of the original, from graphics and cutscenes to AI and overall gameplay.
Release Dates and Platforms
| Region | Platform | Release window |
|---|---|---|
| North America | PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 | March 2008 |
| Australia | PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 | March 2008 |
| Europe | PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 | April 2008 |
What Monolith Set Out to Fix
The plot drew disagreement among the designers themselves. There was a push to fill in the narrative blanks and resolve the open-ended mysteries from the first game. Rooke said: “in my opinion, and I feel mostly responsible for this, the result revealed explanations for things that should have remained a mystery.”
That is a rare admission, and it points to the part of Bloodshot that drew the most internal friction: the decision to answer questions the first game left open. Rooke does not describe the outcome as a success.
A Story Built Around Its Environments
Unusually, the game’s storyline was constructed around the environments rather than the other way around. Lead level designer Jonathan Stein worked with the team to build spaces first and let the narrative grow from them. Stein said level theming was more centered around what environments would be new than concern over a cohesive whole, and that after the environments were built, the story was threaded between them.
Thomas heads to a nature reserve and lodge after finding evidence Vanhorn recently visited. En route, Farrell contacts him and says, “some of us see you as a threat – the enemy. I see you as an asset, a special tool too great to be wasted. Rememdium.” Finding Dorland’s men all over the reserve, Thomas sneaks in and finds a computer on which Vanhorn has left him a message.
This approach was yet another cause of disagreement. Stein said some on the team, himself included, were concerned that the environment, the story, and the enemies felt schizophrenic, or at least not cohesive.
The Verdict on Condemned 2: Bloodshot
Condemned 2: Bloodshot is a 2008 first-person action and survival horror game for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. It is a sequel to Condemned: Criminal Origins. Monolith set out to correct the forensic tools and the melee depth, and it set out to expand everything else.
What is documented is the intent, not the result. The studio’s own designers disagreed about the plot and about the environment-first structure. Rooke’s quote is the clearest statement from inside the project that the sequel’s answers may have cost it something.
The melee system, the weapon classes, and the forensic tools are the parts worth watching here. The score below comes from an IGDB critic aggregate.
Score: 8.5/10 (IGDB critic aggregate, 5 outlets)
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