PS3 Fanboy

Condemned was a launch title for the 360 -- it was mostly overshadowed by other 360 launch titles, but those who played it derived more enjoyment from it than they honestly expected to. It was creepy, violent, and overall a good experience to introduce them to the new off-white console. Condemned 2 is coming and it's not just on the 360 -- it's coming to the PS3 as well. Here's what PSU learned about the upcoming game in an interview with senior producer Dave Hasle:

• There's more open-endedness when it comes to forensic parts of the game -- your power of observation and tools to use are entirely up to you. If you feel like it, you can skip right past those bits and continue fighting baddies. Whatever you prefer.
  
• While that sounds open-ended, the overall experience will be quite linear. We expect one, maybe two endings depending on how involved you get in the story.
• Weapon count right now is at 60, might hit 90 by the time the game finishes up. Throwing weapons are making a pretty big impact on the dev team: bowling pins, booze bottles, etc.
• No cross-platform play, but online modes to be announced later. Monolith has already murmured of an online co-op feature, but until super-duper official announcements are made, we'll take that with a grain of salt.
• No Sixaxis features implemented. Take that as good or bad, whatever your taste.

We didn't go into the storyline or other, more particular, features of the game to save the surprises for our readers who like to stay in the dark on some things. If you are curious, though, check out the full interview and become a knowledgeable person ... about Condemned 2. It's slated for a Spring '08 release, so until then, we'll keep looking for more info.

Condemned 2: Bloodshot has just been announced at the Sega Gamer's Day event for release on the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360 in early 2008. Re-assuming the identity of Ethan Thomas, the severely messed up main character from the first game, players will be tasked with hunting down the location of his missing partner and taking down serial killers. The game will expand upon the violent, bloody first person combat of the previous game with a more robust fighting system and more impromptu weapons. They are also including a variety of online modes, including Deathmatch - something fans of the first game have been asking for for a while.

I thought the first game was pretty good. It was definitely creepy and atmospheric and the graphics were very cool in a Silence of the Lambs kind of way. It was also pretty refreshing to see them mix up the first person shooter genre by putting a lot of emphasis in gory hand-to-hand combat and melee weapons. It had a number of things holding it back from greatness though, including a hackneyed bunch of investigative tools that added nothing to the gameplay, repetitive enemy animations, and bad AI. I have no idea how many times maniacal killers would smack me in the face with a 2x4 and then go 'hide' behind a pillar 1/10th the size of him like he had tricked me. Still, it sounds like Sega is on the right track, and they have about a year before release, so I have high hopes. Any other fans of the original out there?

[Via N4G]