you ever just need to explore decrepit buildings filled to the brim with psychotic vagrants? plunge into urban decay and feel the dried blood and grime beneath your fingernails as you fight for your life. condemned is ashamedly nigh forgotten, understandably so when its sister game is fucking F.E.A.R. revisiting this game, though, was greater on a second playthrough, in both highs and lows. the atmosphere is disgusting. festering paranoia, rotting buildings, filthy footsteps, and ghastly whispers, condemned is one of the few games where i still got startled while knowing what was coming. the utter dilapidation of metro city is tangible in its industrial despair and collapsing floors, but the sickly enemies add to it alongside being able to rip off a weapon from the wall. incredibly simple, brutally visceral. the combat is rudimentary. it's a man killing another man with a rock and huffing with each swing. dodging is only a coincidence or a misstep. you either take a hit or adapt and block hits. yea the last chapter is a bit of a fumble, taking the horror into the background by throwing more and more enemies and guns. yea, the game is janky with audio bugs and a shoddy pc port. yea, maybe there were a few too many guns to overshadow the melee combat. but holy hell, there are not many games this cathartically terrifying. raw, cruel combat and dreadfully dense atmosphere, condemned may not be better than F.E.A.R. (and it's really hard to top F.E.A.R.), but it scratches a specific itch in my brain that not many other games can.