Condemned: Criminal Origins

Introduction

As part of the research for our project I decided to buy and play a Survival horror / Psychological horror “Condemned: Criminal Origins” on the Xbox 360. I decided to do this as I had very little experience of playing this game genre. Whilst playing I wanted to see if any aspects of the game itself made me feel at all paranoid.

Limited light source

The light itself made me focus on one particular area of the room and the rest lay in darkness, this made me feel uncomfortable as enemies could potentially be wherever your touch wasn’t pointing. I found myself constantly turning round just check if anything had creped up on me.

Audio

This potentially made me feel the most uncomfortable as the sound seemed to over take the visuals on occasions as you could see so little, anything from the grunts and groans from the lurkers in the dark, to something as simple as accidentally walking over a can or bottle which would then make the appropriate noise as it tumbled across the floor. I remember freezing on one occasion and had to spin around erratically trying to fine the source of the sound.

Level layout

The majority of the levels I have played were predominately dark with minimal light sources, areas varied from narrow maze like corridors to wide open halls. When I could I would shut any doors behind me, but whilst in the large open areas I kept spinning round to keep checking my surroundings for any enemies lucking in the shadows.

Movement speed and Animations

The speed, at which your character walked, ran and also looked around the environment felt rather slow; I found this to be very effective as it definitely built up suspense and fear. I always had the feeling that I wouldn’t be able to run away from trouble and instead forced to face my fears.

Animations were also slow, whether this is climbing a ladder, stepping over an obstacle or jumping down to a lower level; this again was effective and made me want to urge the character to move faster because of the possibility that there could be someone behind him. Even checking your ammo had an animation as this was not displayed on the players head up display, when I did posses a gun I was always aware of this and tried to saver it.