At its heart, Condemned remains simple: Kill anything trying to kill you. It’s the details, though, that make it a hell of a ride from gruesome start to gory finish. And all the nail-biting while, I guarantee you’ll be flicking on the light switch the minute the sun goes down – it’s suspenseful, scary, and downright twisted.

You’re grabbed by the throat right from the start. As serial killer specialist Detective Ethan Thomas, you’re hot on the trial of a particularly nasty fellow nicknamed The Matchmaker. But what happens just moments after you begin Condemned throws you headfirst into a nearly game-long chase that pits you against not only a serial killer and the police, but also every random nutjob in town.

The creep factor never lets up as you skulk through the city’s subway tunnels to an abandoned department store and beyond. And all you have is a loyal crime-lab specialist (who sifts through evidence you send to her remotely), an ESP-like ability to see through the eyes of the killer, and a penchant for some rather grisly finishing moves. Oh, and a resourcefulness for weaponry. All types of weaponry.

That choice of weapons is one of Condemned’s most interesting features –  you’re able to wrench pipes off walls, conduits off electric boxes, and pick up nail-embedded 2x4s and even mannequin arms. The variety of melee weapons give Condemned a really free-wheeling, realistic feel – but more importantly, it lends your struggle for survival a genuine air of desperation and terror. Firearms, while they do exist and pop up from time to time, have limited ammo, so when you hear that empty barrel go “click, click,” it’s time to hunt down a pipe because there’s always some lunatic lurking around the corner.

And call them “crazy” if you want, but all those violent whackadoos that haunt Condemned’s creepy environments? They’re pretty damn smart – hiding just out of view, moving in for a quick hit, then running off into the shadows to wait, blocking your swings, and basically being pains in Ethan’s rear.

And frankly, when I first started seeing footage of Condemned, I worried about pacing. For a game that revolves around bashing enemies, it could get old real quick without a snippy pace. No worries there –  when you aren’t collecting evidence, the kill-everything-that-moves gameplay never grows stale. But a lack of any sort of map is where pacing takes a hit – one dark hallway dissolves into the next, and you can find yourself running in circles, which kinda sucks. Especially when all you want to do is see what comes next. And with combat this brutal, getting lost in a dark maze because of a lack of direction is disheartening.

But for the ride alone, Condemned’s super-creepy serial-killer yarn cannot be beat. It looks great, but more than that,  it doesn’t rest on its visuals to get its gruesome point across: Next-generation gaming is just as much about gameplay as it is about graphics.

ON XBOX 360

+ Compelling plot delivers plenty of creepy kicks.

+ Unique approach to an otherwise straightforward style of game.

- Map, please!

? Ethan’s voice sounds weirdly a lot younger than he actually looks.

8.5