Monolith and Sega's original Xbox 360 launch title Condemned got a cult following for its unique first person melee style and very dark atmosphere, not to mention its forensics investigations. However, the team at Monolith admits that the final product in 2005 wasn't quite the game they wanted to make. Earlier this week at E3 FiringSquad got to see a demo of Condemned 2: Bloodshot which the team now says is truly the game they wanted to make in the first place.

The first part of the demo showed a portion of the melee combat in Condemned 2 where you once again play investigator Ethan Thomas who has a lot of issues to deal with, not the least of which is being attack by a stranger who seems to spill blood on him. He awakens to find a city in chaos where once normal humans have become zombified and ready to attack. While the original Condemned tried to do new things with melee combat even Monolith admits that their system got too repetitive at times. Based on the demo we saw at E3, that problem has been solved. You still take things from the environment such as a 2x4 with nails or a crow bar or an electrical conduit but now there's more emphasis on hand-to-hand combat where you can snap people's necks, punch them out, throw them into TV sets or walls, dislocate their arm and then punch them out, throw melee weapons at them (they might catch them, though, so watch out)...well, you get the idea. Combat in Condemned 2 was great to watch being played live on screen and it looks like it will have enough variety to keep players more interested. One big addition to the game is dogs; they will try to bite hard on you in the game and at one point the character had to break the jaw of a nasty dog that has his teeth in our character's arm.

The second portion of the demo involves forensics. In the first game you had to solve these puzzles to advance in the story but this time Monolith has made the majority of these puzzles as being optional to completing the game. There's a big incentive to completing them, however, as they give you points that you can use to upgrade your character and give him more advantages in combat (having steel tips boots helps take out enemies faster. We got to see a relatively easy forensics puzzle in our demo; examining a dead body the game gave us multiple choices on what happened to the body (what kind of wound did he have? Was he moved from the actual death scene? What does his clothing say about him?) Successfully completing tasks will get you your upgrade points. If you still want to play the game but don't want to fool with the puzzles you don't have to but we are betting it will be much harder to finish.

The final part of the demo showcased a kind of offline skirmish mode that they are calling "Hobo's Fight Club" at the moment. Basically you have an arena (ok just an alleyway in the game) that you can use to create different fight scenarios that pit you against one or more AI controlled opponents. The idea is to stay alive for as long as possible and given the advanced AI for your enemies that might be a challenge. There will be multiplayer in the game as well and we were told that they really want it to emphasis all of the game design aspects of the single player to make it more than just your normal deathmatch modes. Visually Condemned 2 is dark, dirty and detailed with excellent animation and character modeling (seeing an enemy flail while dealing with a dislocated shoulder is quite funny)

Condemned 2: Bloodshot is clearly a violent game and it will be rated M when it is released. A person in our demo session brough up Manhunt 2, asking if they felt if the ESRB might try to slap an AO rating on the game. The response from the game's producer is that they have already been working with the ESRB to make sure that the game gets an M rating and have actually removed portions of the game to conform to their wishes (one is seeing and more importantly hearing an enemy's head being squished inside a vise). They also emphasized that the enemies you face are monsters and not truly human. Regardless, it looks like this game will indeed be a lot of bloody fun and we will have more info before it is released in early 2008.

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