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[Fancy Clown]

Agreed. We need more games that establish expectations for "safe areas" and then fuck with those expectations:

I haven't played Silent Hill 4 (or any Silent Hills for that matter), but from everything I've heard, the titular 'room' sounds exactly like what I'm talking about.

But even other games, such as Resident Evil 2 and 3, do it to some extent. You clear an area of zombies, only to later backtrack through an area you thought was safe only to be hit by some clever jump scare or new enemy.

 

[Imbarkus]

But even other games, such as Resident Evil 2 and 3, do it to some extent. You clear an area of zombies, only to later backtrack through an area you thought was safe only to be hit by some clever jump scare or new enemy.

REmake Crimson Head says hi!

But seriously, imagine if all of a sudden your typewriter room was packed with zombies. RE keeps those areas of safety very distinct. They could stand to mix it up more.

 

[Fancy Clown]

REmake Crimson Head says hi!

But seriously, imagine if all of a sudden your typewriter room was packed with zombies. RE keeps those areas of safety very distinct. They could stand to mix it up more.

I never had a chance to play REmake which makes me sad because it looks amazing.

Yeah, I totally agree about the save rooms. I recently played through 2 and 3 for the first time and every time I went into one of those rooms I expected them to fuck with me and throw and enemy in there, but even Nemesis didn't do that.

 

[JNT]

With lots of comments asking for a 3rd game, I figured I'd write about what I would have done for Condemned 3. You can read about it here. It isn't anything official as all of the team moved over to work on F.E.A.R. 2 after Condemned 2 shipped. No idea if any serious ideas were put on paper.

I love the first Condemned to death. It's one of the best games I've played and a true masterpiece. One of the main reasons I feel this way is because of the game's ability to slowly, incrementally, and deliberately build up my suspension of disbelief. This made it possible for the game to go some really surreal places without ever becoming silly in the eyes of the person playing it. I think a part of that can be attributed to the narrative never trying to force an explanation to the progressively weirder things happening around Ethan.

The one thing that really bothered me in Condemned 2 was the fact that the narrative completely misses the pace and subtlety that made the first game unique. Within the first half hour the game is trying to explain the events of the first game despite the very real risk that doing so is inevitably going to lead down some ludicrous story path and at the same time retroactively make the first game seem less alien (and by extension less frightening). Within the first half hour I get to fight a sludge monster despite the fact that the game hasn't had the time to ease me into the idea of something like that even existing.

That being said, I don't think a Dallas-esque retcon is the remedy for the 'damage' that Condemned 2 did (however tempting it might sound), because it to some degree implies that there is a theoretical storyline that both explains the events unfolding around the player and preserves the horror inherent in those events were they left unexplained. I don't think such a storyline exists to begin with. Instead, the key would be to progressively ramp up the weird stuff happening at a slow, but steady pace, and avoid over-explaining things that are better left unexplained.

 

[Dusk Golem]

Hey everyone, this is Dusk Golem aka AestheticGamer. I have posted on NeoGAF since 2011, and have decided to resign. I have enjoyed posting about horror games here for years, but I no longer wish to support the site and will be leaving for good. I will still be around the internet, I go by AestheticGamer on YouTube, I make games on Steam as Yai Gameworks, and I plan to go by Dusk Golem on other forums. I'll be joining an off-set of the GAF community leaving to try other ventures like ResetEra (Official Twitter for that here: https://twitter.com/reseteraforum ). I hope some of you who read this may consider it, and I plan to try to expose more people to horror games in the years to come. Just not here.

I hope you all are having a good day, and know I always loved the community, and in the end it's the community I'm going to stick with, not the site itself. If you want to follow me, my official Twitter is here: https://twitter.com/AestheticGamer1

 

[JimiNutz]

I loved this game. My housemate and I both bought this at launch of the 360.
I remember I was sitting behind my housemate as he was playing it in the dark. He had a shotgun and one round left and he could hear the homeless people scrambling around in the dark. I slowly moved closer and then shouted 'RRAAWWWWWRRRR' right in his ear. He shat his pants and accidentally fired off his last shotguh shell at nothing.

 

[FadeX]

My favorite game of last generation.

This. Fucking this.

Probably in my top 5 games of all time. I'm really wishing for a potential sequel in the future :\.

I remember playing a demo of this back in mid/late 2005 just before the Xbox 360 launched at a local gaming event. I was blown away. The graphics were so amazing for its time and still look great even today.

Have the devs ever said anything about a sequel or is the dream crushed completely?

 

[Dusk Golem]

In the news that Jace Hall is looking into an Indie developer maybe taking hold of the Condemned license, though it might be worth bringing this topic back up.

 

[Solidsoul]

I am actually playing through this game for the first time right now. I purchased the first and second both brand new sealed for 360. I'm really enjoying it, but I jump really easy so the pace in which i play is dauntingly slow.

It would be awesome to look forward to a third.