Bad Habits - All this useless beauty? - October 26 2005

Condemned another pretty-ugly game

The video game begins. You play as a forensic detective. You point your flashlight at a crime scene. A woman on the floor is so lifelike you can see wrinkles on her feet, yet she’s obviously so dead, sprawled on the bloody wooden floor. Eyes open. Creepy. A tire chain is wrapped around her mouth. Disgusting.

??
Even I, a hardcore gamer who has become callous to game carnage, am surprised at the images in Condemned: Criminal Origins. Yet, the images are well-painted, which reminds us of the following:

??
A generation ago, hundreds of people who would have worked as canvas artists are now drawing set designs for such games. The prettiness of their handiwork is devoted to the ugliness of crime and despair. Recent and yucky masterworks include Resident Evil games, and the sci-fi prison adventure The Chronicles of Riddick.

??
Now in Condemned, there’s more gorgeously rendered nastiness. It’s a new game for the Xbox 360, a cop tale with action spiraling through gross apartments and rickety shacks that are full of rats, blood and graffiti. Even the bricks of walls seem menacing.

??
As the game progresses, things never get sweet. Train stations and alleyways are grimier than gopher guts. This near-photo realism is impressive, though perhaps it would disturb non-gamers who have not grown accustomed to the gore of game culture.

??
To kill is also nasty. Drugged-out weirdos lunge at you. You swing at them with two-by-fours that have nails sticking out of them. If you play your cards right, you whack a bad guy in the head with a board, a metal pipe or some other makeshift weapon, and then you can snap their necks.

??
This action is meant to be as close to lifelike as the sets are. Guns and bullets are hard to come by. That is why it’s important to look for shovels, crowbars and other devices lying about, so you can use them as weapons against criminals who run at you, or from behind you, in shadowy horror.

??
The effect is intense and has made me jump quite a bit, and I rarely startle at games. My fellow curious gamers might ask, is that addictive? Yes, to a degree, if you’re twisted enough to deal with horror and action games, though I’m not sure if I’d play it to the end more than once.

??
The skeptical reader might ask, do such grotesqueries qualify as art? To certain gamers and artists, I’m quite sure it is. To others, it might be, to borrow from an Elvis Costello song, “all this useless beauty.”

??
Fortunately, there is one human sense that games still haven’t mastered, the sense of smell. In Condemned, dead birds show up a lot, and according to your character’s revulsion, they’re super stinky. But an invention hasn’t happened yet to bring their stinkiness to my real nostrils. Thank goodness for small favors.

??
thegamedork@creativeloafing.com

??
Doug Elfman is an award-winning columnist who is also the TV critic at the Chicago Sun-Times.

??
New To You — Used Game Of The Week

??
One of the most popular and critically acclaimed games of the year has just started getting priced at a reasonable $20 and less in used-game stores. It’s Midnight Club 3: Dub Edition for Xbox and PS2.

??
The difficult game makes players learn how to race on city streets, which is nothing new, certainly compared to better Need for Speed games. But it’s good-looking and has a tough, urban feel to it.

??
I don’t like having to trick out my wheel rims and other nonsense. But many other gamers have enjoyed that aspect all year. It’s rated T for mild language and mild violence.