Condemned 2: Bloodsh...holy hell what the F was that!

I played for maybe a hour last night, and graphically, it is just about the nuts. The lighting, surface textures and mood are awesome. Where the original made me startled maybe twice, this one so far has caused me to flinch about a dozen times in the first hour of play.

The combat system is completely revamped. You can actually punch ffs and still kick. There are new combo techniques with weapons and for hand to hand combat that make it alot more enjoyable than it was in the first game. In other words you have to do more than just swing your weapon around hoping you hit the enemy.

There are more than three kinds of enemy...which is a nice switch up.

One of my favorite things so far is that when you have a enemy stunned, you can perform a environment kill. Basically you get them in a headlock and bring them to a area of the map that has a skull symbol, then hit the right trigger, and depending on what you are near, your kill will differ. So far I have only managed to pull of two of these, one kill by slamming the guys head through a TV, and the other was a shattered neck and dumped into a trash receptical....awesome.

Things I don't quite get though.

I really could have sworn that Ethan was black in the last game..or shall I say of a possible African American Heritage....This time around..he looks like a bad ass escapee from a Resident Evil game with a Hangover. Its a overall look improvement that I like, but...still a bit wierd to me.

I mean, seriously, I thought the guy was black...I mean..his skin tone was definately Mocha...

Anyways...

So far, there has been no need to collect birds or tiny bits of metal such as in the first game. I am not sure if that will change as time goes by..but that's how it is for now.

Like I said, I really like this game, and I will probably hang onto for a while to come, so far to me at least, its delivering the scare quality I was thinking I would get out of BioShock. Its friggin scarey looking that's for damn sure.

I am not sure of the story line, but there is this thick black, TAR like substance covering alot of the city I have passed through so far. Kind of like a cross between something I saw on Star Trek once and the black Goop from the last Spiderman movie that turned into Venom. And this SHIT is everywhere....

Also, I was suprised to see that there are multiplayer modes. Two of them are straight up Deathmatch/Team Deathmatch types. But the two other ones appear to be objective. The Pre-order I got came with a tiny MP guidebook that I haven't read at all so maybe I will have a better grasp what they are when I am done with that. I don't hold out much hope for the MP being very good, but I didn't buy it for the MP. I bought it for the SP, which so far, is delivering totally.