Condemned: Criminal Origins

Condemned: Criminal Origins is a dark first-person survival horror from Monolith Productions, in which the player, as investigator Ethan Thomas, hunts a serial killer through the decaying districts and abandoned buildings of an American metropolis. Unlike most shooters of the time, the gameplay is built on raw melee combat - with pipes, boards, hammers or baseball bats - complemented by forensic investigation at crime scenes, where the player scans clues, photographs evidence and analyzes found objects to progress through the story. The atmosphere relies on claustrophobic, dark spaces full of homeless people mutated by an unknown influence and on psychological tension rather than the action pace of classic first-person shooters. Melee weapons also wear out and break as the game progresses, forcing the player to improvise and reach for new objects found nearby instead of relying on one favorite piece of gear.

The game was an Xbox 360 launch title in November 2005 and earned a reputation as one of the rawest horror games of its generation.

The PC version arrived roughly five months later, in April 2006, and carried over the same story and content unchanged in terms of game mechanics. It brought support for higher resolution and sharper textures than the console version and controls adapted for mouse and keyboard, which required a different approach to melee combat and aiming than a gamepad. The system requirements were fairly high for their time, which limited the pool of players who could enjoy the game on PC in full glory.

The sequel, Condemned 2: Bloodshot, from 2008, never came out on PC at all and remained exclusive to Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, so the PC version of the first game remains to this day the only representative of the series on computers, and for many players without a console, the only way to try the series at all. That's precisely why it remains a popular choice among PC owners even years later, when the game is commonly available on digital storefronts without needing to reach for an old console.

Why play it: For players without a console, it's still the only chance to try the Condemned series on PC, since the sequel Bloodshot remained exclusive to Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.