The second Condemned is as polished as the first was ropey, and is definitely one of those games that is better than you would imagine. It's a dark, horror-influenced action-adventure effort, starring possibly the unhealthiest-looking game character ever in Ethan Thomas, ex-cop turned alcoholic, who actually shakes (making shooting tricky) unless you feed him a belt of booze. Despite the state he is in, he is drafted back into a CSI-style outfit: the gameplay includes analysis of evidence (more fun than it sounds) and a modicum of puzzle-solving. But its bedrock is an excellent brawling system, with which you control each fist individually and must chain attacks to cause more damage and trigger special moves. Although a single-path game (except for some decent online modes), Condemned 2 is fun to play throughout, and its relentlessly dark, often hallucinatory visual style will strike a particular chord with horror movie aficionados.