Condemned: Criminal Origins Was Almost The Perfect Immersive Sim

thegamer.com:

Condemned: Criminal Origins was ahead of its time. This first-person shooter/homeless people bludgeoning simulator was a launch title for the Xbox 360 from Monolith Studios and combined brutal combat, terrifying exploration, and a surprisingly tense mystery at the centre of its narrative to create an experience that remains a treat to revisit even today.

You play as Ethan Thomas, an SCU agent accustomed to horrific crime scenes, dealing with twisted psychopaths as part of his daily life across a city that seems like a very unpleasant place. It appears to exist in perpetual darkness, with nobody on the streets except for hostile addicts and weird creepy monsters eager to end our lives, even as we’re simply going about our daily commute. Such is life in the world of Condemned.

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I first played Condemned as a kid, and while much of its writing and character development feels juvenile today, back then it was unlike anything I’d seen before. You seldom had guns or friends to fight alongside you, instead slowly walking through abandoned buildings and morbid subway stations in search of clues, praying that a stranger wouldn’t emerge from the shadows with a baseball bat in hand ready to destroy you. So many environments were shrouded in complete darkness, with your limited torch providing just enough light to stumble through the dark. Even today, few games play with claustrophobia quite so effectively.

While I might be misremembering, if I recall there is a supernatural force causing people in this city to act strangely, aggressively seeking to kill all those they come across. This means that individuals unfortunate enough to call these disparate locations home