Spurred on by its success, Monolith have now delivered a sequel set twelve months after the events of the first game. Former FBI Agent Ethan Thomas has gone down hill since his vicious encounter with Serial Killer X. Now little more than a dishevelled and bad tempered drunk, Ethan is plagued by visions and burdened by the violent collapse of society around him. The game starts with a frantic phone call from Malcolm Van Horn - an acquaintance of Ethan’s. His former employers at the Special Crime Unit then ask him to find out if Van Horne has been murdered, and if so, by whom and for what reason.

The game expands on the unanswered mysteries from the first game: playing on the supernatural element and introducing new characters and twists along the way. The plot does a lot to unravel the mysteries from the original and (despite some plot holes that appear to have been used to mask poor game design) it is generally well crafted. Fans should note, however, that its more fanciful supernatural leanings tend to pull it away from the raw grittiness that saturated the original.

Unsurprisingly, the game’s locations are just as drab and miserable as before - at times oozing with an atmosphere that is both charged and claustrophobic. Against perpetual twilight or darkness the narrow corridors, ruined buildings and filthy back alleys remain the perfect backdrop for the blood soaked, violence-fuelled story. The ambience is helped immensely by a superb use of sound effects; the rustling litter underneath Ethan’s feet, the heavy crunch of a metal tyre iron against someone’s skull, or the sounds of floorboards groaning as something moves on the floor above. It all adds to the chilling atmosphere - the effects punctuating the silence like someone dragging their nails down a chalkboard.

For the opening sections of the game, the melee combat makes a return, with the player using everything - their bare fists, wooden planks, pipes, baseball bats and bottles - to take on the rampaging thugs. Melee combat has been improved, with the player now able to chain attacks together in one-two combos. However, while this makes combat much more fluid, the game opts for an obtrusive combo ring in the top-centre of the screen, which distracts from the otherwise unblemished atmosphere. It would have been nice to have an option to turn it off.

Landing clean and precise blows on an enemy causes a three-tier combo bar to fill up. Once a section is full, a double tap of the punch button starts a short “quick time event” sequence. If the player successfully completes the sequence, their opponent usually ends up with a broken limb or snapped neck. Condemned is now even more brutal than before and doesn’t shy away from blood, gore and decapitation. A fitting demonstration of this is that subdued enemies can now also be dispatched using an environmental kill. This involves grabbing hold of your opponent and throwing them over banisters, smashing them headfirst into TVs or arcade cabinets and even squashing their head in a machine press. The hand-to-hand combat retains the immensely satisfying and visceral "hands on" feel that made the first game so different.

You’d be forgiven at this point for thinking that it’s all good news, but sadly things soon start to go horribly, horribly wrong. Halfway through, the game introduces high-powered assault weapons and it starts to feel like Monolith has mixed up Condemned 2’s design documents with those of a game in their F.E.A.R. series - resulting in two separate games mashed into one. Although the first game featured guns, these were very limited in ammo and were only good for a couple of shots and tricky situations. Here, however, a large portion of the game is devoted to full-on fire fights, with ammo so plentiful as to be virtually unlimited. What’s more, the aiming is twitchy - even if you remove Ethan’s alcohol-induced shakes by taking a drink to steady his nerves.

Furthermore, the enemy A.I. - which worked so well for hand-to-hand combat - is totally lacking. Enemies suddenly seem incapable of doing more than standing in one spot and shooting. Even when they do make a vague attempt to hide, they end up conveniently sticking their head or other body parts out – making it as easy for you to kill them as fish in the proverbial barrel. The effectiveness of the health system also starts to crumble in these sections. Whereas before two or three enemies with melee weapons could quickly kill a careless player, now Ethan seems to be almost unstoppable. The tremendous sense of foreboding and tension that has been carefully crafted up to this point is totally washed away. The whole thing becomes little more than just another shooter - and a poorly made one at that.

For every step it takes forward in atmospheric content and ideas, there is another step backwards thanks to the dire shooting sections. It’s a gob-smackingly poor approach which will leave any self-respecting gamer wondering just what was going through the designers’ heads when they decided to discard the things that made the original game so unique.

Aside from the improvements to the hand-to-hand combat, the other area where the game does get it right is the greater detail that has gone into the crime scene investigations. Players are now expected to think more about what has happened - selecting multiple-choice answers in order to arrive at the right conclusion. Although the only real consequence to getting these wrong is affecting the player’s completion rating at the end of the level, and despite some questions being overly simplistic, they do break up the fighting and help the game retain some of its former originality.

The obligatory multiplayer aspect has been shoehorned into the game and there are no real surprises in the modes available, save for the hand-to-hand combat – which actually carries across quite well. At best, though, it’s a forgettable inclusion that will likely be devoid of players within a few months. The time and energy spent implementing it would have been better directed to improving the lacklustre single player experience.

Overall, Condemned 2 starts off brilliantly and has much potential, but ends up a crushing disappointment. Not only does it pail into comparison to its predecessor, but it also fails to stand up against other games in the FPS genre. It could have been a far superior title if the developers hadn’t demeaned it by destroying its sense of uniqueness. Let’s hope that by the time the inevitable third game turns up, Monolith will have regained its senses and returned the series to what it should be – shocks and scares instead of guns and firefights.