Condemned: Criminal Origins

....and are generally uninteresting as antagonists, owing to their almost cartoonish uber-villainy (they would not be out of place in certain Marvel comic franchises).

Never heard of this one? Not surprising. An obscure, dirty and extremely short lived franchise from the days of the Dreamcast and original X-Box, Condemned: Criminal Origins is a bizarre hybrid of first person not-quite-shooter, point and click adventure and survival horror.
 
Billed as another step in the evolution of horror in video games, the original game follows the exploits of Detective Ethan Thomas who operates in a world of urban filth and decay; a world that is crumbling down around his ears, its dissolution almost inevitable. The game makes a point of emphasising how close society has come to total collapse; radio broadcasts, TV news reports and snippets of overheard conversation emphasising the almost mindless violence that is escalating beyond all control or containment, the abandonment of civilised mores by otherwise perfectly “normal” people who, within a space of days, become just other examples of the human vermin infesting every street of every city; the inability of sociologists, politicians, priests and philosophers to explain the phenomenon, leaving humanity only one step away from descent into total chaos.

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