The original Condemned game, released on the Xbox 360 around the time of launch some two years ago, was a seriously overlooked title; not only was it possibly the best of a pretty so-so early bunch of titles, but it actually stood out on its own as something a little different from the tried-and-trusted FPS formula we’ve all had rammed down our throats since Goldeneye. The notion that we could tear pipes off walls, pick up prosthetic arms and wrench desk drawers from their railings and use them to batter insane tramps was really rather refreshing, even if it did eventually become somewhat samey.

Still, there was most certainly a lot for Monolith Productions (F.E.A.R) to take from their horror-filled title, and hence we now have a sequel to work our ways through. Condemned 2: Bloodshot arrives promising much the same in the way of beating up tramps, but aims itself at a slightly different, deeper psychological horror angle. The underused investigation techniques that the first game offered to allow you to make sense of the unfolding plotline are back and expanded too, so it would be fair to say that expectations are reasonably high.

The game sees you resuming your role as Ethan Thomas, who seems to not have been doing too well for himself since the conclusion of the last title. Now sporting a manly beard and floppy haircut, he spends most of his time staring into the bottom of a whisky glass in bars (snap!) and getting into scuffles (er, not so snap). Having been involved in a particularly brutal brawl he is chucked out onto the street where he sees a nightmarish vision of his old mentor Malcolm Vanhorn and thus decides to give chase. From there it all slides into a rather horrific, sinister world of aggression, coming close in places to feeling akin to a first-person Silent Hill title.

The main change from the first game, and probably the one you’ve all read about in previews and such, is that the combat is a far deeper, much more brutal experience than it was the first time around. Not content with allowing us to wield all sorts of blunt instruments in our quest to rid America of the homeless people clogging the streets, Bloodshot goes the whole hog and introduces a pretty involving hand-to-hand combat mechanism that’ll see you duking it out with each trigger acting as one of your hands.

The system actually works pretty well too, and after a few fights you’ll be used to having to pick your moments to attack, or to press both triggers to block an incoming punch. You’ll also find yourself mixing your left and right hooks up to get a combat bonus, whilst inflicting damage will also build a rage metre that – whilst not turning Ethan green and causing him to swell into an angry hulk – will slow the action down and see you given a short QTE section which will deliver a powerful finisher if carried off properly. Another addition are environmental kills that allow you to drag a player toward a skull icon floating above certain types of scenery and watch as you carry out some sort of rather brutal context-sensitive final move.

Another different feature this time around is that Ethan, given his rather alcohol-soaked state, is rather poo when it comes to aiming any kind of firearm properly. The solution to such a problem is provided by a number of conveniently placed liquor bottles that seem to turn up in the strangest possible places and, when consumed, give you a limited period of perfect aim. Remember kids: drinking whisky will make you shoot a pistol like a pro! (Daily Mail disclaimer: actually, it doesn’t).

Thus, the combat is actually a pretty rewarding thing, which is in turn lucky because there’s so much of the bloody thing. Whereas the original game broke up the combat nicely between some eerie, rather nerve-jangling periods of solitary exploration, Bloodshot goes too far the other way and starts throwing enemies your way at pretty much every opportunity, which in turn blunts the atmosphere a little and dampens the sense of dread and anticipation.

In fact, the atmosphere in Bloodshot is something that you can really pinpoint as to why the game doesn’t show up too well when it comes to what came before. Criminal Origins kept you on edge because you were really aware that, despite all the strangeness and the violence, the happenings you were playing through were very much rooted in the real world, and the feeling of vulnerability as you traipsed through apartments and abandoned schools was hugely tangible. The sequel, for all its attempts to mix all sorts of weird alcohol-tinged confusion and Silent Hill horror into the story with weird black goo monsters and strange, almost organic growths from walls, ceilings and floors, fails to generate the same feeling of tension and genuine dread.

All this is despite the game looking and sounding pretty fantastic, with all sorts of horridly dirty textures spread across a number of settings and some genuinely pulse-raising backing tracks and effects. At points in the game you will wince as you see in graphic detail the damage a particularly brutal blow or gunshot does or have your toes curl at the creepy gurgles of a rather frightening living doll, so it’s not as if the audio and visual departments haven’t done their jobs.

The storyline running through all this vivid violence is another problem, with Ethan having turned into a somewhat annoying drunk stereotype with whom you hardly ever empathise, even despite his troubles. The plot itself starts reasonably well and seems interesting enough, but around the time you find yourself staggering around the police station approximately midway through the game (a fairly annoying level, I can tell you) in some sort of weird trip the story really begins to take some rather curious turns. The sense of drama is there, sure, but at times it feels like Bloodshot is pulling things out of thin air and trying to blend them into the plot.

Whilst the plot and the atmosphere might not tick too many boxes, the boosting of your investigational abilities and increase in interaction with the characters you report to does do a pretty decent job of getting you involved in what’s going on. At most stages of the game Ethan has four tools at his disposal, from UV light to a sound detector, and you can use these at any stage you want, although some serious prompting means that you’re unlikely to discover anything without the game letting you know it’s somewhere around for you to look for.

Still, the techniques used to collect evidence are great fun, and provide a nice distraction from the seemingly relentless wave of opponents you are battering your way through. Whether it is checking a hotel corridor to find a room number, peering at a body to determine the nature of a wound or looking at a blood splat to determine how someone met their doom, each bit of investigation allows you to submit an answer out of a number of choices, with perfect submission upping your score tally at the end of the level. Combined with a few additional optional tasks that you’re given it combines to give you a ranking depending on how fully you completed each segment, with higher ranks being rewarded with new, shiny equipment for use in future levels. It’s certainly a good reward for that little bit of thorough exploration, and it makes sure you do as much as you can to absorb yourself into Ethan’s world.

It’s still a world with its little niggles, though. Having bits of scenery fly around under explosion is all well and good, but on more than one occasion I found myself jammed in a doorway with a piece of bookcase or some steps that were blocking my passage. With no jump button it meant that I had to either glitch my way past or kick/punch/batter the offending piece for a fairly significant amount of time to be able to get past. There are also a couple of moments where the game requires you to carry out an action quickly or you’ll die, and no matter how much of a good idea the developers thought this way, getting squashed by an elevator because you weren’t aware that you had approximately 3 seconds to force your way through a door is not a particularly rewarding scenario.

Unlike the first title, Monolith have also decided to lump in a few extra modes to give the whole show a bit longer under the spotlight, although not all of them are particularly welcome additions. Multiplayer modes on offer include standard deathmatch and a couple of police vs. bad guy type affairs, and whilst the latter are actually reasonably good fun (especially Crime Scenes, which sees a group of infected tramps hiding some evidence and having the other group of players use their forensics to find them before the clock hits zero), the former turns into a silly mash of melee combat which reminds you of schoolyard fights when you were eight. It’ll amuse you for the first few times, but quite soon it becomes a mode you’ll not want to be involved with too much.

For the player who likes a bit more of a solo offering, Fight Club mode pits the player in hand-to-hand (or weapon-to-weapon, come to think of it) action against as many infected tramps as he can possibly handle, with an online leaderboard showcasing the most persevering of battlers off. It’s a pretty decent little mode, really, with completion of the single player levels unlocking levels and weapons to fight in and with, and as something to relieve a little after-work stress it’s surprisingly effective.

Condemned 2 is, as you have probably guessed, something of a polarising experience. Whilst on the one hand you have some rewarding, tough combat, lovely visuals and sounds and a very praiseworthy increase in the level of investigation, it’s all slightly undone by a rather nonsensical plot, a loss of the sense of isolation due to having enemies swarm towards you more often than not and some annoying little glitches that crop up as you carry on through. You get the sense that Monolith might have overstretched their vision for the series a little and given us something a little hit-and-miss as a result. It’s certainly not a bad game – heck, it’s still decent in its own right, but given the potential the first game showed it is something of a disappointment nonetheless.