Serial killers. They're not all bad. Personally we're not keen on "Special K" either, so a bit of breakfast bludgeoning is understandable in a way... ahh, wait a minute. Our introduction appears to have perpetrated an exceptionally awful gag. It needs to be arrested, now! Quick, it's making off through the hole in this paragraph...

And so begins Condemned: Criminal Origins - with a tense chase scene. It's actually a crime/thriller style first-person shooter where you play an FBI agent on the trail of a serial killer, whom you're hot-footing it after right from the start of the game.

Condemned takes many of its cues from the horror genre. There'll be lengthy periods of creeping around darkened rooms by flashlight, with nothing happening... then suddenly a crazed junkie will spring out and ambush you with a piece of lead piping. Combine this with unsettling background noises and effective use of spooky flashbacks, and you've got some fantastically "jumpy" moments.

It's different from your typical shooter in several respects, the most notable being in the weapons department. You can only carry one weapon at a time, and mostly that'll be a crude melee affair, such as a plank with nails in it, a shovel, or whatever else you can find in the game environment.

Melee combat is a simple matter of blocking, then attacking, although there's a definite skill to it, and the different hand-to-hand weapons all have varying reaches, speed, damage and blocking ratings. Whatever you pick up, you're guaranteed some brutal and bloody action, as you can imagine: whacking some nut over the head with a shovel is as satisfying as it sounds. There are guns too, but they're pretty rare and are only loaded with a few bullets.

What makes the fights more exciting is the impressive AI your opponents display. If there's a better weapon nearby than the one they've got, they'll drop theirs and pick it up. There's nothing like the sight of a foaming-at-the-mouth maniac wrenching a fire-axe off the wall and then charging at you. During combat, enemies duck back and block intelligently, and guys who have guns will run behind a pillar to reload them in cover. Very cool.

Condemned also provides the player with an arsenal of crime scene snooping equipment, including a gas spectrometer (for detecting methane given off by decaying flesh, or possibly cows), an ultraviolet light and various cameras for relaying evidence back to the labs for analysis. However, the investigative elements are completely spoon-fed sections, as you're told when to activate a tool and what to use. They help capture that authentic in-the-field police work mood, and advance the plot, but do little else.

Graphically, the dark and depressing environments are captured with an excellent, gritty realism, with some superb strokes of detail like papers fluttering about on the wind in the squealing wake of a subway train. The only downer is that there's no full-screen view mode as, rather strangely, the developer has opted for widescreen, which spoils the sense of immersion in the game a little.

Condemned works well as a suspense-driven, horror-style shooter with added investigative flavour. It's just a shame the developer couldn't have fleshed the actual detective work out with more substance.

With bone-crunching combat and a genuinely spooky and intriguing atmosphere, Condemned: Criminal Origins is pleasantly different to your average shooter, and well worth a shot. However, we can't help thinking it could have been pepped up more with some real depth on the investigative front.