There was once a time when the common FPS protagonist could carry every weapon he encountered and a full load of ammo for each. Likely as a result of the success of games such as Halo, which have a more realistic limit on weapon carrying, this has become somewhat less common. Nowadays, you're typically limited to a couple of guns, some ammo, and maybe some grenades. Condemned 2: Bloodshot takes this its (il)logical conclusion: not only are you limited to carrying a single, solitary weapon, but if that weapons happens to be a firearm, you're only allowed to carry the ammo in the clip.

As a gameplay mechanic that forces the player to scavenge his immediate area for improvised weapons, it's kind of interesting. But it also flies in the face of common sense: even the most drunken and idiotic of ex-cops (which your protagonist certainly is) probably has a couple of pockets in which he can stick some extra bulltets, or failing that, his gun once the bullets run out. Seriously, if I've got room for a flashlight, a radio, and a digital camera/UV light/audio spetrograph, then I've got enough room for a couple of extra .38 shells.

And that's just the most obvious and pervasive flaw you'll encounter.

As game studios continue to pillage existing franchises, the affliction of sequel-itis is becoming more and more common. I didn't play the first Condemned beyond the demo, because back then I wasn't in the "business" of reviewing games. I also gave it a pass because it looked to be little more than a "beat the junkies with a 2x4" simulator. If I wanted to go around (and get away with) beating on junkies with a 2x4, I'd move back to Detroit. However, it would appear, based on the situation as presented in Bloodshot, that some significantly non-junkie beating related activities took place. Among other things, these activities resulted in the fall from grace of our (now drunken) protagonist as well as some sort of bum-uprising in the unnamed city in which the game takes place. The problem is that none of this is explained. The only context you start the game with is that you're playing a loser ex-cop and that there is some bad-mojo in the air.

I'd sure like to know why that guy in a pig mask (it is a mask...right?) is attacking me.

What I've been able to figure out so far is that you play (as mentioned) a drunken ex-cop. This is important, the fact that he's a drunk. If you actually want to have a steady hand on the rare occasion in which your gun has ammo, you must also find a drink. He's got the shakes, and without that nerve steadying ambrosia, your gun waves all over the place. There are some bad "people" (and I mean people in the loosest sense, their identity and species is, in fact, unclear) placing some sort of agression inducing noise maker contraptions throughout the condemned (ha ha. Get it? Condemned?) buildings in the city. The noise makers apparently piss off the bums and injure our protagonist. There also appears to be some sort of shadow/dream world which our protagonist occasionally visits in which the bad guys are all made out of some sort of black icky oily substance which is taking over everything.

I'm lost. Does this make any sense to you yet?

The whole one weapon, no ammo thing really irks me not only because it is well, just idiotic, but also because it also seriously gets in the way of gameplay. It's not a transparent mechanic, it's an in your face rule. At one point, early on, you'll encounter a thug with a .38 revolver. After you take him down, cool, you've got a gun. In the next room is another gun, fully loaded. This is a .38 we're talking about: 6 bullets. Because the gun you've got has bullets, your options are to leave that gun alone or drop the gun you've got and pick that one up, leaving your (probably partially loaded) gun behind. Moving on, you'll go down some more hallways and some caps into the local wildlife. Oops. All of out bullets. You have two choices here: look for something to beat on people with or run all the way back to the room that you know has a loaded gun in it.

The fact that this choice exists and that I must make it and that the best choice is to go back for the gun is just ludicrous beyond belief. You can't even just pocket the gun on the off chance that you might find some ammo for it. You have to drop it. You simply cannot carry more than one object at a time. You can't even carry two bricks at a time. Crikey, I play video games all day and I can manage to pick up two little red bricks at the same time. This is important: there are little red bricks in the game, and you do need to occasionally pick them up. One. At. A. Time. Say there's an "emitter" beyond your reach. Simple, run on over to that pile of bricks and pick up....just one. Run back over to where the emitter is, and throw the brick. Oops. you missed. Run back over the brick pile and pick up...just one. And so on.

I find myself alternating between three states whilst playing this game: utter frustration at being killed by opponent that I never even saw, being terrified by opponents that jump out of the shadows, and being bored out of my freaking skull because I have to do things like go back for one more brick or those three extra bullets that I know I left behind. And that brings me to my final point on why this game pisses me off so much...

It is so utterly unbalanced and unfair to the player. Even on the easiest setting.

Time and time again, I have been jumped and mauled by opponents whose presence I was previously unaware of. And it's not like I'm not looking for them. It's not like I'm not being careful to peek around each corner. It's like they're invisible and psychic and when I step around a corner they come bursting through the walls, on fire, and kill me. Instantly. And so the game sends me back to the previous checkpoint, and I have to replay last fifteen minutes all over again. I've played this game exactly twice. Each time for a little over an hour. And both times, it was a string of nearly unavoidable deaths that led to me turning it off and saying to nobody in particular, "screw this, I have better things to do". I just do not enjoy games that are punishingly hard. I play to enjoy myself. I play to experience the story. I do not play because I enjoy looking at loading screens and doing the same crap over and over again. Thus, I can only conclude that I (and others like me) am not part of this game's target audience.

This is all too bad, really. I actually kind of like the fighting mechanics. Bloodshot is a sort of dirty fighting simulator. You can block and parry. There are special moves. When you parry, you can counter attack for bonus damage. And each weapon behaves just a little bit differently based on speed, range, damage potential and condition (which determines how many hits it will withstand). The variety of hand held weapons is pretty outrageous, as well: bats, hammers, pipes, conduits, beaker stands, prosthetic arms, crutches, bricks and bottles. The list just goes on and on.

There's even a mode where you can just hang out in an alley and fight against a continuous onslaught of beweaponed thugs. And that mode is, for me, the best one. I don't actually care for the story mode all that much. It's too uneven and I'm sick of dying for no apparent reason. And I don't really care for the story, in part at least, because I have no idea what the heck is going on. The alleyway brawl, though: that's a hoot. So, while the main campaign is unlikely to see much more of my time, the next time I'm feeling particularly bloodthirsty, I'll boot up Bloodshot for the practice fights.