I picked up Condemned 2, and it looks very promising. I’ll be saving the single player portion for when I get together with Toby, as is tradition. Fortunately Condemned 2 comes with a multiplayer mode which, while not perfect, is quite a bit of fun.

I’ve only really played the ‘Crime Scene’ mode, but honestly after playing that, I don’t know why I’d play regular death match. In Crime Scene, one team plays as the cops, and the other team plays as the drugged out, psychotic, homicidal hobos (called The Influenced).

The Influenced are tasked with hiding two crates of evidence (which are basically boxes full of ice packed around a severed head) at the beginning of the round, and then protecting them from the cops for the length of the game. They start with melee weapons. The cops, obviously, have to track down the evidence and scan it. They have little scanner devices that work sort of like “hot/cold” to tell you if you’re getting close to a crate. The cops start with guns and very limited ammo. The catch here is, you can’t have your scanner and weapon out at the same time, and it takes a second to swap between them. So if you get caught with your scanner out, chances are, you’re toast.

So it becomes a good idea to have one cop scanning, and the others protecting him as you move around the map, while the influenced hide in corners and closets and attempt tp leap out and murder cops. Now imagine all of this taking place in some super creepy and dark environment, and you’ll get what the game is. They have actually managed to capture the same suspenseful feeling from the single player survival horror FPS in the multiplayer game. There’s no running and gunning here, it’s all quiet and scary.

I’d recommend it, especially if you’ve played the first one. I’ll write about the single player game once I get to it, but they already pretty much nailed the formula for that one in the first game, all they really had to do was fix some stuff. The multiplayer was the new bit, and while it will clearly never be a Gear of War, CoD4 or Halo 3 juggernaut on XBL, it’s a pretty fun title.

I’ve heard Army of Two has gotten some mixed reviews, but I love it, both co-op and versus modes. Sure, the game has some technical flaws, I’m not debating that. But the fun factor wipes them all away for me. Also, if you aren’t playing it co-op, you’re doing it wrong.

Rainbow Six Vegas 2 is also out next week, which I now have high hopes for. It’s pretty much a given that the multiplayer matches and maps will be fun, but the addition of an honest-to-goodness co-op campaign makes me giddy.