Before Shadows of Mordor and F.E.A.R., but a bit after Cate Archer and the Warner Bros. acquisition, Monolith brought us one of the best launch games ever certainly the scariest. Following the cross-medium translation trend, Condemned: Criminal Origins has a lot more straight violence than Se7en ever did, veering off in an even darker, more desperate direction than Finchers psychological horror classic, but nonetheless evoking its trademark vibes. Theres no denying the similarities between intro segments. Even the opening credits have the same high-contrast, x-ray jitters and unwelcoming fonts. The first stage in Condemned the dank, inner city crime scene, the flashlight investigation, and the body at the dinner table looks an awful lot like the first murder Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt investigated, otherwise known as Gluttony. Se7en was set in Detroit, while Condemned opts to drop us in the fictional Metro City, but the inspiration is clear. Again, almost immediately, Criminal Origins goes crazy. That same starting level sees you shooting, bludgeoning and tazing junkie-tweakers left and right. At the end of the stage, not only do you meet Serial Killer X, the main antagonist, but he frames you for a double-cop-murder on the spot. Beyond that, the only similarities are crime-scene investigation and a savagely depraved tone. We prefer Se7ens grounded characters and mind-numbing, albeit coherent, twists, and we doubt Condemned would have existed without it, which is just another reason to be thankful for both.