At Sega's recent reveal of survival-horror title Condemned 2's multiplayer mode, we got a chance to go fist-to-fist with the rest of the videogame industry. The multiplayer features Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Bum Rush, and Crime Scene modes, and we got to play all four on a wide variety of maps, from the claustrophobic Hangover Alley to the creepily vertical Farmhouse. The maps are one of the strengths of the multiplayer mode, capturing the creepy feel of the core gameplay with plenty of dark corners and hidden alcoves, and bricks, butcher's tools and Molotov cocktails tucked throughout.

Here There Be Monsters

Bum Rush and Crime Scene are the early highlights. They take advantage of the uniqueness of the Condemned 2 setting to differentiate themselves from other games' multiplayer. Bum Rush puts two players in the role of heavily armed SCU agents, while the rest play as the twisted, "Influenced" bums. SCU agents don't respawn, while the bums keep respawning and coming until they bring the SCU agents down. The two players with the highest scores get to play as SCU agents in the next round. Playing in the freakish Doll Factory stage, the Influenced team quickly learned that the best tactic was to physically drive the SCU agents apart from each other and then force them down by weight of numbers. SCU players learned to lay down fields of fire and keep to the open spaces.

This mode sees the most Molotov cocktail drops, with the fuming pyromaniac cocktails waiting for enterprising antagonists all over the level. Molotovs do damage over time and also obscure the view of whomever is unlucky enough to get hit by one. Since nailing an SCU agent with one essentially guarantees their death, and hitting a crowd of Influenced with one essentially guarantees that an SCU agent's damage score will be in the top two that round, getting to the Molotovs is key. Of the modes we played, Bum Rush was hands-down our favorite.


Crime Scene was played out in a massive multi-story building (the Farm House map), with the players hunting through the attic, interior, basement and occasionally the railings around the house. In Crime Scene, the Influenced have two "evidence cases" to hide at the start of the round, whatever primitive weapons they can get, and spectrometer scramblers. The SCU agents have guns, spectrometers and a limited amount of time to find both evidence boxes. Holding up the spectrometer shows a 1-100 reading for each case. The higher the number is, the closer the evidence is. Once the Agents find the evidence, they still need a few seconds to scan it before they score.