Condemned 2: Bloodshot, follow-up to the Xbox 360 launch title Condemned: Criminal Origins, joins the ranks of games like Manhunt and The Punisher in its depiction of intimate, fiercely intense, and utterly explicit violence.

It features some of the most gruesome kills ever seen in a game, forcing as it does players to bludgeon enemies with bricks, hack at them with paper cutter blades, and bash them with nail encrusted two-by-fours. And those are just some of the game's standard means of dispatching enemies. More stylized finishing moves include impaling people on rebar, smashing their heads into televisions, and throwing them off balconies.

Bloodshot's bloodlust is matched by its terrifying atmosphere. Set in a rapidly deteriorating urban metropolis overrun by homicidal maniacs, we explore all manner of mostly abandoned locations, from a doll factory to a bowling alley to a barge. The settings are dark and decrepit, filled with shadows and ferocious things that go bump. And the subtly eerie score is the perfect complement, raising in fervor and volume at just the right moments to make you leap from your seat whenever crazed lunatics jump out from the murk.

Simply put, the game's creators know how to scare us. Indeed, if, while playing Bloodshot, you feel no shivers and your heart fails to race, then you have been irreversibly desensitized to the worst horrors that our horror-obsessed popular culture can dish out.

The only problem is that the writers themselves seem to have gotten lost in the gloom. Our hero, an ex-cop recruited back onto the force, is a vicious, mean-spirited, swing-first-and-ask-questions-later drunk, and most of the officers he works with are just as unlikeable. And heaven knows we don't run into many characters worth caring about as we prowl the streets. One can't help but think that perhaps these reprehensible people and their hellish world might not be worth saving.

And that makes the horror and viciousness all the harder to stomach. Violence -- even the extreme kind -- has its place in modern, mature video games. Used in appropriate context it can have a marked impact on the emotions the player feels as the game unfolds -- we need look no further than to violent but psychologically complex games like Bioshock and Assassin's Creed to understand that brutality can have narrative purpose. But without the interesting protagonists and moral conundrums integral to a good story, it just becomes violence for violence's sake.

Of course, hardened horror game players will almost certainly find some satisfaction in Condemned 2: Bloodshot's sensational action. The graphics, controls, and artificial intelligence are all highly evolved, providing little fodder for technical complaints (the multiplayer modes are a little run of the mill, but most players won't even try playing online -- live play isn't the reason why people pick up scary games).

However, the grimy characters and senseless story will almost certainly end up leaving players feeling a little hollow, and perhaps in need of a shower.

Play at your own risk.