Heh, I haven't even played the game, but my guess is he's totally spot on. Even without playing the game that's pretty much what I was getting from it. The difference is, in my neck of the woods we like our horror supernatural.
I like my horror, either way -- realistic or supernatural. I think to me, that all really depends on the story itself, the direction the story is moving in, etc etc.
I can do without Dragonball Z bullshit (which disappoints me to hear about), but I don't mind crazy supernatural crap, cults, whatever. As long as it has horrific monsters, blood gushing everywhere, and lots of sadistic <whatever>, that's cool.
The DragonBall Z thing sounds....odd...
Condemned 1 didn't really aim for monsters nor cults; your enemies were pretty much all human.
Indigo Prophecy was something completely different. That was a game that centered entirely around plot, built up a great foundation, got you totally hooked, and then literally threw in random supernatural shit that didn't even make sense in terms of the plot it had built, threw in totally shitty, stinky, just-plain-stupid sci-fi elements that added nothing to any aspect of the game, plot or otherwise, and a stupid, nonsensical, braindead "love story" that flew out of a monkey's butt and featured nudity and a creepy sex scene that so did not need to be there.
And let's not forget how somehow a good first half of an adventure game suddenly turned into in the last half an interactive cut-scene button-matching hell, too.
My guess is that Condemned 2 doesn't come anywhere near the clusterfuck that was Indigo Prophecy (I actually played the Euro version due to the censorship issues... I wish I hadn't), and I suspect that Yahtzee's issues with Condemned 2, while probably valid, are at least somewhat more based on taste.
On the gameplay part, I'll probably agree w/ you that Condemned 2 probably isn't the mess Indigo turned out to be -- namely b/c the shooting elements when they were in Condemned 1 were actually good, so I doubt they screwed those controls up in Condemned 2. We can't really say the same for Indigo, b/c it screws the gameplay up with way too many interactive cut-scenes in the last half of the game and not as many adventure elements as the first half of the game.
From what I've heard and read, I guess it sounds like in Condemned 2, we will do more shooting than we did in Condemned 1; I'm not sure if that'll be a good or bad thing, since Condemned 1 had such awesome melee combat...If there's a PC port, I'll just have to wait and see....
He's right about one thing, though: never reveal the mystery. Ever.
For horror, yes -- that does work, in most cases. It's the fear of the unknown that usually scares the life out of us. Once we know, then the scariness is usually pretty much gone.
Revealing mysteries in horror should probably really only be done when you're trying to make the story the centerpiece. In other words, that's basically when all the horror elements are completely done with and you're trying to wrap up the entire story for good.
I don't think that's why there's very many good horror movie sequels usually, either -- b/c they reveal so much by the end of the first story, that when there's a sequel, you're not scared of the same character in the sequel. Often, you know what makes them tick, by now. Also, since the scare tactics from the first one won't work anymore, what you're really looking for in the sequel is more storytelling and backstory; which'll make it more of a drama and less of a horror movie.
And if you do, make it so bloody convoluted nobody can figure out what the hell you're talking about anyway (see: Silent Hill).
Yeah, you gotta' love Silent Hill, hehe.
