Condemned gets a nod because the combat at least recognizes the reality of beating someone to death with a lead pipe. Sure, you don't get fountains of blood, but the first time you hit someone across the face with a crow bar and are greeted with the sound of steel meeting meet and bone rapidly followed by the disturbing crunch of bone giving way is as brutal a thing as I've seen in a game.
Total War, as a series, has intensely brutal combat, but my vantage point on the battlefield renders the carnage essentially moot. In my most epic battle ever, when my most elite army lead by my greatest general (Late Game, English army) was defending the Citadel of Antioch against five full armies of Timurids, the carnage was staggering. The plains in front of the outer walls were littered with the dead, and my men fought an almost hopeless battle back through the city. The entire route of my retreat deeper into the citadel was simply littered with the dead (mostly Timurids, but with 6:1 numerical advantage they could afford to be wasteful). The battle for the last line of defense alone cost me nearly 200 men and the enemy lost nearly a thousand, all in the space of a football field.
Gears of War and God of War are bloody to be sure, but the actual action of combat in God of War is mostly just me slaughtering everything that moves without much effort, while in Gears all I can do is rev the chainsaw and hope for the best.
Oh yeh, it's all good fun!
