With weekly News Wrap-ups and special in-depth editorials on Xbox.com, GameDAILY keeps you up to date on the latest Xbox and video game industry news as well as hot game announcements.

GameDAILY News Wrap-up:

Tracking a Killer

By now, you hopefully own Xbox 360™ and a handful of its launch titles, one of the most important being SEGA®'s Condemned: Criminal Origins™. Developed by Monolith, the same developers responsible for the frenzied PC blast-fest F.E.A.R., Condemned is a macabre excursion into the darkest depths of humanity, a survival horror adventure that forces you to pay close attention to sight and sound, lest you get rocked from behind by a dirty scum bag wielding a board with nails in it.

It's one of the few Xbox 360 games that hasn't been tossed into the hype machine, but don't let its low key arrival trick you into leaving it on the shelf. This is a terrifyingly delicious video game that should be near the very top of your must play list.

Not a nice part of town.

Condemned is, in some ways, similar to the movie Se7en. In the game you play an investigator who's on the trail of an infamous serial killer known as the Match Maker, a demented weirdo who enjoys posing his victims with creepy-looking mannequins. In order to track him down you have to explore a wide range of dirty, run-down locations that include an abandoned building, a department store, and a metro station. All, of course, feature plenty of maze-like corridors and disturbing imagery.

That's scary enough, but what really sends this game over the top are the plethora of strange characters populating these squalid environments' dusty innards—deranged psychopathic murderers that are devoid of any compassion whatsoever. Whether you like it or not, they're all gunning for you.

Powered by sophisticated A.I. technology, the NPCs in the game are capable of evaluating situations and making semi-intelligent decisions. If, for example, you have a shotgun and your adversary is wielding a pipe, he or she will either run away and hide, come at you full bore, or seek out a more sophisticated weapon.

You never know what's around the next corner ...

They also lay low and wait until you pass before attacking, so you really need to have eyes in the back of your head. Not once did I ever know what to expect.

Much like games QUAKE™ 4 and Call of Duty® 2, Condemned is played from a first-person perspective but it's not a shooter. While firearms exist in very limited quantities, the emphasis has been placed on melee combat. The game contains a myriad of different weapons including pipes, conduits, fire axes, sledge hammers, and boards with bolts or nails through them, among other naughty objects. Smacking someone in the face with one is about as virtually realistic as it gets.

The hard-hitting blows were enough to seriously unnerve me at first, especially when I was on the receiving end. Make no mistake about the A.I.'s dedication to slaughtering your ass. These people are ruthless and will stop at nothing to bash your bloody brains in.

Looks like I picked the wrong alley.

Aside from the combat, the other reason why this game is a winner is because of Monolith's achievements in both audio and video. The aural component drew me in more than the next-generation visuals did, what with the footsteps stomping overhead, the sound of plastic containers bouncing off the floor, and glass shattering into hundreds of tiny fragments. Several times I found myself spinning around and wildly swinging at air after stepping on something—that's how intense the game is.

Its graphics are also outstanding. All of the environments have been meticulously crafted, you can see tons of detail on even the smallest of objects, and the lighting is excellent. Even the animations are on target, with lifelike movements that at times made me feel a little guilty for popping some nut in the head with a revolver. However, my remorse quickly faded.

There are plenty of first-person shooters on Xbox 360, and critics even complain that there are too many. But Condemned: Criminal Origins manages to stand out because there's nothing quite like it. It's a first-person adventure with a serious edge, and its deliberate pace is perfect for survival horror junkies like me. If you somehow missed it last week, be sure to add it to your shopping cart and prepare yourself for one hell of a ride. You won't be disappointed.

Launch Day Mania
I'm usually down with midnight console launches but this year, I'm glad that my EB didn't have one. The east coast is pretty damn cold this time of year, and I'd much rather take a leisurely stroll to the store the following morning than freeze my ass off and risk infection.

Besides, given consumers' frenzied states this time of year (especially with Black Friday), I'm not so sure I want to be walking around at night with well over $400 worth of equipment in a thin plastic bag. However, there is something magical about forming a crowd with a few hundred obsessed gamers. It's something that dedicated PC users can't understand.

Let's face it: Mobs don't form outside Best Buys for new graphics cards, though this holds true for most electronics. There's just not the same amount of love for HDTVs, DVD players, or digital cameras. But what separates these items from something like Xbox 360 is the lack of fear. We don't fear that Circuit City will ever run out of Samsung HD monitors. We're not rushing out of our houses to snatch the latest DVD player before someone else, save for Black Friday, which is easily the most ridiculous day in America.

There's just a significant lack of hype for these items, but there's also no press releases or Internet buzz warning of shortages. Since the 16-bit days, there's been this dark cloud that ominously hangs over almost every console launch, and if you look into this evil cloud and read its face it always displays the same exact message: "If you didn't preorder, you're out of luck."

Because of this we go absolutely loony and camp out in front of stores for well over twenty hours, and doing this doesn't even guarantee us a console! On the other hand, the adrenaline rush is well worth it, especially when its being shared with a collection of our peers (even though those same "friends" always look at you with hungry eyes as you're leaving the store with your hard-won bounty).

Article by Chris Buffa, GameDAILY Senior Editor