Condemned tracks down gold

With the launch of the Xbox 360 a mere three weeks away, Microsoft still has yet to officially announce the day-one launch lineup. Several games have fallen in and out of the lineup, with 2K Games' role-playing game Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion most recently falling back to 2006 and Activision's Gun and 2K's Amped 3 possibly making a run at a launch release.

Sega, on the other hand, knows one game that will definitely be there on November 22. The company today announced that Condemned: Criminal Origins has gone gold, and it has confirmed that it will be available the same day the Xbox 360 is in US stores. The game is the first Xbox 360 game to officially complete development and be sent off for duplication.

Condemned fills the survival horror genre for the console's debut, letting gamers play a crime-scene investigator on the track of a madman in a city with way too many abandoned warehouses and dark corners. The first-person adventure puts all the high-tech tools of a real investigator and the weapons of a two-bit thug in the hands of gamers.

The game's hero, Ethan Thomas, will encounter a variety of obstacles on his way to the truth. In addition to deranged drug addicts who try to beat him over the head with blunt objects, Ethan will also have to deal with his own sanity and eerie premonitions.

The game was developed by Monolith Productions, the studio that worked on The Matrix Online and F.E.A.R.

Condemned: Criminal Origins is rated M for Mature and has an MSRP of $59.99. For more information on the game, investigate GameSpot's recent preview.