It's thirty after midnight and I'm frightened.

I've been playing Condemned: Criminal Origins on my retail 360 downstairs in my very quiet house. This game is angry scary. You know, that kind of scary that actually pisses you off. You find yourself actually cussing at the TV and at yourself everytime you jump. And I jumped a lot.

This is one of the best looking 360 titles I've played to date. The graphics are rich, realistic and very moody. Unfortunately, they are also very dark, mostly for mood-setting purposes, but I'm always annoyed by perpetual darkness in a game.

I played through the first level or two and the damn game just kept scaring me. You play as Ethan Thomas, an agent with the FBI's Serial Criminal Unit. The game plays as a blend of a creepy sorta first person shooter action, survival game and puzzler.

What makes the game so unique is that while you're wandering around (mostly dark) maze-like buildings you are both trying to take down bad guys and collect evidence as you work to solve a mystery.

The mystery solving is a little weak, but the amazing graphics does a lot to make up for the simplified play mechanics. The game pops up a little message when evidence is nearby, you push a button and the proper forensic tool automatically pops up. Then you scan, detect, whatever for evidence, but the process doesn't really even qualify as a mini-game. I didn't mind doing the forensic detecting that much, it was really more of a device to move the story along than a play mechanic.

Searching for evidence does get a bit tricky when company shows up. The levels I played through were populated by raging, drugged-up homeless people (think Detroit) and to take them on you have to scrounge around for a weapon.

You can rip piped from walls, pick up shovels or sledgehammers or even find the occasional gun. Typically, though, my weapon was some sort of blunt object that I used to block attacks and smack the shit out of enemies.

Sound plays a big role in the game. Wandering through a building looking for a particular piece of evidence I would start getting completely freaked out when I heard someone muttering to themslves in another room or a bottle toppling over. It really makes you feel like you're in a dangerous enviroment.

Overall, I think this is going to be a lot of fun to play through, though I didn't and don't expect to see any amazing next-gen play mechanics buried in the game. Had Sega done a little more to make evidence gathering more of a challenge I'd say this game would be a crown jewel in the 360 launch library, but instead it falls just shy of that.

I give Condemned Criminal Origins three and a half stars out of five.

It is now 1 a.m. so I'm going to hold off posting screen grabs, but I'll make sure to post some later in the day.

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