Counter-Strike: Condition Zero goes gold

It's not every day that we see a gold announcement from Gabe Newell, and sadly this isn't some sort of Half-Life 2-shaped surprise either (you can find today's HL2 bombshell elsewhere) - it's just news that Counter-Strike: Condition Zero is going gold "this Friday" and will be available via Steam and at US retail on November 18th (perhaps appearing in Europe on November 21st or 28th).

The fact that it's going to be available on Steam is very interesting, particularly given the flakiness of the service so far. In a way though, it's a clever tactic. Even if it tanks at retail, Valve can probably rely on hordes of CS-loving young'uns coughing up and hauling it down their broadband lines despite a critical pasting. Heck, we want to get it via Steam just to see how it does sending us a whole game on release day...

The game itself, for those to whom "Condition Zero" means very little, has been developed mostly by Ritual, although Valve collaborators Gearbox originally kicked things off, and is basically the free CS 1.6 (with the bot options that were stripped out when 1.6 emerged from its Steam beta) tied to a similar single player game. Reviews haven't been all that kind to the single player aspect, but we'd like to see it for ourselves - if only because the prospect of getting paid to play Counter-Strike again is irresistible...