Batch of mini reviews for some games I've been playing recently.

[Siva]

Geometry Wars Galaxies
9/10

Good:
Retro style high score play
Simple yet fun
Flashy graphics only add to the action and in some cases difficulty

Bad:
Only one mode
No online high score board what the fuck

Overall:
A good way to waste 5 minutes.

Far Cry 2
7/10 (An actual out of 10 not like 5-10)

Good:
Open, open environment
Animals fuck yeah
The camera is always actually your guy in the first person, you crash a car your head flies forward etc.
Graphically good, not Crysis good but close.
Fire that spreads holy shit

Passable:
Useless malaria
Flat fire
No real variety of animals
Quicksaves make a new save each time. You can fast end up with 1000 saves on your computer, which amounts to about 1.5gb of space.

Bad:
Repetitive missions
Repetitive driving
Graphics are fucked on my computer, doesn't run nearly as well as people with the same rig are running it.
Guard Posts every fucking whichway when all you want to do is finish a mission.
Long load times, like 2-3 minutes to load a mission, and another 1 and a half minutes to LOAD A SAVED GAME FROM 2 MINUTES AGO.


Overall:
Good in 2-3 hour stints but you can't binge on this one because the little issues do pile up and eventually make you turn it off in frustration.

The Witcher w/ Enhanced Edition Patch
8/10- So far.

I haven't finished this yet, and RPG's can and have been known to either become better or worse the further you get.

Good:
Finally, the load times are very, very short. This stopped me playing it originally.
Graphics, despite an issue I'm getting with the cutscenes causing pixellation. Also on one occasion I got supermassive artifacting and had to close the game.
Story isn't typical THE WORLD IS IN DANGER, the world has already seemed to gone to shit, but you're just trying to get back what was stolen from you. Nice.
Finishing moves look absolutely beautiful.

Hate it or love it:
Combat. I personally quite like it, but some people might prefer a more typical keyboard based approach. For the uninitiated, it consists of mouse clicking at set intervals depending on how far you've upgraded your weapon. Mixed up with signs (basically spells) and dodging (double tap a direction.). On the hardest difficulty I have noticed you MUST also use alchemy.
Alchemy. Some people won't be able to stand it, I quite like this also, I find it a nice way to distract myself, actually preparing for a battle and it feels twice as good to see the fruits of my labour in the form of various potions.

The Bad:
Sometimes the voice acting leaves a little to be desired, other times it's spot on and hilarious but the character animations leave a little to be desired.
No way to tell exactly how hard or how badly an enemy will fuck you up without slashing him in the nose. At first I thought everything scaled to my level, I learned this is not the case.
So far, most hard enemies or boss enemies I've fought are OHKOable using a certain sign that knocks them back and then using a finishing move.

Dynasty Warriors 6
7.5/10 if you like the series, probably a 3.5 if you don't.

Good:
Graphics have received a SLIGHT, SLIGHT touchup. Motionblur here, slight HDR there, etc.
It's on PC. I think Koei are making an honest effort to reach out to the PC platform.
English VO isn't all dog bollocks, it's getting better but slowly.
It has dual interlocking double halberds for fuck sake.
It feels good to be a one man army.
2p splitscreen. That makes 5 games I have with this on PC now. Times are getting better.

Bad:
It's Dynasty Warriors again
Still no fucking netplay
No duel mode
Some characters have cloned movesets which fucks me off a little, although there are multiple weapons with different movesets for some characters, like Lu Bu (A spinning giant shuriken for crying out loud)

Test Drive Unlimited
8/10

Good:
Seamless online play
Huge beautiful island
Many, many beautiful cars and a few bikes
Some fluff to keep you occupied, like clothes, you can wind the windows up and down etc.
Strikes a good balance between simulation and arcade.

Bad:
No manual tuning, it's done in "tuning packs"
Graphics are brilliant in some places, not so much in others, baffling.
No damage modelling.

[Mr. Tastix]

The problem I have with Dynasty Warriors is they keep pumping out the games but adding hardly any feathers. Same with Samurai Warriors, it's just the same thing all the time.

They even tried making it new and unique with Dynasty Warriors: Gundam (shameless self promotion on their part). But I mean, seriously, have you PLAYED that game? That game is an insult, that game is so fucking bad words don't describe the shit that it is.

[clyzm]

but adding hardly any feathers

[Siva]

The problem I have with Dynasty Warriors is they keep pumping out the games but adding hardly any feathers. Same with Samurai Warriors, it's just the same thing all the time.

They even tried making it new and unique with Dynasty Warriors: Gundam (shameless self promotion on their part). But I mean, seriously, have you PLAYED that game? That game is an insult, that game is so fucking bad words don't describe the shit that it is.

I've got alot of friends that think Gundam is the best one. I do not subscribe to this school of thought.

However, Gundam 2 looks fucking brilliant.

I'll throw down a Fallout 3 early mini-review tomorrow.

[Siva]

Fallout 3
9.5/10
Serious candidate for Game of the year.

There are too many pro's to count, so I'll do the cons

Pros:
Fallout humour is everywhere

Cons:
Dogmeat is poorly implemented and a liability, he got himself killed within the first 8 minutes I met him. I don't know about other AI NPCs yet.
Character animations in conversations are practically nonexistent, thankfully VO is usually very good, and on occasion it's bad. No real in-between.

[Mr. Tastix]

What I didn't like about Fallout is it looks like Oblivion that's been brought several hundred years into the future. And it didn't look like a game that would suit the fans (but then, look at Deus Ex 3, lol).

If I ever get a decent computer though it is one game on my list to try, simply because it does look awesome. How does the gameplay even work?

[Siva]

Far Cry 2 loses a point for the worst ending in the history of gaming