Not for Christmas but I grabbed Pariah as it was marked down to $20 CAD, KOTOR2, X3, Civiliation 4, and NFS9:MW.
Hrmmm. Well X3, voices don't work at all and it is basically unplayable even with the 1.3 patch still. Just loves to sound loop and crash the GPU. At least the evil copy protection didn't destroy my system, yet.
Civilization 4 is uhm, boring. I know I've never been hot on turn based anything but I don't remember the past ones being so dull. Hardly feels like I'm building much of a civilization, combat is incredibly lame. Blah blah blah.
NFS9:MW: Oh yay the exotics are back, at least most of them are. My preciouss diablo is gone though. Worst soundtrack ever. Entirely rap/metalcore other than three or so other songs, none of it even remotely fits racing. At least I can turn it off and play my music from NFS4/5. Ricing the cars is still all too present, but I am not forced to do it like the shitty underground series. Whoever mods a Lamborghini or Porsche needs to be hung by the feet. Controls seem really strange when using my PS2 controller via USB adaptor on my PC; the car drifts and turns after I stop. Why did they try and put a story in a racing game I will never know. Police are better than any of the past games, still stupid but now they have realistic road blocks and 'attack' in mass. Physics are completely nuts, hitting a car head on sends it flying, even if its a semi, and you keep going only with a little speed lost and you can pull a sharp turn at 200km/hr+ in the rain. And what really irks me: NO FUCKING WIDESCREEN SUPPORT! I can't even play in my native resolution and none of the hacks for widescreen can display a proper 16:10 resolution without chopping the top and bottom off. No sound other than mono/stereo either, what kind of game doesn't support 5.1?! Civilian cars have no damage, damage to player vehicles is very limited, only the cops seem to have lots of damage and doors/etc fly off like burnout 3.
I haven't got around to KOTOR2 or Pariah yet.
