Finally got the full version. To be brief: The game is absolutely unplayable out of the box. And I do mean it. On a 2.4ghz, GF4 Ti 4200 and 512mb ram machine the mouse lags, the FPS is dipping down into single digits and the game looks like something from 2000. I got it working reasonably well though, after some ini tweaking, but that the game is unplayable to that degree out of the box is just unacceptable. If I had bought this I would have claimed a refund.
Anyway, after getting the game to work then I can just say that yeah, the story is kinda neat and the levels are nice, or at least above average. But the weapons are still horrendus, the AI still the same and the whole game still feels like it has been raped by an Xbox.
Keechi, if you took a brief look at the HL2 beta then you would know that it isn't exactly going to be revolutionary..
OT:
I had a pretty uneventful weekend so I got to play a few other games as well, mini-reviews:
SW: Knights of the Old Republic - Fair enough. Nice graphics, solid story and some decent combat. Overal pretty good, but just didn't do it for me.
Prince of Persia: Something with sand - I actually liked the puzzles, the graphics are nice, the sound is excellent(apart from the volume of voices differ from all the other sounds in the game) but the fighting is piss. Reasonably fun.
XIII - Good story, neat graphics, enjoyable gameplay with a few new twists. The game I found most enjoyable of the three. The only one that kept me playing to the end in one setting.