Usually AAA games make me feel like I'm eating fast food, but Far Cry 6 reminded me of a moldy old frozen pizza I'd forgotten about in the freezer. It's technically a video game, but it's so uninteresting and devoid of any creativity or novelty.
Ubisoft seems to be trying to recapture what people loved about previous episodes. From "you have to burn down a plantation with a flamethrower, listening to fun music" to "there's a false ending that makes you finish the game very early in the adventure", it really does feel desperate.

Giancarlo Esposito is the GOAT, but here the script is poorly written and his character is forgettable.
This was the first Far Cry to feature a real city, which was very exciting on paper, but Esperanza is a huge disappointment. It's a completely dead city that reminds me more of a series of corridors disguised with fake buildings from a movie set. Honestly, this should be considered false advertising, given that Ubisoft was selling urban guerrilla warfare with FC6.

Outdated graphics, animations, mechanics, AI, open world design.. Far Cry really needs a complete reboot at this point because this ain't it.

There's an achievement that consists of killing 30 raptors and I didn't even get it after finishing the game, to tell you how much it's not a very good Turok game.

Seriously though, I have nothing against the remaster itself, Nightdive have done a great job as usual. It's just that Turok 3 is such a mediocre game in so many ways, why bother remastering it?
The level design in general is very linear and weak, with simplistic layouts and boring puzzles. There's no sense of exploration anymore. With the exception of a sequence where we explore Mayan ruins in the jungle, most of the game consists of gray concrete corridors that are quite ugly to look at.
The bosses are poorly designed, especially the last one, which is ridiculously bad and easy.
The music is also extremely generic, and lacks the charm of previous episodes.
This game came out in 2000, so it feels somehow inspired by Half-Life. It is more linear and much more story-driven than its predecessors. It even includes levels inside a scientific research center, with many friendly scientists NPCs. The story isn't good though, and the cutscenes are hilariously bad and cheesy, which almost gives Turok 3 a reason to be played.
But overall, it's bland and unmemorable, which is a shame after Turok 1 and 2.

I'm glad I'm not a hardcore Payday 2 player, because I'd be really disappointed if this was the sequel I'd been waiting 10 years for.
Server issues aside, the game isn't even that bad imo. I like the stealth system and the gunplay is pretty good too. The graphics aren't extraordinary, but New York looks pretty cool.
That said, none of the levels are memorable. The title as a whole is bland, as if it had lost some of its edge and identity. It feels more like an imitation of Payday 2 than a true sequel.

In a time when "boomer shooters" are more popular than ever, Soldier of Fortune is a game that has aged like a fine wine.
It's a military-themed game, but it's still very fast-paced and arcade-like. The gore is fun, the weapons are powerful as hell. It has one of my favorite shotgun ever in a video game. Many levels have some wonderfully dark atmosphere.
And despite the gore, the game also feels like a Saturday morning cartoon, in a good way. The main villain looks like the Cyborg Ninja from MGS. The yakuza also use ninjas that throw shurikens at you. One of the weapons is a tesla raygun that has a secondary firing mode that can implode enemies etc... It's not realistic at all, and it gives a not-so-serious feeling that's more charming today.
The sequel, on the other hand, tries to be an overly scripted realistic tactical FPS and it just doesn't feel the same (even though I also liked it when it came out, but it doesn't age as well as the first game imo).

This is a short horror FPS made by the team behind the HL2 mod "Grey". It takes place in a small Hungarian town, and the atmosphere is well done. The overall mood reminded me a lot of Silent Hill and Cry of Fear. It has some truly disturbing creature design, with Junji Ito-style body horror stuff going on.
The game itself is a rather classic survival-horror: some puzzle solving, exploration, item management etc... Nothing revolutionary but it works pretty well. Some puzzles were interesting.
The story is a bit confusing, and the game has a few too many of the usual indie horror game tropes. But it's still a solid experience for a game made by a small team.

Chasing Static is a small horror game with a particularly charming visual style. It's clearly inspired by Silent Hill, with great PS1-ish graphics, set in a moody British village.
The sound design and the voice acting are also good.

Unfortunately, the rest is a bit underwhelming. There's no real exploration, except that you have to walk in circles using a special device to catch anomalies. There's no combat, no puzzles, not even a sense of fear or danger. The whole game boils down to "find an item to get to another area to find another item" and so on.

It's mainly a narrative experience that can be finished in one session (around 2-3 hours). The story is not very interesting and rather confusing. It's hard to get attached to the main character, since you don't know anything about him, and he doesn't get any development during the adventure except at the beginning and end.

It's a real shame, because the atmosphere is once again very good. I'd still applaud the effort since it's made by a single developer. I hope that their next project, Hollowbody, will keep the qualities of Chasing Static and correct the flaws, so we can have a really good horror game.

Ever since Phantom Fury was announced, I was very excited. I really like the overall look of the game. It's a sort of modern version of the graphics from the year 2000, and the artists have done a good job of creating a visually appealing title.

However, the game itself is sadly very disappointing. It feels like an aimless project that isn't sure what it wants to be. It's like Ion Fury, but without the fun and violent action nor the clever level design. It's very inspired by Half-Life 1 and 2, but without the well crafted narrative structure that makes the adventure engaging. It's like DNF 2001, but without the charm or the humor. It's even a tiny bit like Deus Ex, but without the complex mechanics and systems that make immsim so interesting to explore.

Combat is at best dull, at worst frustrating, especially because of the bullet spongy enemies and the lack of quick saves which sometimes forces you to replay a 5 minutes sequence all over again.
Enemies' AI is shockingly stupid, even for a small indie title. They often get stuck and stop attacking the player.

The developers had fun implementing numerous interactions with the environment. At first, this seems cool, but it quickly ends up feeling pointless and superficial. There's no gameplay purpose, and it's also inconsistent since some buttons can be pressed or objects picked up, but many others are purely decorative. Honestly they should have used the time spent making those interactions to improve the core gameplay instead.

Phantom Fury is a very unfocused game. It is ambitious and tries to do a lot of things (there are even some completely unnecessary vehicle sequences, or HL2-styled physics-based puzzles that seem to be there just for the sake of it), but everything feels half-baked, from the gameplay to the story (what story?). There are also a lot of bugs, such as scripts that don't execute properly and force us to reload the previous checkpoint. The bugs can be fixed, but I don't think the adventure will improve with a few patches.

The Room series is a very consistent series, with titles that all have the same qualities and weaknesses. These games are basically like shape-sorter toys pretending to be puzzle games. But it comes with an excellent dark art direction, very creative visuals and cool animations that it's still worth playing if you're into that gothic horror vibe. This 4th episode takes place entirely inside a mansion, with each room having a specific theme. It's pretty cool, I especially like the Japanese themed room.
Just don't expect a real puzzle game a la Myst, as all the puzzles can be solved by pressing buttons and inserting objects into the right holes. There isn't really any moments in which you really have to think about the solution. Most of the time if I got stuck, it was because I didn't know what part of the mechanism could be interacted with.

Shadow Warrior 3 is frustrating, because underneath all the problems, there's definitely a fun game in there somewhere. It's fast, violent, and feels like a knock-off Doom Eternal, but it has its own interesting ideas.

But it's also very flawed in many ways. First of all, the writing is complete garbage. The humor is absolutely horrible, all the characters are annoying and can't close their mouths for more than 10 seconds. It's like the worst Marvel lines, only even worse somehow. Halfway through the game I decided to turn off the voices and subtitles, which made the game much more enjoyable.

The action can be very confusing because of all the colorful particles everywhere and the overall sub-par arena designs. I went back and played Doom Eternal after that, and was impressed with how readable the action was and how well the levels were designed compared to SW3.
You can't make a discount Doom Eternal without platforming sequences, and SW3 has tons of those. It's super repetitive and drags for far too long in each level. It feels like filler between arenas. And if you miss a jump, you usually have to redo the whole section thanks to misplaced checkpoints.

Glory kills are another thing inspired by Doom. But this is one aspect where SW3 tries something new and it's interesting. Once killed, the body parts of enemies can be used as powerful temporary weapons. This is pretty cool, but there are also some problems. First of all, the animations are way too long and get repetitive. Also, the fact that each enemy has to come with a unique weapon for the player means that they couldn't design as many enemies, so you'll be fighting the same enemies over and over in each level.
Some enemies are more annoying to fight than challenging. I hope the game designer who put the mole enemy in the game wakes up tomorrow stepping on a lego.

Another disappointing aspect of the game is the Katana. I remember the Katana being incredibly fun to use in SW1 and 2. But here, they've messed it up somewhat and it feels more like an extra melee attack that you can use on trash mobs.
We're constantly running out of ammo, and I'm pretty sure the developers reduced the maximum amount of ammo we can carry so that we're forced to use the katana even if it sucks.

As someone who enjoyed SW1 and 2 (even though I wasn't totally sold on the looter shooter aspect of the second game), 3 is disappointing. It's fun at times, but it's mostly generic, repetitive, and worst of all, annoying.

I was happy to see the Hawken name again, but this really blows. It's a mind-numbingly boring single player FPS. You simply move through a linear corridor following a friendly NPC, and shoot the same enemies over and over, with no strategies or skills required. And if you dare try to go in another direction, you'll just get a game over. It feels like a bad game from the PS360 era. It even looks like a game from that era, with flat and ugly brown colors everywhere.
The story is uninteresting and it's told with ugly comics drawn with AI. The only good thing I can say is that I didn't encounter too much bugs I guess.
This is clearly not an attempt by passionate developers to revitalize a beloved niche IP, but just a soulless attempt to use an old IP to sell microtransactions.

This 4th Dread X compilation focuses mainly on horror shooters. The number of games included is lower than usual, but each game is long and ambitious, so it feels more like they've focused on quality than quantity.

From best to worst:
The Fruit: 4/5
This is the best game of the collection. It's very ambitious and polished. It has a great atmosphere, good gameplay ideas, and manages to feel like a true survival horror. The mechanics of the manually reloadable rifle and the book of runes are well thought-out. Even the plot, while not revolutionary, has the merit of making the adventure captivating.

Rose of Meat: 4/5
Alright, this one is WEIRD. I thought I'd played a lot of weird games, but this one easily makes the top 3. Is it a good game? Impossible to say, really. But it's so unique and deranged that I can only respect the author. Probably the most divisive game of the lot.

Axis Mundi : 3.5/5
It's a paranormal game inspired by Project Zero/Fatal Frame. You can capture ghosts with a camera. You can also relive the past of the deceased, taking you back in time. The atmosphere is varied and well made. It alternates well between combat, puzzles and exploration. Pretty good overall.

Uktena 64 : 3.5/5
A N64 inspired hunting FPS. Not the most remarkable game, but there's an undeniable charm to the visuals, music and humor.

Black Relic : 3/5
It's the only game that's not a FPS but a TPS. You can tell it's inspired by Resident Evil 4. It's pretty good, but the pixelated visual style is very pronounced, making sometimes confrontations difficult to read. The gameplay is also rigid, with slow reload and pickup animations. I understand that slow movements makes a survival horror more stressful, but in this case it feels more clunky. The Fruit managed to execute that idea much better imo.

The House of Unrest : 2.5/5
Basically first person RE1 with an exorcist. The minimalist atmosphere isn't bad, but it's too easy (ammo is unlimited) and the puzzles aren't interesting.

Seraphixial: 1/5
This one is very bad, I'm sorry. It's really ugly to look at. The gunplay is boring and repetitive. Even the sound effects are laughably bad. Also the only "scares" come from lazy jumpscares.

Also the main hub of the compilation is an adventure game inspired by The Thing. Nice atmosphere and it's overall enjoyable. However, the main character is particularly annoying, with voice lines that remind me of Wolfenstein Youngblood.