The Ascent is very pretty. Neon Giants managed to create an incredible Cyberpunk city filled with small details and jaw-dropping vistas. The soundtrack is also very good, it's mostly ambient tracks mixed with synthwave and it fits the game perfectly.

The problem is that it's not a very good game to play. The quest designs are very generic and repetitive, and all the dialogues and characters are pretty forgettable. The map can be a pain to navigate, with a lot of back and forth. The difficulty can be all over the place, and the loots are not unique so it's not very satisfying (you'll end up finding the same shotgun 7 times in one session etc...)

So if you expect a good looter shooter, there are definitely better options. But if you like Cyberpunk settings and you just want to explore an impressive futuristic city, it's definitely a game worth checking.

It's not a terrible game, but it's pretty much an inferior L4D clone in every aspects. The game looks decent and the gunplay itself is fine, but everything else is subpar and forgettable.
Levels are very generic and boring. There are no fun and exciting settings like in the L4D games. No Thrash Metal concert, no airport, no roller coasters, no Mardi Gras parade... just some generic streets, warehouses and other unimaginative locations. The atmosphere is also pretty dull and doesn't even feel like a horror game.
Special zombies have some very generic designs, and they are very bullet sponge-y and tedious to fight.
No gore effects, no memorable music, no mod support... but plenty of micro-transactions.

I'm sure you can have some fun with friends, but honestly you should just replay L4D 1&2 instead.

This is an impressive mod for Half-Life 2, with some of the best looking environments made with Source I've seen. It even has a great original score.
The mod has issues though. First, the pacing is weird. 70% of the mod is puzzle solving. I like puzzles but in this case it's a bit too much. They constantly stop you in your progression, and some of them aren't that interesting (like go find a battery or a jerrican to start a generator, stuff like that).
The levels are often too claustrophobic, and you'll bump always against walls and small objects on the ground. This mod is clearly inspired by the Metro series, and that kind of narrow level designs don't work very well with Source. You need more space to move smoothly.

With that said, it's still a good mod that's worth checking out. Despite the issues, it feels like an ambitious project made by a passionate team. It's nice to see a HL2 mod which has completely new environments, and not just the same assets from HL2 recycled.

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.

It's a pretty fun game but don't expect anything really new compared to the previous episodes. It plays well (despite some bugs), and levels are often beautiful. The 3rd mission in Mont-Saint-Michel is gorgeous, and it also has a great level design that lets you experiment with sniping, stealth or action.
After that, a lot of missions feel pretty bland. Many generic locations like bunkers, factories etc... with repetitive mission objectives. Sometimes the level designers seem to have forgotten that it's a game about a sniper. We have some very flat levels with no interesting sniping spot.
It's a fine game, and I think if you have game pass you should play just to enjoy the Mont-Saint-Michel level. But they seem to have put the entire budget of the development on that one location (it's on the box art after all).

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).

Anno Mutationem is a charming little indie RPG. (If we can even call it a RPG.. don't expect any deep mechanics, complexe dialogue system or branching stories etc... )

The visuals are the best part. I really like the mix of 2D sprites and 3D environments. It's clearly not an original Cyberpunk universe, but each area is full of little details, the city feels alive and it's enjoyable to explore.
The inspirations are too obvious sometimes, with many elements that seem to be directly borrowed from Akira, MGS, Evangelion or even SCP.

The combat system is simple but fun enough, and the overall level design and pacing were decent. Nothing crazy but I never got bored either.

The main problem is the story, which gets very messy towards the end. The developers tried to make too many plots and put too many characters. I think it's the typical case of the writer throwing stuffs on the wall in the hope of making the lore deeper.

The first Entropy: Zero was a fun but flawed experience. This sequel is so much polished and better paced. The level design is excellent, with interesting encounters and great art direction.
They've nailed the HL aesthetic. The HL lore is used in a very interesting way. All the creatures, items and locations seem to fit well in this universe. They've added a lot of creatures from Xen compared to the original HL2 which is fun.
Combats feel more punchy than the original game, and all the new weapon animations are great. There is also a new grenade with an interesting concept.
Puzzles are also interesting but not too difficult or repetitive/annoying to solve. (Not like the 50 cable puzzles in Black Mesa Xen for example).
The writing is also surprisingly good. At first it's a bit weird to have a talking protagonist in a HL experience, but the dialogue between 3650 and Wilson is fun and touching. 3650 seems like a standard asshole character at first, but we keep learning about his struggle and feelings towards the adventure. The voice acting is also pretty good, I was surprised that it was not actors but the developers themselves.
Took me around 7 hours to finish. It even has a great soundtrack and achievements. It's mind-blowing that it's free.

A.W.O.L. is an ambitious game that tries to create a more tactical military experience with the Build engine. Well, at least on paper. It's a pretty well made project, especially for a free game, but I didn't find that the experience was really "tactical" at all. It feels more like a classic boomer shooter in which you have to find colored key cards, but with a slower pace and the ability to aim down sight or throw grenades.

I think the main problem is the AI. Both the enemies and your teammates seem completely braindead, and it doesn't offer the slow-paced military experience that the devs tried to recreate (I think?).

The levels look good in general. I especially like the smaller levels in which you have to infiltrate an enemy base and eradicate all terrorists inside, or sabotage their equipment.
But there are also some bad levels, especially the Dubai mission which is easily the worst one. Granted, it's very impressive to create such a massive level with the Build engine. But it drags on faaaar too long and the level design is a confusing mess. The drones are super annoying to fight, and there are way too many elevators that take forever to move. (I don't exaggerate, there is one that takes a whole minute!)
Also the music in that level was very bad. In general, the music in the game is... weird? They often sound like a joke and don't match the serious tone of the game.

The story and characters are very cheesy, which is fine. That's part of the charm of an indie project. Although I'm not a big fan when developers put references that are too obvious. I'm a big fan of Max Payne, and the developers apparently are too. But I rolled my eyes with that MP reference.

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.

I loved Prey 2017 and had high hopes for Arkane Austin's next project. But I can't believe this was made by the same team. Redfall is so bad, like, questionably bad. What the hell happened??

I'm not even totally against Arkane making a looter shooter instead of an immersive sim, if at least the game was good. But here, it's a failure on all levels.
It's very repetitive, the guns feel so weak, finding loots is not satisfying at all. The open world is not interesting to explore because there is nothing really to do except shoot the same vampires and humans over and over again.
Speaking of the enemies, they are completely braindead. This is some of the worst AI I've seen in a AAA game in a long time. They can't even jump over a car or fence, or crawl under a low object. They will just stare at you because they don't know how to get to you.

Visually, this barely looks like a PS4 launch title, but it takes up 105GB for some reasons and runs like ass. I had constant texture streaming issues and everything looked blurry.
Also the art direction is very bland and lacks a distinct style. This is the most disappointing aspect as Arkane is known for creating games with strong artistic visions. Redfall looks like a bunch of Unreal Engine asset packs.
Even the music seemed out of place, and I had to mute it because it was destroying the mood.

This is definitely not worth 70$. It feels so barebone and cheap. They couldn't even afford cutscenes, so the story (which barely exists anyway) is told with a bunch of still images.
I'm really worried about the future of Arkane Austin, this is super disappointing.

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.