Pros: Masahiro Ito and Akira Yamaoka are back doing their thing, which does end up lending the game an unexpected sense of authenticity. The production design looks great.

Cons: Very clearly written by middle-aged men who probably mean well, but have no idea what teenage girls are like these days. You get a lot of very awkward moments like the protagonist crying about not getting enough likes. The chase sequences are inexplicable.

My expectations are on the floor for Konami's attempts to bring Silent Hill back, so it's nice to have a game even slightly beat my expectations.

(Beaten with Danielle, will go back with Joseph later but not right now)

A neat effect of going through the Turok games is seeing where Acclaim thought the state of the FPS genre was going. They clearly made a safe bet on Half-Life being the way of the future, this game shifts hard towards linear storytelling and level design. The level design isn't nearly as frustrating as either game could be, but also the worlds don't feel anywhere near as distinct as they used to. Shockingly brief.

As always, Nightdive delivered with the remaster. Might be one of their more impressive remasters simply by how much work they had to do reverse engineering it. Shadow of Oblivion is probably the most impressive use of the N64's technology, even if it barely runs, so it's nice to see that hard work shine.

Shoutout to Slave Zero for having the wildest genre whiplash between entries possible: janky mecha action to character action game to officially licensed Quake mod (no idea how they convinced Bethesda/id to make it downloadable on their mod service). Probably the best thing you could expect from a free promotional TC for another game. Really impressive maps and architecture, the weapons mostly feel solid too. There's a bit of jank coming from trying to stretch Quake's systems, but hard to complain about something free. If X-Men: Ravages of Apocalypse was good.

(Nightdive version)

Wasn't as frustrating an experience as the first game could be at times (the quick saves definitely help) and I enjoyed seeing all the wild alien worlds interpreted through the hottest technology 1998 could offer. The level design is hot garbage, consisting of a lot of cramped tunnels and confusing layouts. Lair of the Blind Ones might be up there as one of the worst maps in 90s FPS gaming. Half the guns feel very strange and unintuitive to use. I don't know that I would have gotten too far in this if it weren't for all the quality of life changes Nightdive added.

Kinda love the concept of horror anthologies without a set theme, so naturally I was down to try this. I guess there isn't a set theme, but the games Mike Klubnika included in the pack do tend to have similar ideas of crumbling industrial hells and having to work around complicated machinery.

Quality of the games obviously varies, Tartarus Engine was probably the strongest of the ones I've played. I'd be curious to see more from this developer, and his newest game, Buckshot Roulette, definitely shows a lot of promise.

In the new wave of retro shooters, this very much goes for the Doom Eternal spectacle mode. Thanks to some clever tricks, it mostly pulls this off, which is especially impressive when you realize only a couple people worked on it.

One of the wildest toolkits you'll find in one of these games, I think it speaks a lot to how well the weapons are designed that the starting pistols ended up being one of my most used tools later on.

One of my only real gripes is the game's way, way too long. Especially in the third episode, I definitely feel like some episodes could have been cut and the game would be better for it.