Ben Brosofsky
This author account hasn't been claimed yet. To claim this account, please contact the outlet owner to request access.
Writing For
Screen RantLatest Reviews
Each of the five stages comes in three clearance levels, starting with a tutorial version and progressing to two additional iterations. While all three clearance levels of a job start in the same area and present the same basic objective, each one unlocks a new door to continue deeper. Firebreak's potential for short sessions is a selling point, but only the final clearance levels offer any noteworthy challenge, and only when cranked to Extreme difficulty. The other clearance levels have no selling point beyond brevity, and the ease of sleepwalking through them renders two-thirds of the purported content almost irrelevant.
Midway through my fourth game of Civ 7, I forced myself to go to bed to squeeze in a minimally appropriate amount of sleep before work. When I woke up in the morning, my first thought was that I wanted to keep building my empire, and that's when I finally knew how I felt about the game. Sid Meier's Civilization 7 is streamlined, strange, and bound to be divisive. It's also, undeniably, Sid Meier's Civilization. As ever, the series stands apart.
The junction between the old and the new is the common haunt of indie horror games, but few are positioned at the crossroads as perfectly as Fear the Spotlight is. First released in 2023 by Cozy Game Pals, Fear the Spotlight's 2024 relaunch adds an extra layer to the experience while serving as the debut of film production juggernaut Blumhouse's dip into game publishing. The game mixes a modern approach to storytelling and presentation with a gratuitous serving of analogue fuzz, calling horror titles from the original PlayStation to mind while never quite mimicking them.
Winning a round with a hero locks them out for future use, but building a custom crew with repeat heroes can get around this obstacle. Swapping, however, is incentivized by the buff-stacking system, which integrates more naturally in Rivalry than in casual mode. With careful flanking and team showdowns that tend to be more guided than the directionless arenas of other modes, abilities are more consistently relevant, and playing a slower tank no longer feels like punishment. Rivalry is relatively tactical without venturing into hyper-competitive territory, and it could be nice for those who like strategizing without sweating.
The Invincible is something of an ensemble novel, but the game jumps to a different perspective entirely to unfold the world for a singular character. The only notable relationship in the original work is between the novel's protagonist Rohan and his ship's astrogator, and some of the core underpinnings of this dynamic are expanded upon with Yasna and Novik. Dialogue choices and a few key decisions regarding the exterior world are a driving factor in The Invincible. Through these, Yasna can be characterized as cautious or impulsive and considerate or heartless, with every option feeling plausible in the high-stress environment of an uncaring planet.
Many elements of Park Beyond's gameplay might feel familiar to Planet Coaster players, with the game taking a similar approach to modernizing the experience found in classics like the RollerCoaster Tycoon series. Mapping out and building up a park is typically intuitive in a similar way, and the cartoony 3D graphics achieve comparable effects. The principal difference lies in what each game expects the player to enjoy. Planet Coaster puts effort into a healthy dose of realism, while Park Beyond broadly rejects such notions in favor of the fantastical. Guests won't turn back from a ride with excessive g-forces, eagerly queuing to be shot through a cannon over a lake.