Ben Sheene

8.5

Great

9.5
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Where the Heart Leads

Where the Heart Leads invoked memories of The Novelist, a “narrative adventure” I played in my early days of reviewing games. When The Novelist released in 2013, Gone Home was on the mouths of everyone. For me, that period felt strange and influential. I had spent so many years prior tearing through as many big budget games as my small budget would allow. The opportunity to play and re...[Read More]

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9

Amazing

Boomerang X

Boomerang X is one of the few games I’ve reviewed having virtually no previous knowledge of it. I was completely unaware that at some point in time my character would be throwing around a mystical boomerang and teleporting to it mid-air. As its title suggests, Boomerang X cuts to the chase fairly quickly. The boomerang is the only weapon players will use and it looks like an “X” ...[Read More]

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7

Good

Curved Space

There’s a strange disconnect amongst Curved Space‘s many parts. Before starting up the game I decided to peruse the options menu as I tend to do, looking for subtitle settings and making sure the sound is turned up. I noticed the ability to look at the game’s soundtrack–stuffed with synthwave tracks (a favorite genre of mine)–and listen to it in its entirety. I attrib...[Read More]

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Team Up With Friends and Race Your Way to Glory With New Game Modes in Trackmania

For all you racing fans out there looking for new content in Ubisoft’s free-to-start Trackmania. During this week’s Ubisoft Forward, Ubisoft announced that an all-new Royal mode and Ranked Matchmaking mode are now available for free in Trackmania as part of Starter Access. Trackmania is the biggest and most compelling remake of the legendary racing game, TrackMania Nations. Trackmania ...[Read More]

9

Amazing

9.5
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Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade/INTERmission

Waxing poetically nostalgic on Final Fantasy VII is a difficult task for me. As a longtime gamer, one of the most culturally significant JRPGs is, in fact, a massive hole in my book of accomplishments. For all its availability on multiple platforms, for the numerous magazines I owned with it gracing the cover, for the dozens of hours I’ve watched Advent Children, I’ve never played the ...[Read More]

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9.9

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Victor Tech DC840 High Rise Height Adjustable Electric Full Standing Desk

Last year I was temporarily unemployed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. From March to around August I didn’t work and instead spent most of my time sitting at a desk or an office chair and figuring out ways to spend the day. During this period, I moved out of my apartment and moved in with my girlfriend who lived 30 minutes away from the job I was on a temporary hiatus from. When it came time t...[Read More]

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9.5

Amazing

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart

“It doesn’t get any better than this.” That’s what I thought in 2007 after playing Ratchet & Clank: Tools of Destruction. I had spent most of that winter season delivering pizza so I could have the cash to buy a PlayStation 3 on Black Friday. For Christmas my grandparents got me–per my request–Tools of Destruction and Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. What a...[Read More]

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8

Great

8.6
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Biomutant

Biomutant is a game I would recommend everyone play. It isn’t that Biomutant is an exceptionally dazzling game capable of redefining genres. Nor does Biomutant reek of any particular stench that would personally offend. What makes Biomutant such a solid recommendation is that, after a point, players will find themselves in the midst of a game attempting to fire at all cylinders and mostly ch...[Read More]

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7.5

Good

9.7
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Rust Console Edition

My two minutes into Rust Console Edition I was killed by a bear. “Seems about right,” I thought to myself. Rust was released on PC nearly eight years ago, remaining on one of those many “why did it take so long to port?” lists. As a younger person with an under-powered PC, I watched the burgeoning survival genre with titles like DayZ and Rust, wondering why no one thought t...[Read More]

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9

Amazing

Resident Evil Village

In the grimy recesses of Eastern Europe or Spain or wherever it was, I thought to myself, “Leon Kennedy is having a really bad day.” All he wanted to do was save the President’s daughter. Instead he was met with a cult of weirdos who had bugs bursting out of their heads. And then he was stuck in a lake with a mutated reptile. Then he was being chased down by a mechanical leviatha...[Read More]

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8.5

Great

10
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Immortals Fenyx Rising: The Lost Gods

The Lost Gods does one of the more admirable feats I’ve seen a piece of DLC accomplish in recent memory. Immortals Fenyx Rising has felt like experimental ground for Ubisoft ever since I played the game last December. As a Breath of the Wild-like, it hit the right notes while fitting nicely into the Ubisoft mold of open world games. The first DLC, A New God, integrated the base game’s ...[Read More]

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7.8

Good

Godstrike

Games like Godstrike are akin to mathematical puzzles. There’s a certain logic, a science behind the programming of the hundreds of balls of energy that encircle and threaten to harm the player. The fractal patterns of bullets spewing from a boss construct the constantly tantalizing bullet hells that delight the most masochistic. Being poor at math and, sometimes, pattern recognition, the ge...[Read More]

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