Posts By Mat Growcott

Stop the press! The biggest news of the gaming day - and it's been a day filled with gaming news - is that the next update to the iOS includes the ability to use third party controllers with the system. Announced yesterday, very few details have been shared, but the very news will be enough to open up a whole new world of mobile gaming, and it might even make a few old favourites even more of a pleasure to play.

The next Need for Speed game, Rivals, will give long-time fans everything they've come to expect from the franchise when it launches across multiple platforms, as well as a few new tricks to keep them coming back for more, both at the console or on tablet. In Need for Speed Rivals, the basic gameplay remains: cops and racers face off against one another, the cops trying to knock our the racers hurtle at ridiculous speeds towards the finish line. If you enjoyed ...

Bioware have made no secret of the fact that they've been working on a new Dragon Age game, and the reason for that was tonight revealed. Dragon Age: Inquisition hits all the buzzword tick boxes that a decent RPG should: it's open world, it gives you an awesome amount of power over the story and you'll interact with deep characters (both old and new, we're told). Although the Lord of the Rings vibe is still immense, Inquisition is a title that any Bioware fan ...

Plants Vs Zombies has become a global phenomenon, and no more proof of that is needed than the support that Popcap are pumping into it this year. Plants Vs Zombies 2: It's About Time is going to give fans of the franchise a fix of a gameplay that just can't be gotten anywhere else, but the newly announced Garden Warfare is something else entirely. A third-person action game, Garden Warfare is like Plants Vs Zombies mixed with Orcs Must Die and again with some ...

Battlefield 3 was a good game. What would have made it a great game? Destructible environments. It was there in small doses, but it felt almost scripted in its limitations. That's not going to be the case in Battlefield 4, as the demonstration game shown at tonight's EA conference proved. We're talking skyscraper falling, foundation shaking destruction, and it's going to change the way we look at online games.

I'm sure I'm not the only one that swore out loud when Star Wars Battlefront was announced this evening. EA, not content with merely proving themselves as the new holders of the Star Wars IP, have instead just gone straight for the game we've all wanted since the release of Battlefront 2 in 2005. More than that, it's being built by DICE, a team that knows multiplayer shooters like the backs of their hands.

Nobody but the biggest Xbox One fanboy would have expected Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain to be the first game to get actual gameplay footage on the Xbox One, and that Hideo Kojima would be there to talk up the system afterwards. It was a huge surprise and a huge screw-you to gamers who had doubted that the Xbox One would be able to pull in the core titles that made the 360 a must-own. The surprise was short-lived, however, as the game itself was ...

Love the look of the Xbox One but are bummed out that you'll have to wait until the end of the year until you can get it? Don't worry about it, Microsoft have you covered. From today (or tomorrow/later in the week, presumably, depending on your location), you'll be able to buy a brand new Xbox 360, made in the same design as the Xbox One.

One of the first exclusives shown at tonights Microsoft E3 Conference was Ryse: Sons of Rome, and although it was very pretty (and although it features some rather nifty SmartGlass support), it was a little underwhelming in the gameplay department. The idea behind it - that you get to feel like a real Roman warriors, a real Roman commander - was sound, and a lot of what was shown supported that, but the combat left a lot to be desired.

It's impossible not to make the connection. Project Spark is a whole new way to enjoy the create and play genre of games and is everything I'm sure LittleBigPlanet fans wished that that franchise could have been. Built upon by Kinect and Smartglass technologies, Project Spark makes building games easier and more intuitive than ever before, giving players (creators?) the ability to create entire third person RPGs, table top games, pinball, retro titles and more ...