Posts By Mat Growcott

The Unreal Engine has problems. On console it’s often running at sub-1080p resolutions, and stuttering is an issue across the board. Is it time for developers to start looking at other options? It’s getting to be less and less of a surprise when a major video game franchise suddenly announces it’s going to be running on Unreal from here on out. Halo is the latest to fall, ditching its own engine and instead building future titles in ...

After seven months I have finished Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth. It’s a masterpiece, and now it’s done. I don’t know what I’ll do with myself. Expectations were high when the Remake trilogy was announced. Rightly so. You can’t casually put together a new version of one of the best loved games of all time. Remake proved the concept, Rebirth perfects it. Spending half a year or more with something makes it hard to walk away from. This ...

I’ve started playing games wrong, and I’ve got to say it’s feeling pretty right. This won’t be a new idea to some people, especially those who’re deep into achievements. But it’s something I recommend for everybody, if only to shake things up at a time when games aren’t spending much time rewriting the rules. The biggest games are so slick now. You barely have to play them. They put the maximum amount of energy into ...

Death Stranding 2 has a photo mode that will influence the way the story plays out. It also has in-game concerts. The attention to detail is incredible. But come on Kojima, I have a life. Games are getting too damn big. I’ve been playing Final Fantasy VII Rebirth since March. It’s one of the best games of the generation and I don’t see that changing. But its need to completely dominate my free time is frustrating. I’ve enjoyed every ...

You don’t need an insider knowledge to know Overwatch has been mismanaged. It’s still nice to know it for definite. Jason Schreier’s new book on Blizzard goes into some detail on the inner workings of Overwatch. He shared a shorter version on Reddit. The further abridged version is that the team behind making Overwatch such a success were cautious in hiring new people in case it changed their company culture. They tried to feed the original ...

The panic is over. Horizon Zero Dawn is going to be re-released with shinier graphics. At seven years old, it was getting pretty dicey. It would be all too easy to be snarky about this one, and I wouldn’t be alone. Although there are people defending it – and why shouldn’t they? – I’m not alone in finding this release to be both bizarre and unnecessary. Even more so than The Last of Us Part 1. Horizon still plays as…

Square Enix announced is financials this morning and the outlook isn’t so hot. HD Games – including Final Fantasies XIV and 7 Rebirth – underperformed to the tune of ¥8.1 billion ($57m). This is terrible news for a franchise which has finally found its footing. Those two Final Fantasy games are the best the franchise has been in years. Rebirth, although I’m biased, will likely be this generation’s Red Dead Redemption for me. A ...

The PlayStation 5 Pro was officially announced. It’ll allow you to have fidelity graphics at 60fps. And it’s a… er… steal at $700. And if you think that’s bad, wait until the PlayStation 6 gets announced. The new pro console boasts the ability to play your games with higher quality visuals while retaining the 60fps. Three quarters of people are choosing performance modes over fidelity. I will save the obvious observation that ...

Astrobot is an inoffensive, entertaining little platformer that has been entertaining fans and critics since it released last week. So the discussion around cameos might be a little surprising. Like its predecessor, the free-on-PS5 Astrobot’s Playroom, Astrobot contains a whole load of cute cameos. PlayStation characters in all shapes and sizes return in their dozens. Unlike Playroom, which came out at the start of the generation, today’s cameos ...

Just a few hours after I wrote that Concord wasn’t dead yet, Sony killed it. I guess that’s a lesson to us all. You can no longer buy it. Servers will be shut off tomorrow. After eight years of development, the game lasted about a fortnight. Its director said that it will be back after the development team “explore options, including those that will better reach our players”. If you heard “free-to-play model” then you ...