Posts By Mat Growcott

Today we’re putting aside the irreverent gaming commentary to bring you the most important fact from yesterday’s Xbox conference. Despite the apparent surprise from huge swathes of the gaming community, Starfield is indeed a Bethesda game. I can sympathize. Really I can. You follow a game for years and years, straight from its announcement at the Bethesda conference. You expect a brand new Bethesda RPG in space. Then the day comes: gameplay for the ...

It’s been some 15 years since I first started covering E3 and it’s been almost like a religious holiday to me ever since. It’s Christmas without the drunken uncle and his racist rants. It was pretty obvious that it was on its last legs these past few years. What can the organisers possibly offer today that publishers can’t just do themselves online? “Come be part of our big named event – bring money”. As a business, it ...

Dead teenagers, a talking teddy bear, endless mysteries – it’s no wonder Danganronpa became a massive thing when it was first released ten years ago. Now the Trigger Happy Havoc anniversary edition brings that classic visual novel to a new audience. And it remains just as fun. You wake up in an abandoned school with a group of strangers. The only way to escape is to not only kill someone, but to get away with it. The group promises not…

The first look at Sonic Frontiers has proven to be quietly popular with fans – it is a Sonic game after all. Panic comes later. The disappointment traditionally comes with every subsequent trailer. And then even with release. It is a Sonic tradition. Personally, I hope this one bucks the trend, but we’ll have to wait and see. I feel slightly more expert than most on this topic. Long-time readers (Hi Mom) will know my wife and I are in…

Rumours are that new higher-tier consoles will be released next year. The PS5 Pro and Xbox Series X-2 will offer up a higher graphical fidelity and no doubt other bells and whistles too. But what’s the point where there aren’t any games? Neither console has got to the point where it deserves an upgrade. It’s as simple as that. The PS Pro and One X were desperately needed. 4K televisions had become more popular. Graphics had increased, but ...

Roulette is a hugely popular game, and yet its often overshadowed by the showier games online. People talk about poker, slots or sports betting – usually forgetting about the humble fun of roulette. What is it about roulette that is so much fun? There’s the pure chance of it – the ability to go as specific or vague as you’d like. There’s that little moment as the ball is finding its spot that most other games just don’t ...

Retro classics from PlayStation’s past have begun to appear on the platform’s store in Asia. Games like Abe’s Oddysee, Worms Armageddon and Ridge Racer 2 will be available to download when the service launches over the coming months. And along with the leak of these previously unannounced games, some features of the classic games have also been revealed. And it’s bad news for trophy hunters. The good news is that for PlayStation fans ...

Blackjack is one of the simplest card games to play. It’s short, it’s simple, and it’s exciting. And there are dozens of Blackjack bonuses out there to take advantage of. Changing around online casinos is one of the absolute simplest ways of making your gambling more efficient. and that’s because of bonuses. Joining a new casino can give you free money, free bets or increased odds. And that’s hard to say no to. Because Blackjack ...

Final Fantasy XV has finally tipped over 10m copies sold. At an almost eerily similar time, Grand Theft Auto V was revealed to have sold 165m copies. This is an insane discrepancy. Final Fantasy XV was a really successful game. It was a benchmark title discussed and rediscussed endlessly since the day it was released, for better or for worse. It was torn apart, criticized, enjoyed, built up – it had spin-offs and tie-ins. And it sold 155m less copies…

There have been a few attempts at Evil Dead games over the last few decades and as many asynchronous horror-related multiplayer games too. The stakes are high with the originally-named Evil Dead: The Game. Luckily, it’s an incredible time. It captures the feel of the films while also providing an enjoyable gameplay loop. Neither of those things were guaranteed. That doesn’t mean that it’s the perfect game by any means. This close to launch, ...

Ubisoft has announced today that its Ubisoft+ Classics service will come to PlayStation Plus’s extra and premium tiers when it launches over the next couple of months. This is fantastic news for fans of all things Sony. But will the service be coming to Xbox? It’s a fair question considering there have been rumours that the service would be coming to Microsoft’s Game Pass service for nearly a year now. Here’s what we know, and ...

Japanese stuff is really in at the moment. Yet the likes of Trek to Yomi is a rare gem – a love letter to the old Japanese films, and to that old way of life we know so well from books. It’s a masterclass is atmosphere and is one of the bars for indie graphics. It’s also not always a great game. In many ways, it’s that old indie complaint. Style should not make up for gameplay, and to be…

Okay. This is an official written warning. Yes, there are Silent Hill rumours again. No, I’m not going to bloody write about them. Enough is enough. Done. Period! Long-time GamesReviews readers will know that over the last decade, I have written some 4,000 articles about Silent Hill returning. Mostly about whatever insider has seen absolute definitive proof that the next game is coming. God, imagine the emotional rollercoaster if you were a fan. I am not ...

Sometimes a series of events is so poor you have to hold your head in your hands. The Starfield delay, and what it means for Xbox, is one of those times. After years of fighting off accusations of having a thin first party line-up, this is what happens. How does it get to the point where the only major game you have officially coming in 2022 is Deathloop, a game that was released last year on PlayStation? Granted, more could…

Console wars are for kids. Subscription wars are for the discerning adults, and with a brand new (although not really) PlayStation subscription service on the horizon, things are going to start heating up. Further evidence of this has come to the reaction to Sony CFO Hiroki Totoki’s comments that their investment into AAA games would need to drop if they were to put them onto a subscription service day one. First of all, I’ll get to the actual ...