Posts By Mat Growcott

There’s about no bigger screw you in the industry than making Crash Bandicoot your new mascot. But that’s just what Microsoft did when they bought Activision. And that’s the least of it. Spending nearly $70b has put them in about as incredible a position as they ever could be. They’ve taken on a whole host of huge hitters, from Call of Duty and Warcraft to Spyro the Dragon and Tony Hawks. Like with Bethesda, we must now wait several months…

Microsoft have announced nearly $70b plans to buy Activision Blizzard.  Like the Bethesda deal, some months of work will now take place to complete the sale. The company highlighted titles including Call of Duty, Warcraft, Candy Crush, Tony Hawk, Diablo, Overwatch, Spyro, Heathstone, Guitar Hero, rash Bandicoot and StarCraft within its announcement. “Gaming is the most dynamic and exciting category in entertainment across all platforms today and will play a ...

Shadow Man Remastered brings back a cult classic – successfully reviving a game that fans have been demanding gets new life for years. I hope they’re happy with what they wished for. In some preliminary research for this game, I took a quick look at some of the original reviews, and was blown away by what I saw. I remember the case, of course. It looked cool and edgy, not unlike the Blade film I’d been too young to watch.…

Shadow Man is back, and with him the age old question of how to beat the game’s true boss: any ledge from which you have to jump backwards. I’m kidding of course. But it is something you eventually have to do, and it’s something that’s not especially well explained. And yes, if you go searching, it won’t take long to find people who complained about this issue in the original release of this game. The good news is that it’s…

Fly through people’s deepest desires as a bird. And, no, Aery – Dreamscape isn’t an adult game. Because it turns out everybody’s deepest desires are things like “be a pirate”, “visit the moon” or “get out in nature”. Not a single level begins with the phrase “hey, you know that girl from Friends?” Maybe that would have been a better game – its not for me to judge – but it would have been a different game. This one is…

Every so often there’s a reminder that mobile gaming is a massive, massive thing. It’s easy to forget when all you think about is the next-gen blockbusters on the horizon. Last year $116 billion was spent on the mobile market. For context, the entire video game market generated $162 billion in revenue in 2020. The joke, of course, is that nobody talks about being a mobile gamer. There aren’t many popular forums where casual gamers debate whether the Samsung ...

There are some casino games that can take all day… And then there’s Andar Bahar. The Indian game is becoming more popular worldwide because it is simple to learn and quick to complete. And more than that, the odds of winning are 50/50. Like many games of chance, the possibilities are entirely in the deck. You can influence it beyond crossing your fingers. But the simplicity means newbies can be experts within minutes. In this guide we’ll talk you through…

Let’s talk about the 32x, because frankly not enough people are. The 32x was an add-on for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive that effectively turned it into a Sega Saturn. Well, not really. It gave it a decent power boost, allowing it to play such intensive games as Doom (oooh!) and Star Wars Arcade (ahhh!). But its release was muddy, confusing and probably a good sign of things to come with the Saturn and ultimately the Dreamcast. Here is where Sega’s…

The new PSVR2 looks very impressive on paper. Oled screens, 4k, HDR, head vibrations (which isn’t something you brag about unless it’s pretty good). But Sony’s laundry list of features may sound great on paper, but they do absolutely nothing to solve VRs biggest problem: content. And I must stress this isn’t a Sony only issue, In fact, everybody has this problem, and nobody seems overly keen to solve it. VR is a limited market, so nobody wants to create…

New Years is usually the time when we reflect on the past 12 months. And in the case of 2021 one word sticks out: covid. It influenced our day-to-day lives, our politics, our jobs. It impacted our video games, and it will continue to do so. Sony and Nintendo released so few mainstream games last year, while Microsoft’s biggest title came along after a year’s delay. The already barren first years of the new console generation were about as bad…