Posts By Mat Growcott

There are a dozen open-world RPGs every single year, and enough of them are post-apocalyptic that it’s almost impossible to have your game stand out unless you have a budget running hundreds of millions of dollars. The solution is perhaps obvious in hindsight. Why not let players create their own weird playable hamster thing? Well, Biomutant has that locked down. Yes, the world has fallen apart. Yes, the remains of ancient civilisations litter the ...

There’s been a fresh wave of concern over the prospect of “cross-gen” games this week – or games that’ll come to both the PS4 generation consoles and PS5/Series X. It’s getting beyond old. Every few months it’s the same thing: “we can’t see what these devices are truly capable of until they ditch PS4 and Xbox One.” And while that’s partly true in some extreme use cases – situations where ...

Covid, strange working conditions, a general feeling of overhype – the first E3 since 2019 is going to be the same as all E3s, but with added barriers. That means a little bit underwhelming, and 2021 has so much more to take into account. That’s not to say it’ll be unwatchable. It’ll be the usual combination of okay trailers, seemingly random mid-tier games being advertised like they’re AAAA and moments of insanity both good and ...

It’s been more than 10 years since Portal 2 was released, and nearly 15 since the original. And despite that decade and a half being filled with the endless beating to death of “The Cake Is a Lie” and “When Life Gives You Lemons…”, we’re no closer to any fresh material. I’ve had a new computer – the most powerful I’ve ever owned. It outguns the Series X and PS5, so naturally I wanted to test out all ...

There’s a myth about online gambling that says all those that do it are loners. They sit at home, curtains closed, playing slots because they’ve got nobody to talk to. It shouldn’t need saying, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, there’s a social side to online gambling that never really gets talked about. Just like real gambling, there’s more to it than just playing a game. Where does this myth come from? ...

Casinos have been around for a long time, but they’re changing every year. While the heart and soul stays the same, everything else seems to be different. Forty years ago, the idea of playing real money casino games at home was a pipe dream. Over the years that followed, there were occasional games that recreated blackjack or poker, but it was only with the rise of the internet that things began to really change. Now anybody can play anything they…

You’ve seen the werewolves. You’ve seen the ridiculously sexed-up memes about giant vampire ladies. Other than giving the internet a new fetish, Resident Evil Village is a worthy new entry in the long-running series – and a great indicator of just what these new consoles are capable of. The latest Resident Evil seems to have been more meme than game for most of its known existence. Don’t let that put you off. For all the cookyness we ...

Esports are filled with male players. The biggest and brightest names are almost exclusively men, and while that’s not necessarily a bad thing, it’s unusual all the same. What is it about the now billion-dollar industry that is making it such a boy’s club? And will this become a self-fulfilling prophecy? Seen as a mostly male pursuit, women stay away? The Conversation says that fewer than 10 per cent of esports players at the college level ...

Managing your money is probably the only important skill in most gambling. When everything is based on luck, you have to control what you can. Sometimes that’s just as simple as knowing when to walk away. And yet this is a point that often gets overlooked when talking about starting gambling as a hobby. Often there’s hints and tips about choosing the right game or device, or doing a bit of research before you begin. But all too often the…

Over the last few years, Bingo has seen a massive resurgence, partly thanks to the ability to play it online via phone apps. From experts predicting it was all but dead in the 90s and early 2000s to more than a billion dollars of revenue in 2019/20, Bingo is well and truly back with a bang. That’s good news for fans of the game, but potentially bad news for developers of mobile titles. When the whales start putting their cash…