Posts By Mat Growcott

Super Mario 64 is old. And that means those of us who played it at release are also old. That’s the most depressing takeaway from my revisiting it nearly 25 years later. The good news is that it’s still the precursor for pretty much every 3D game created since. Yes, it has been bettered technically in every imaginable way, but the heart and soul are still there to beat. When I think of gaming in the mid-to-late 90s, it still…

What on earth has happened to the sports game genre? Has there been a mass brain removal among the fanbase in the last 10 years? I get it – sports fans tend to buy one or two titles a year, and they’re always exactly the same franchise. They’re like Call of Duty fans, except without the new maps, the new story levels or the new guns. Instead you get a new roster and, maybe, a slightly new graphical sheen. So…

There are too many games to play, not enough time and every developer wants to create a sweeping open world with a million question marks to visit. Enough is enough. Open world is the forced stealth levels of the late 2010s/early 2020s. It’s the tower defence that we all got bored of in 10 minutes flat a decade ago. And yet, like that one cookie-cooker enemy that you fight in every single location of an open world game, it just…

How do you make old games even more of a good time? Well, for me, you add achievements. Call me a sucker, but those digital trophies are like crack. On one hand, it’s a good way of making sure you get the absolute most out of your purchases. On the other, it’s a guide to things you might’ve missed in a game you’re loving. I get they’re not for everybody. Neither is chocolate or music. I don’t get it, but…

2020 was a lot of things to a lot of people, but it also had the distinct displeasure of being the year the new consoles were released. Somehow, the Xbox Series X and PS5 were still released, and the only real downside seems to be keeping stock levels high enough so people can pay for them. In hindsight, that’s about the best anybody could have predicted, and it’s fully down to the geniuses at Sony and Microsoft for making that…

There are a small but dedicated group still trying to find meaning in Metal Gear Solid V’s biggest mysteries. There aren’t many of them, but five years on they’re still trying to work out the hidden secrets that will – they hope – fill in the game’s blanks. “Never Be Game Over” is a subreddit that has more than 15,000 subscribers, and since its creation they have broken down the game to its very core in the hopes ...

It’s around this time each year that I start to think back on Christmases past, and how wonderful it’d be to start pulling out old consoles again. The excitement of December 25 has gone, but the holiday spirit remains, and the Dreamcast or N64 is calling to me from the closet. Inevitably, I play a few games for 20 minutes, die repeatedly because of the crazy camera and then go back to some hand-holding modern title for comfort. You know…

We didn’t review the Xbox One seven years ago. We didn’t get a preview unit and nobody on staff at the time was interested enough to pick it up day one. Man, what a difference seven years makes, because the Xbox Series X is a triumph. Check out our One Dislike, Three Likes article about the Xbox Series X! This console has been built by gamers for gamers, and it comes through in every interaction you have with it. From…

You unwrapped the packaging and saw this awesome monolith within. Like 2001: A Space Odyssey, you and your family danced around it, screeching to high heaven. No? Just at mine then? Still – you got that Xbox you wanted, and that’s pretty cool too. Maybe you got the black tower-like Series X, or maybe you received the adorable Series S. Either way, you got it set up (you used the mobile app to do your settings while you waited for…

Did Santa manage to get you a PS5 this Christmas? You’re not alone. In fact, the jolly old fat man has been hoarding these things pretty solidly. I’m not sure how we move forward knowing St Nick is a dirty scalper, but it’s not the only horror of 2020, so let’s move on. The important thing isn’t how you got it, but that you got it at it. Take in its awesome size. Take in its white, plasticky sheen. Look…