Posts By Mat Growcott

It’s time to enjoy two of the best co-op games ever made… again. Overcooked! All You Can Eat combines the first and second games together into a “remastered” pack on Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5, but it feels a bit like warming up leftovers. If you’ve never played this series before and have somebody to play it with, disregard any negativity in the coming 900 or so words. They are fantastic fun and you’ll get an awful lot ...

How do you make a great racing game like Dirt 5 into a must-play experience? You optimise it for Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5. It’s that easy. Racing should be a bigger genre than it is. When you look at the mobile scene, the biggest titles are things that are intense, fun and playable in short bursts. That’s driving games to a tee. We haven’t been able to have that pleasure on console until now. The traditional experience has…

There was some chatter earlier this year that the jump this new generation will give us will be the biggest since the leap between 2D and 3D. Don’t just dismiss that as marketing talk, because it’s very true. Since the strongest 2d games were released for the SNES, we’ve seen a very slow transition to 3D. PS1 and PS2 were about finding the roots that would lead us to gaming as we know it today. PS3 was about building those…

There’s no better way of rounding out a dinner party than to load up Jackbox. The mini-game compilations are fantastic fun, often come to Gamepass, and, more amazing than anything, are now up to their seventh pack. This latest compilation brings with it five new games, each worth looking at. For what it is, there’s nothing quite like the Jackbox compilations, and I think if you know you’ll get the use out of it, it’s worth every penny. ...

It’s 2020 and that means aliens are going to invade about any second now. If those aliens are half as useful as the Pikmin, it’ll be a good day for our planet. The little blighters are happy to be tossed into walls, chucked at enemies, fed whatever yellowish goop happens to be lying around… On second thoughts, maybe this isn’t such a great idea. A better idea was Nintendo porting Pikmin 3 from the Wii U to the Switch. The…

Here we are on the cusp of a bonzer new generation of consoles, and I’m thrilled that Ty the Tasmanian Tiger is still here, biting it up with the big boys. Old games deserve to live on, and that’s doubly true when you’re talking outside the holy trinity of Mario, Sonic and Crash Bandicoot. Seeing those ripper levels again was a joy, but Ty HD is just that: those same familiar levels again. The resolution and framerate have been bumped,…

There was a whole article written in my head, and with each loss the adjectives were getting swearier. Rocket League had gone to the dogs. Was it because it was now free-to-play? Had the community just got bogged down by awful players and bad losers? It was sad to see such a great game in such a sorry state. The good news is that Rocket League is still amazing. The bad news is that players on Switch are getting a…

Whatever happened to the brawler genre? One day, every game was a brawler, and the next it was gone. It had become retro, with new content consigned to stylised sequels like the incredible Streets of Rage 4. 9 Monkeys of Shaolin is an attempt to bring those old titles back in something feeling a little fresher – and it mostly succeeds. But not just that. 9 Monkeys of Shaolin is a perfect combination of genre and theme, bringing back kung-fu…

Metal Gear Solid 4 is about the most next-gen game you can imagine. Your suit automatically changes textures to match its backgrounds. There are epic gunfights that you can use to blend into the background, or you can choose to change the ebb of battle to gain allies. That’s before we even mention that epic moustache, still unsurpassed in games or cinema. It’s next-gen in every way you can name, except that it’s 12 years old. Created by ...

The team behind The Medium are teasing that a mystery related to the game will be revealed tomorrow. The announcement will be made at 6am PDT/1pm UTC/3pm CET, and those interested in the dual reality game are speculating that it may have to do with the game’s release date. There isn’t currently a firm release for the psychological horror game, which is being made by Bloober Team for Xbox Series consoles and PC. Developers announced a vague ...