Posts By Mat Growcott

Each and every year sees the release of dozens of sports management simulators, and the vast majority of them are extremely niche. While the likes of Football Manager destroys millions of man hours each year, similar games are often completely overlooked, panned or even mocked for their apparent lack of interactivity or their place in the sports hierarchy.

You're going to need a beast of a machine if you want to run Battlefield 4 at its highest settings and at 60FPS. Although it scales down quite nicely (allowing decent cards to run it around the 30FPS mark), working towards the best possible Battlefield experience might take a graphics card upgrade.

As somebody who is at least reasonably intelligent, there's a good chance that you wouldn't allow your children access to your credit card in a toy shop. You probably wouldn't give them a thousand dollars to hold either. Apparently, though, if you have over your phone, fail to use the included parental controls and your kid spends way too much on doughnuts, smurf berries and skins, it is the manufacturer of the phone that is at fault.

If you were a fan of Alice back in the day, the thought of American McGee's Oz was just unbearable. That dark style mixed with one of the best know fantasy stories ever... It inevitably got cancelled. That hasn't stopped the question popping up regularly, however: "Will American McGee and Spicy Horse ever tackle Dorothy's trip along the yellow brick road?"

Sony exclusive Puppeteer will soon be getting a demo. The game, which was formally announced last year, is a platformer of sorts that has you using a magical pair of scissors to attack enemies and alter the world. It's one of those games that sounds really strange until you try it, and that opportunity is on its way.

Lovefilm may well be putting a stop to their game rental service. Gamebrit reports than an email sent out to Amazon marketing affiliates late last week asked that people stop showing advertisements that mention the game rental program. Although it may well be slowly phased out, there's still mention of the service on the Lovefilm website and nothing seems to have been changed on that end of things.

Sonic After the Sequel is a fan made retro-inspired Sonic game set between Sonic 2 and 3 that was released as a free download this week. It's not a hack or a rebuild of something SEGA decided to ditch, but a full game designed and made from scratch, with new levels, new opponents, new obstacles and new music. If you didn't know much about Sonic history, you'd be forgiven for thinking this game is some long lost Genesis title. Perhaps the biggest compliment ...

What's a little Metal Gear hype without a few wild (and a few less wild) fan theories? We've all had over a week to watch and soak in the extended version of the first "proper" Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain trailer, shown at the beginning of last week's Microsoft conference, and I'm sure we've all got our own ideas about what's happening and how it all fits into the series as a whole.

Akaneiro: Demon Hunters is a game by Spicy Horse, originally released as a web browser title and now available for early purchase as a downloadable on Steam. It's still in development, with new features on the way over the next few months, so this probably isn't the last time we'll take a sojourn into historic Japan. An action-RPG of sorts, Akaneiro's beautiful art style covers limited, repetitive gameplay that may be fun in small doses on a tablet or in a ...

There was a post made on PasteBin by an apparent Microsoft employee, a post that said that Family Sharing was just a glorified way of sharing demos. This would have not only been annoying to those who liked the sound of the feature, but it would have meant that Microsoft were flat out lying about something they were advertising. Not a mistake in an interview sort of lying, but across most of their promotional materials.

Although Kojima officially revealed that Kojima Productions LA were working on a new Metal Gear Online, little else has been said about how multiplayer will fit into Metal Gear Solid V. That's still true, very little has been said. Still, it has been reconfirmed on the Kojima Productions Alert 4 podcast, and it's been said that it'll work in a very interesting way.

In an email sent out today detailing various changes to western Square Enix personnel, they have confirmed that IO Interactive are working on a "new AAA Hitman game." No other details were given, although it's probably fair to presume you won't be waiting as long as you were for Hitman Absolution, and that the new game will be making an appearance on next-gen consoles.

You may have heard that 2013 is the year of Luigi. Mario's bumbling brother has been forced to the forefront, first in March's Luigi's Mansion Dark Moon and, today, in New Super Luigi U. The first piece of DLC for New Super Mario Brothers U, New Super Luigi U is a full game conversion/expansion that gives fans of the game a whole new platforming experience within the same game. With Luigi's unique skills and few more challenging levels (and a harsher time ...

Gamestop have released a statement congratulating Microsoft for their change of heart concerning the Xbox One. It's perhaps no surprise that they're in support of the move considering their stocks dropped 5% when the Xbox One was announced.

It was a feature of the Xbox One that very few people seemed to know about, but for those that "got" it, yesterday's announcement that Microsoft were dropping more or less everything that had previously been announced was a bitter-sweet reveal. Family Sharing would have allowed you and up to ten of your friends to share a single game digitally, with you and one other person playing at exactly the same time. For those excited about the feature, this would have ...