Posts By Mat Growcott

Action movies in the eighties were simple. There were two sides – good and evil. A large muscled man (quite often with only the smallest grasp of the English language, and I’m not just talking about Arnie) would fight “someone bad” while causing millions of dollars of damage, a couple of hundred explosions and spouting kick ass catchphrases.

The Xbox Live Family Pack allowed groups of gamers to get four accounts upgraded to gold at a discount price, alongside a few other helpful features (like parental controls). At only $99 for a year, it really did offer a competitive option for groups of Xbox owners. That option has today been removed.  Without offering much explanation, the Xbox Live Family offer has been closed down. As of earlier today, it was possible to still click the advertisement for ...

Team Meat have been pretty vocal about their time spent developing Super Meat Boy on Xbox 360 – it wasn’t a good time. When they first shared their experiences in September 2011, a lot of other developers came forward and had similar comments. In short, Microsoft didn’t care about smaller developers, and made it pretty clear that appearing on a Microsoft console was reward enough for months of sweat and hard work. Some had hoped that the ...

The first season of Telltale’s Walking Dead game has been both critically acclaimed and a huge success with fans. The only real problem seems to be that the second season can’t get here fast enough. There was a rumour in recent weeks that those that loved the first set of episodes might have to wait another year and a half to find out what happens next, but, thankfully, that has turned out not to be true. After hearing the rumours,…

Bullet Run might not have been the biggest free-to-play shooter on the market, but it’s not good news that it’s closing. Its TV show style was utterly unique, and it was one of the better examples of the genre in the F2P market. If you never played it, you’re now probably too late. It closes, for good, tomorrow at 12PM PST. Sony have just sent out a new message reminding everybody to get their last games in over the next…

After rumours that Dead Space 4 had been cancelled thanks to the poor sales of Dead Space 3, the web imploded with anger against EA, first for daring to ignore what the fans wanted for the franchise and then for putting business and money ahead of, well, anything. The site from which the claim originated, Video Gamer, brought in a ton of hits, watched the drama unfold and laughed as every EA hater in the world picked up their pitchfork…

Gears of War 3 might have been the end of the Gears Trilogy as we knew it, but nobody thought for a second that the franchise would end there. Gears of War: Judgement takes us back before the original 360 game and gives us a glimpse at the back story of Baird. Why was that character chosen? According to Epic and People Can Fly, it’s because Baird was the favourite character for gamers. From ThatXboxShow and Lead Level Designer, Jim…

Ubisoft's press release revealing Assassin's Creed IV Black Flags was a masterclass in not saying things, but it left a pretty large set of lines within which to read between. Given that this is one of our first official announcements of a multi-gen game, it was interesting to see whoever wrote it squirm between too much information and not enough. Although it largely only confirms things we already knew, it's possible to make a few vague conclusions about ...

Lara Croft is a gaming icon, a woman that, in the nineties, became the very symbol of video gaming and its place in society. Although many of the people who saw her in newspapers and magazines couldn't tell you that she came from a video game called Tomb Raider, they certainly recognized her face (and, perhaps, other part of her anatomy). The fame didn't last, and it didn't take long for the Tomb Raider franchise to drop in sales, and for Lara Croft to stop ...

It was announced that we’d be getting a new Tomb Raider film almost two years ago, and in that time very little has been revealed. Actually, nothing has been revealed. There have been rumblings of people attached to the project – Olivia Wilde was named as Lara Croft not long ago, although it was almost immediately debunked. On the day of the general launch of the new Tomb Raider game, however, Crystal Dynamics has decided it’s the right time ...