Posts By Mat Growcott

Idiots on Tiktok have turned the new Minecraft movie into a meme. Kids (and more than a few adults) have been convinced to throw popcorn and drinks, scream loudly, and generally cause trouble in the name of fitting in. The real problem? Some producers are taking notice. The cinema business has been in freefall for a good while now. People are going to less and less films, and with more variety than ever. If you’re not James Bond, Marvel, Star…

Microsoft has released an AI generated version of Quake 2 and it’s proof, as if proof is needed, that AI isn’t the way forward. The version of the game is buggy, hard to control, and breaks when you look up and then back down. It’s just not fun, and the generation part of it doesn’t add a thing. No amount of “a computer made this” makes it better. It comes hot off the back of the terrible Ghibli crap people…

Pricing for the Nintendo Switch 2 has proven to be mildly controversial. In reality, it’s the costing of everything around the console that should be raising eyebrows. Right now you can jump onto Steam and buy a Deck from as little as £350. The OLED model with more than 500GB of memory costs £479. The Switch 2 console on its own is £395.99 (449.99 USD, 629.99 CAD) – although no doubt scalpers will be adding a pretty penny at launch.…

Nintendo are launching a new console at the worst possible time. Their feature set is questionable. They’re charging for absolutely everything, including the game that explains how the console works. People are excited, the biggest fans will buy it no matter what. But the best we can say? The Switch 2 is not without hurdles to hop. Just hours after the Nintendo Direct revealing its brand new console, US President Donald Trump is holding a press ...

Last week’s Nintendo Direct was pretty special. It had some deep cuts for fans, some major announcements, some decent third party stuff. They announced system level features and an news app, updated daily. This is the kind of dedication we expect to see from a console at the height of its sales potential, and yet this also marked the very last Direct dedicated to the Switch. That’s absolutely spectacular. Listen, there is a lot you can knock ...

We bought a Steam Deck at Christmas, despite not really knowing how it’d get used. The answer surprised me and in the best way possible. As people once again discuss the viability of the Deck in modern gaming, those of us using it know that it doesn’t really matter.  Digital Foundry released a new video on the Steam Deck’s ability to play modern games including Horizon: Forbidden West, Final Fantasy XVI and Black Myth: Wukong. The result was ...

Man, the first half of this year is packed. The next month and a half is filled to the brim with games worth playing. From Avowed onwards, barely a week is going by without something major to bother our backlogs. Why is it so stacked? GTA6. A new Grand Theft Auto is coming out this year. And although we’ve only had a single trailer, the presumption right now is that it will hit its announced release date of 2025. That…

The rumour is that Xbox’s next console will be a PC in a “TV-friendly shell”.  It’s a gamble, and one that probably won’t pay off in any kind of big way. The good news is that Microsoft probably don’t expect it to, so everything will be built with that in mind. It’s been a long-standing rumour, now stood up by Jez Corden. It’s an interesting idea, but one that fans will be more excited by than the general ...

It’s the classic response each time someone mentions loving Final Fantasy VII. “Wait until you try Final Fantasy VI,” someone will inevitably say. “Makes VII look amateur.” And I’ve written that as politely as possible. I’ve seen too many hipster rants about the beauty of the SNES JRPG classics, and the message is simple. If you came in with the PlayStation games, you’ve missed out. There’s always been a ...

There have been a lot of op-ed pieces lately about the end of the console wars. With Xbox finding their own way and Sony and Nintendo representing different parts of the industry, it seems there’s now little reason to compare the big three. We’ll do it anyway though, eh? I started a segment on how the gaming industry will look very different in five years. But the reality – for those not deep in the trenches – is that the…