Posts By Mat Growcott

Over the last couple of weeks, Microsoft Rewards have been slowly being nerfed. Users are getting less points, which is making it harder to maintain the level of bonuses they were used to. The scheme, which allowed those interested to utilise Bing and Game Pass to earn Xbox money or subscription time, as well as other rewards, has been made harder to use. That has included reducing points for things like earning a daily achievement and the removal of ...

Casinos love a tie-in. That’s how you end up with the Big Bang Theory slot machine. But sometimes they go deeper than just slapping a face on a wheel. And often that is most obvious with video game gambling adaptations. Today we’re going to take a quick glimpse through some of the most famous video game adaptions for gambling. It’s not surprising that popular franchises try to cross into other forms of media. Nobody would be surprised if a ...

There are few things in gaming that are absolutely sacred, but one of those things is modding. It is an inalienable right, as Bethesda found when they started considering paid modding. Capcom, apparently, didn’t hear this message. Taro Yahagi, a programmer for Capcom, said mods “aren’t that different from cheating” in terms of what they do to the game internally. Which shouldn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, but of course ...

Most people probably know Matthew Perry as the ever-popular Chandler Bing in the more ever-popular Friends. And yet gamers know him as a fan of Fallout and as the voice of Benny in New Vegas. Benny is one of the most memorable characters in the most memorable of Fallouts, and a huge part of that is Perry’s performance. A side character in a video game might seem like it pales in comparison to being a main character in the biggest…

There was a lot of talk, not that long ago, about the potential of cryptocurrencies and NFTs in video games. Now that discussion has died a death. There’s a couple of obvious reasons for that – all of the mainstream news about these things has been negative lately. I barely go a day without reading something about how someone lost a fortune on an easily stealable picture of a cartoon ape. But then again, you know what they say about…

I haven’t spoken much about the Metal Gear Solid Master Collection, despite the fact that it’s MGS and I’m a huge fan. I’ve been cautiously awaiting impressions to know what to make of it. I don’t want another GTA set. On the face of it, it’s an amazing set. MGS is available on Xbox for the first time, and with trophies and achievements. It includes Integral, VR Missions and multiple languages to choose from. For the first ...

Since the Activision merger was announced in January last year, it’s been all we’ve talked about. No gaming news has quite lived up to this giant behemoth, edging ever more closely to the finish line. And it probably never will again. But it is indeed now done. What impact is it going to have on the industry? Will Microsoft keep buying? And where does this leave PlayStation? Suffice it to say this deal is going to feel like a lot…

It is the nature of modern games that they can change, and quickly. Luckily Sonic Frontiers is all about quick. Okay, puns aside, this is a game that has changed a lot since I reviewed it back in January, and not least because of the free Final Horizon DLC released at the end of last month. But is that enough to bring players back? My initial opinion on Sonic Frontiers is that it was a diamond in the rough. It…

I get all the high scores in hearts. Unfortunately for me, that’s the opposite of what you should be trying to do. While you can pick up something like solitaire fairly easily, hearts sometimes feels counterproductive. It’s about scoring as low as possible. And at first the rules are seemingly complicated. Like poker, you don’t know till you know. But then you play it a bit more and start to get into it. You start to learn how to get…

It’s a headline that I didn’t think would take me the best part of two years to write… but the Microsoft Activision merger looks likely to close this week. Honestly, I’ve spent so long writing about this thing. It’s almost like the actual impact of it no longer clicks. It’s all been about the detail and the largeness, but not the actual long-term impact. So, for instance, within the week Crash and Spyro will be Xbox mascots ...