Posts By Mat Growcott

Avowed has been delayed into 2025 to give it room within a chockablock run of Xbox releases later this year. Which would be all good and well… but what releases are we talking about? Take out the PC-style strategy games, Call of Duty (which will be everywhere), DLC and AA games and you’re left with Indiana Jones. Which I’m not going to knock for a second, but if that’s your main release for the entire year, then something has gone…

Microsoft will close the Xbox 360 store at some undisclosed time today, and that really is the end of an era. There’s a lot of positives to say about that store, and we’ll get to them in good time. Gamesreviews is well over ten years old now, and when we started out, the 360 store was the one to beat. It’s hard to get my head around the idea that we’ve outlasted a console store, especially one so popular. For…

“It feels a bit cheap.” Our first reaction to the Turtle Beach Stealth Ultra was not a good one. In fact, you can count our second reaction to that as well. From there, it has seriously grown on us. Search Google and you’ll find a seemingly endless list of articles and videos declaring this controller an Xbox Elite killer. Well, my Xbox Elite killed itself. I didn’t need gimmicks, I needed a solid device for PC gaming. So obviously I…

Look up a list of great controllers for PC gaming and Microsoft’s Elite 2 will come up more often than not. And those articles are correct: it’s a great controller. That is, it’s a great controller with one giant caveat. From the moment I cracked it open, I felt I was playing with something special. Heavy, sturdy to the touch, and easily customisable, it felt like a really decent piece of kit. And it was. Until it wasn’t. That is…

Overnight, Retroachievements launched its Gamecube support. More than 100 classic Nintendo games now support achievements when emulated, and thousands of fans turned out in support.  When I woke up this morning, nearly 100 people were playing Super Mario Sunshine. Dozens more were playing other big hitters like Mario Kart: Double Dash and Super Smash Bros. Melee. I would expect those records to be broken again this evening, as more people get involved and the ...

Gaming disorder has been in the press again. Not fully understood or even accepted as real by some, every so often there’s a spate of discussion. This has been going on for over a decade. This time, it’s this piece that has started the discussion. It’s interesting and sympathetic, and I’m not going to go to hard in on the piece itself because those experiences happened. Like anything that takes very specific individual cases from a much ...

It’s Steam Sale time, and that means those of us with powerful PCs are picking out indie games that will barely tax them. Happy holidays everyone! And yet the season has me thinking once more about the state of the gaming industry – and the perks of being a patient gamer. I must own over 1,500 games, easy. I’m hoping one of these days I’ll finally play one or two of them. But within that backlog sits every genre and…

I loved Beyond Good and Evil and I’m glad the original is getting a decent modern re-release. It comes with a new mission tied to the long-promised sequel, and I’m wondering at this point what that could possibly mean. The original game was not a commercial success. Quite famously so. It sold less than 300,000 copies in the US, and it took price cuts of up to 80 percent to get there. Quick searching shows official mention of a sequel…

The original Resident Evil has been rated for a release on Steam, and it’s the most ridiculous thing ever that it isn’t already a thing. Think about it. You have a giant library of games from the last 30 years just sitting there. The average PC gamer has it open by default. They want games to buy, and the rights holders… just do nothing? Yes, the REmake is available for purchase. But that’s not enough. Steam should have all the…

Starfield is just okay. That’s the biggest sin a game can make in today’s reaction-led world. But those reactions are starting to wear a little bit thin. Reviews on Steam are negative again after an update added some paid mods to the game. Skyrim and Fallout 4 both have these mods, and they’re completely optional. And yet it’s another case of Starfield living rent free in some people’s heads. I should clarify that I found much of ...