Posts By Mat Growcott

When I was told that Sonic Generations was the weakest part of this package, I let out an audible sigh. SEGA remasters are always met with these kinds of comments. I still feel the reactions to the Shenmue set. And yet the truth is Sonic X Shadow Generations really does prove that the best of the Blue Blue is ahead of him… and it took a game starring Shadow to prove it. Sonic Frontiers was brilliant, especially after all the…

The PS5 Pro went on sale this week. If you didn’t know, you won’t be alone. I’ve seen no advertising, no sprawl of articles convincing me to overcome my skepticism and lay down the best part of £1,000 on a console, a stand and a disc drive. It’s the most muted console release I’ve ever seen. And as naturally happens on the internet, I’ve been told it’s either a sign that it’s overperforming or underperforming. On ...

Death Stranding has shadow dropped on Xbox today at the immensely affordable price of £17.50.  Buy it. It’s awesome. It’s also an interesting look at things to come. The biggest PlayStation fans are going to quickly point out that this isn’t a big deal. It’s five years old, they’ll say. Besides, Kojima has bought the rights back, so Death Stranding isn’t even owned by PlayStation. This new release is published by 505 Games ...

Bioware’s latest Dragon Age is out, and it’s good. Critics have called it a return to form for a series that’s lacked form for a long time. It won’t be getting DLC. Is this a good thing? I’ve seen all the celebrating that The Veilguard won’t get DLC. I’ve seen the five word paragraphs that celebrate the return to a day where a good game could exist in isolation. Buy it full price, finish it, move on. Gone are those…

Yakuza used to be pretty much exclusive to PlayStation. Now, with its release on Switch, the franchise is officially everywhere. See for yourself why it’s one of the best things in gaming. It’s the kind of success story this industry desperately needs to celebrate. It’s been around for 20 years, starting out on the PS2 and having pretty much a release a year since then. The mainline games are all worth playing, and will offer up hundreds of ...

We booted up the new version of Sonic Generations this morning, and it was a blast. In fact, it was exactly the same blast it was when we played it on PC 12 months ago. That’s not strictly true. There are some new bits, some re-recorded lines of dialogue. New things can be found. Places that had slowdown, even on a fairly beefy PC, don’t have slowdown in the newly released version of the game. All of these are pretty…

What’s the most innocent thing you’ve ever seen annoy the maximum amount of people? This is the internet, so I’m guessing we all have our examples. Here’s my latest find: the outpouring of grief over “Real Yakuza Use a Gamepad”. For those not in the know, that makes up most of a splash screen that shows at the start of every Yakuza game on PC. It’s a hint that if you try and play with a keyboard and mouse, you…

The Unreal Engine has problems. On console it’s often running at sub-1080p resolutions, and stuttering is an issue across the board. Is it time for developers to start looking at other options? It’s getting to be less and less of a surprise when a major video game franchise suddenly announces it’s going to be running on Unreal from here on out. Halo is the latest to fall, ditching its own engine and instead building future titles in ...

After seven months I have finished Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth. It’s a masterpiece, and now it’s done. I don’t know what I’ll do with myself. Expectations were high when the Remake trilogy was announced. Rightly so. You can’t casually put together a new version of one of the best loved games of all time. Remake proved the concept, Rebirth perfects it. Spending half a year or more with something makes it hard to walk away from. This ...

I’ve started playing games wrong, and I’ve got to say it’s feeling pretty right. This won’t be a new idea to some people, especially those who’re deep into achievements. But it’s something I recommend for everybody, if only to shake things up at a time when games aren’t spending much time rewriting the rules. The biggest games are so slick now. You barely have to play them. They put the maximum amount of energy into ...