Posts By Mat Growcott

The Summer Game Fest has come and gone to mark the semi-official start of the season’s Not-E3 celebrations. And yet this year, more than ever, we can see that it’s not the E3 replacement perhaps everybody wants it to be. That should be okay. That is to say, there a place for a smaller “hyped” event that can explore a variety of smaller games alongside a few bigger announcements. And while that might not seem like a controversial ...

While the State of Play was an underwhelming start to the Summer games news blowout, there was at least one major bright spot. Astrobot and Dynasty Warriors mark another welcome return to mainstream fun. That’s not something to take for granted. The actual prioritisation of entertainment over production values or spectacle is something that rarely comes along. And while Dynasty Warriors was edging a little closer to edge than I’d have traditionally ...

To the surprise of nobody paying attention, Call of Duty will be coming to Game Pass. It’s official. Stop asking. Xbox confirmed the news today, after previously confirming it multiple times. But don’t worry guys, you can still secretly hope a new Call of Duty tier is added between now and November. Or that the price suddenly doubles. Microsoft have had a crappy year so far, and there’s absolutely no denying it. They’ve scored more own ...

I woke up this morning to perhaps the most important low-key video game news of the year. The Kingdom Hearts series is finally hitting Steam. Those not in the know might shrug their shoulders at this news. There’s a good chance that most people in the know won’t give a damn. A hodge-podge of PS2, PS4, PSP and 3DS games reaching an app on a platform they were already available on? Yawn, right? Wrong. This signals a change in priorities…

It’s nearly that time of year when – for a week or two – there’s actual game news. And this not-E3 might be the most important yet. Since the actual E3 died a death, publishers have collectively decided that June is still a good time to share your big marketing push for the coming year and beyond. And while I miss the organisation, pomp and cringe of the proper show, what we’ve got now is still better than the nothing…

There was a time when I’d write about games. Now I write about how industry executives keep stepping on rakes. I should preface this by saying I’m not the multimillionaire executive of a trillion dollar company, so perhaps the line between “making customers happy” and “destroying an entire brand in a fire” is thinner than you might think. Xbox this week shuttered two popular studios for reasons beyond public comprehension. ...

It seems like five minutes ago that Xbox didn’t have the studios to maintain its first party offerings. Now they have the benefit of closing them down. It’s easy to be emotional over news like this. Tango Gameworks, Arkane Austin, Roundhouse Games and Alpha Dog will no longer exist. And while I’m sure there are internal things that we don’t see here, there is little that can justify studio closures outside of the obvious. It’s ...

Like the Series S before it, the Nintendo Switch 2 is the worst kept secret going. It’s getting to the point where it’s so unofficially official that even third party manufacturers are casually dropping details. So frequent are the Switch 2 info drops that the biggest takeaway from Nintendo’s announcement will be discussion of the varying degrees of rightness that have come over the last couple of years. Which leakers were correct, which can ...

I watched the trailer for Tales of the Shire yesterday, and instantly decided it wasn’t going to be my thing. You know what it is? Exactly the kind of gaming adaptations we need. Life sims are huge right now. Will any of these games still be rated especially well in a decade? Enjoy before the wave comes crashing down, because man the weight of some of these titles is starting to feel heavy. And I start this article from pointing…

When Ghost of Tsushima comes to PC it’ll bring with it something that many of us guessed would never happen. You’ll be able to earn PlayStation trophies through your Steam purchase. This is massive. I get it. It doesn’t feel massive. In fact, on the face of it, Ghost of Tsushima coming to PC massively outweighs that little nugget of information by an order of magnitude. But that’s only if you’re not paying attention. There was a ...