Author Profile
- Username
- MatGrowcott
- Articles
- 61 (59 reviews)
- First Article
- Mon 2nd, December 2013
- Avg. Review Score
- 6.3
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Review Trials Fusion (PlayStation 4)
Motorcycle menagerie
Republished on Wednesday 30th May 2018: We're bringing this review back from the archives following the announcement of June's PlayStation Plus lineup. The original text follows. There aren’t nearly enough motorcycle games that let you play a round of tennis with a penguin, of that we can all agree. Alas, until some clever...
Review Child of Light (PlayStation 4)
Painted paradise
Republished on Wednesday 30th August 2017: We're bringing this review back from the archives following the announcement of September's PlayStation Plus lineup. The original text follows. Child of Light, a new two-dimensional role-playing game from Ubisoft, is best described using the titles that it was so...
Robotic robbery
It's a well-known fact that, back when Britain had an empire, you couldn't step into the foggy London night without occasionally tripping over the odd robot here and there. Every house and factory had a small army for protection, complete with complicated computers and pressure-sensitive mines. Like a pair of Queen Victoria's...
Review Deception IV: The Nightmare Princess (PS4)
Dreaming of you
So, it turns out that the Devil has another daughter. Shocker, but it seems he has a penchant for sleeping around. The second girl, Velgyrie, haunts our nightmares with traps and death – but who can blame her with a name like Velgyrie? Thankfully, a handy robotic companion is on hand to teach her how to most efficiently murder...
Review Tour de France 2015 (PS4)
Smooth ride
If your Sunday bike ride doesn't take you 180 kilometres through some of the most scenic areas of Europe, you really need to buck your ideas up. The rest of us – statuesque in our hard-bodied glory – don't really need a video game tie-in for the Tour de France, because we live it every single day. Still, last year's travesty...
Review The Escapists (PlayStation 4)
Bored behind bars
Every great prison break in history has been executed by someone with the ability to make a fully functioning machine gun out of two plastic forks, a DVD of Adam Sandler's 1989 cinematic masterpiece Going Overboard, and three inches of wire. The Escapists teaches you everything that you need to know when you inevitably get locked...
Review Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare - Ascendance (PlayStation 4)
Fastest food
You know that the world has really hit the skids when zombies take over a fast food restaurant, the last bastion of all that is good in our western society. The blank stares, the lust for blood, the senseless grunting – all of that is gone, replaced by hordes of the undead. In the latest slice of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare DLC,...
Review Project Root (PlayStation 4)
Bullet hell
There are so many things worth spending your money on: a gift for that creepy man in the bus stop, one of those rubbery, gooey aliens that were popular in the '90s, or – if all else fails – a can of delicious Spam. With so many quality products on the market, Project Root may just seem a little bit underwhelming. Indeed, it doesn't...
Review Titan Souls (PlayStation 4)
Fall of the Titans
There are people that would say that you deserve to die if you go on your monster-squashing quest armed with nothing but a single arrow, a pink bow in your hair, and a backpack filled with only the finest Waitrose-branded good intentions. Titan Souls doesn't have a story, but it improves the game tenfold if you view it as a fable...
Review Stealth Inc 2: A Game of Clones (PlayStation 4)
Patience test chamber
Office politics can be a killer. As anybody who has ever had to share a tuna salad baguette with Gina from accounting will attest, we're all just one wrong word away from snapping. Usually that takes the guise of making off-hand comments about a 55-year-old's fascination with leopard skin underwear and tight skirts, but what if...
Review Battlefield Hardline (PlayStation 4)
Battlefield Vice
We all know what police officers are like, don't we? If semi-documentaries like The Wire, CSI, The Shield, and A Touch of Frost are anything to go by, there's barely a person in law enforcement on either side of the pond that isn't addicted to meth and good-hearted hookers. As easy as it is for us to identify with these fictional...
Review La-Mulana EX (PlayStation Vita)
Temple of Doom
Back in the good old days, a game wasn't even considered playable unless it was so hard that you could never actually see beyond the first few levels – that was just how we got our value for money. The late 1980s were a time when men were men – even when they were pre-pubescent or, God forbid, female – and chest hair, flat caps,...
Review Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare - Havoc (PlayStation 4)
Eating John Malkovich
If there's one thing that was missing from every previous Call of Duty DLC pack, it was the ability to play as that one guy from the first two seasons of The Walking Dead. Also, John Malkovich, whose performance as himself in Being John Malkovich was the part that he was born to play. Celebrity cameos aside, Havoc adds some of...
Review Trivial Pursuit Live! (PlayStation 4)
Genius in a can
If there's one problem with the physical version of Trivial Pursuit, it's that there aren't enough klaxons. Without loud noises and bright lights, how are you supposed to know how awesome and attractive you obviously are? Ubisoft's latest adaptation drops most of what made the question-and-answer board game such a huge success,...
Risky business
With so many kitten videos on YouTube, taking over the world is something of a hassle these days. Vladimir Putin, with his head as smooth as a baby's first jazz recital, has found this out the hard way, attempting to start a world war while also maintaining his long-distance stalking of PewDiePie. Luckily, there's an easier way to...
Review Criminal Girls: Invite Only (PlayStation Vita)
Crack that whip
There's a classic feminist anthem by Devo which goes into great detail on what one ought to do when faced with a problem. Criminal Girls: Invite Only isn't the long-awaited JRPG based on that classic musical achievement, but there are similarities. In fact, put the song on in the background as you play and, like Dark Side of the Moon...
Review Resident Evil (PlayStation 4)
S.T.A.R.S. power
The Resident Evil "REmake" is frequently offered as an example of just how fantastic the series was back in the day. With its stunning visuals, impressive additions, and less embarrassing opening cutscene, it's easy to forget that this enhanced version of the survival horror classic sold well under two million copies on the...
Review Joe Danger (PlayStation Vita)
Not so dangerous
Joe Danger was a stunt hero, right up until he bit off more than he could chew and ended up hospitalized. It was a gruelling process, but he's back on his bike, and only you can help him to get back to the top. Expect to spend a huge amount of time flying through the air, making the kind of landings that'll make reproducing all but...
Review Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee HD (PlayStation Vita)
A remastered oddysee
When the Oddworld franchise made the move to 3D, the developer decided that many of the older 2D mechanics needed to come along with it. Saving captured innocents while solving puzzles and farting way more than is funny was still the name of the game, only now there were beautiful, wide environments to explore and a new...
Review Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris (PlayStation 4)
Familiar faces, too many balls
Lara Croft is back, kicking butt across an isometric playground filled with demons and darkness, just like in The Guardian of Light. Fans of the original spin-off title will feel instantly at home exploring The Temple of Osiris, fighting off alligators in terrible wigs and solving “puzzles” that tend to involve...
Review Speakeasy (PlayStation 4)
Don't lose your head
Speakeasy is what happens when you take a great idea, strip it of all but the very bare essentials necessary for it to work, and then release it at about ten times its worth and hope that people buy it based on the premise alone. If it were free-to-play, you’d feel ripped off. This game isn’t just bad, it’s insultingly...
Review Kingdom Hearts HD 2.5 ReMIX (PlayStation 3)
Sora sensational
Square Enix may not know how to do release dates, press conferences, or reasonable haircuts, but it's an expert at HD Collections. The firm's Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster was at least half a masterpiece, and the original Kingdom Hearts collection has become the only proper way to start the franchise. Kingdom Hearts HD 2.5 ReMIX...
Review Blood of the Werewolf (PlayStation 3)
The wolf among us
Some people just don’t have any luck. As though transforming into a hairy, blood-thirsty bipedal wolf every month isn’t a tad inconvenient, then someone has to come and murder your husband, burn down your gothic home, and take your son. Thankfully, the only thing between you and him is a series of impractically designed...
Review Shadow Warrior (PlayStation 4)
Crouching tiger, hidden Wang
Take those old kung-fu movies that get repeated endlessly on daytime cable channels, add a dash of retro shooter and whatever random bits of supernatural plot you have lying around, and that’s Shadow Warrior. An overpriced product of a bygone era, its attempts to highlight the way that things used to be do little but...
