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  • Why Final Fantasy 7 is (still) unstoppable 25 years since its release, the cultural phenomenon is still generating headlines.

    Search “Final Fantasy 7” on YouTube and some of the titles coming back at you read “The Life Changing Impact of Final Fantasy VII,” “What Made Final Fantasy 7 A BIG DEAL?” and “Why FFVII Is So Important To So Many People” – and videos along this theme have hundreds of thousands of views. There is no denying the impact of FF7 on its fans. And, in fact, 25 years since its release, the original PlayStation and Square masterpiece is still generating headlines. There is no denying that the game has also made a cultural impact. Apart from the multiple spin-off gaming appearances, movies, remakes and merchandise, the story of…

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    These are the most controversial games of all time, according to science We’re sitting here with a beautiful big dataset from Metacritic. It's time.

    February 7, 2018

    The craziest Pokémon Go stories so far Spontaneous friendships, Diglett dick pics, illuminati conspiracies, dead bodies, and all the other crazy Pokémon Go stories so far.

    July 12, 2016

    The 24-year feud that has dogged Star Citizen The story of two men, several ambitious space games, and an ongoing feud that has rocked a community of over a million fans.

    September 26, 2016
  • Under the thumb: the evolution of buttons How the buttons we press daily were formed over many decades.

    I’ve been delighted with Nintendo Switch, not just because Breath of the Wild is probably now my favorite game ever, but because the Joy-Cons really make the hardware feel special. Even more so if you were fortunate to get hold of the neon red and blue version. It may be because no other controller has ever had so much versatility, either for a single player or for the instant sideways turn into two stand-alone controllers. It shakes up a lot of other controller preconceptions, too, and in doing so made me think about all the controllers I have used. How over time that knowledge of where to move your thumb is accumulated,…

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    These are the most controversial games of all time, according to science We’re sitting here with a beautiful big dataset from Metacritic. It's time.

    February 7, 2018

    Legendary Commodore 64 Daffy Duck game finally found, playable for first time It’s a 228KB download, which was huge for the time.

    September 4, 2015

    Media calls for VR safe spaces Everyone will finally be safe in places where nothing can hurt you to begin with.

    May 3, 2016
  • The Mission: the most bizarre soccer game ever made "Once you have acquired the ball it is used as your main weapon against the Ninjas."

    Of all the ways a British child could have their Christmas ruined in the late ’90s — sherry-fueled arguments after dinner, a sibling raging because they didn’t get what they wanted, a burned turkey — there is a special place in yuletide hell reserved for crappy soccer games bought by well-meaning family members. For the contemporary gamer, soccer more or less means the slugfest between FIFA and Pro Evolution Soccer. But before this heavyweight title card came to dominate, back in the era of the original PlayStation, the soccer games jostling for position more closely resembled a royal rumble. And much like in the WWE’s yearly 30-man brawl, the majority…

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    The history of Wing Commander Wing Commander’s paved the way to the modern video game industry, and its design continues to influence game development to the present day.

    August 10, 2011

    Mario and Sonic: a tale of two mascots Super Mario Odyssey and Sonic Mania reflect the histories of their star characters almost too well.

    January 9, 2018

    Five standalone ‘sidequels’ that are far better than their main series The bitesize masterpieces that edge out their main series counterparts.

    January 19, 2018
  • Is true next-gen Cyberpunk 2077 worth the wait? Cyberpunk 2077 releases on all platforms in one month, but the next-gen upgrades for the PS5 and Xbox Series X versions won't be out until 2021.

    The launch lineup for PS5 (November 10th!) is looking pretty impressive, but fans of one of the most anticipated games ever now face a dilemma: the Cyberpunk 2077 scheduled for release on December 10th isn’t a real next-gen product. We have important news to share with you pic.twitter.com/qZUaD6IwmM — Cyberpunk 2077 (@CyberpunkGame) October 27, 2020 A later upgrade to Cyberpunk 2077, taking full advantage of the next-gen hardware, will be available for free. — Cyberpunk 2077 (@CyberpunkGame) June 19, 2020 While technically you can play Cyberpunk 2077 on your shiny new PS5, it will essentially look and feel exactly like the Cyberpunk 2077 in your PS4. The upgrades that allow…

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    gdc-2019-game-developers-conference-woke

    Woke at the GDC The Game Developers Conference is now about how games are to blame for every social ill — real or imagined.

    March 24, 2019
    wow-rage-suffer-beyond-imagination-2

    “You will suffer beyond imagination!” WoW Classic player fights girlfriend while streaming Annoy this WoW nerd and you will suffer beyond imagination, you will see the punishment.

    September 15, 2019

    Why you pay what you pay for video games We can often feel short-changed when it comes to buying video games, especially in the UK. So what exactly determines what you pay?

    September 30, 2015
  • 2D games exclusive to the PlayStation

    10 beautiful 2D games exclusive to the PlayStation (PS1/PSX) The future of gaming was 3D, but the PlayStation had several beautiful 2D exclusives.

    When the original PlayStation hit store shelves in 1995, it unlocked new possibilities in 3D gaming, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t a ton of beautiful 2D games on the PS1. The fifth generation of video games includes the PlayStation as well as the Sega Saturn and Nintendo 64. Out of those three consoles, it’s often assumed that the Sega Saturn had the best 2D games, considering its limitations with 3D. But the PlayStation had a giant library with a ton of great exclusives. Here are 10 great 2D games that you can only play on the original PlayStation in no particular order. 1. Alundra Watch this video on YouTube…

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    What Frostpunk could learn from real-life survival stories If you’ve idly wondered about the everyday lives of your little survivors, Ernest Shackleton’s failed Trans-Antarctic Expedition may prove a treasure chest of enrichment.

    May 18, 2018

    Mario and Sonic: a tale of two mascots Super Mario Odyssey and Sonic Mania reflect the histories of their star characters almost too well.

    January 9, 2018

    The largest ever MMO battle—3000 players!—was an accident Someone forgot to pay rent, resulting in a space battle involving over 3000 players and $300k worth of the game's currency gone forever.

    January 28, 2014
  • playstation-wallpaper

    Sony reveals next-gen PlayStation 5, confirms backwards compatibility, raytracing and 8K 2020 at the earliest.

    Fans of Sony’s leading games console, the PlayStation 4, have long awaited a successor to the popular platform that’s delivered everything from Uncharted 4 and The Last of Us to last year’s smash hits, Spider-Man and God of War. They will soon be getting their wish as Sony made a surprise info dump revealing their “next-generation plans” for the gaming world, which fans are unofficially referring to as the PS5. In an exclusive interview with PlayStation’s lead architect Mark Cerny, Wired got the first word of Sony’s plans to take their gaming endeavors to the next generation. The bad news is that it won’t be out this year, but the…

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    Could Watch Dogs’ smart city ever become a reality? A smart city, driven by the Internet of Things. Is Watch Dogs merely a sci-fi vision, or a real glimpse at the future?

    May 27, 2014

    The worst (best) ads in early video game history We remember some horrific advertising campaigns in gaming.

    May 16, 2014
    red-dawn-redemption-2-female-npcs-feminism

    Youtuber banned after hilarious murder—of female video game character Viral RDR2 video of feminist pixels being fed to alligator pixels was too much for YouTube in latest fiasco.

    November 8, 2018
  • anthem

    BioWare’s Anthem is broken and bricking PlayStation 4s Uh oh.

    BioWare’s latest – and worst rated – shooter, Anthem, is facing more than just bad reviews: it’s also bricking consoles. According to redditors, the game often crashes and occasionally takes the system down with it. And in some cases, the system never starts back up. One complaint thread by ForTheMasters has prompted over a thousand upvotes. This is the only game that causes a complete PS4 shutdown from AnthemTheGame ForTheMaster’s complaints were echoed by other users. “Happened to me as well,” wrote Terry2Toke. “The worst part is when it shuts your console off, it does it as if you pulled the power plug out of the wall. The console has…

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    The people obsessed with uncovering gaming’s deepest, darkest secrets For some, playing a video game to completion isn’t enough. They want to reveal the secrets behind its creation.

    September 7, 2020

    10 hilariously offensive Steam games you aren’t allowed to buy any more In memoriam the best of the worst banned games in Steam's storied history.

    December 4, 2020

    The world of video game vinyl Down the video game record collection hole.

    November 29, 2020
  • The making of WipEout Forget Lara. There was only one true herald of the Playstation generation. Real 3D, real music, real gaming. The future, after years of waiting, was finally now.

    Wipeout is a central part of The PlayStation Success Story. Its licenced music and in-club promotion are held up as the keys to attracting the post-pub generation. Play it now, however, and you’ll see a contradiction. Often regarded as the originator of gaming’s move towards the cool and the casual, it actually pointed the other way: towards bare-bones gameplay and aggressively clean styling. It was the perfect ambassador for Sony’s understated PlayStation powerhouse – all style, all substance. It is somewhat ironic, then, that the origins of video-gaming’s most famous trendsetter were in the resolutely unfashionable grid-based strategy game Matrix Marauders, which featured vehicle designs uncannily similar to those in Wipeout. The…

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    The best JRPG you’ve never heard of The SNES was the home to a lot of classic Japanese RPGs, but this one is in danger of being lost to time.

    October 9, 2015

    The world of video game vinyl Down the video game record collection hole.

    November 29, 2020

    RIP Konami console games, 1983-2015 With Konami moving away from mainstream gaming and onto pachinko and mobile, it's time for a nostalgic look back over its best games.

    September 21, 2015
  • Console wars are becoming an Apple-style rip off These days buying a console sets you on a dark, dark path.

    Oh guys, guys, what happened? You used to be cool. There was a time when buying a console got you onboard with a world of gaming that could reasonably be expected to last a generation (in silicon terms). Fanboys would argue until they were blue in the face as to why their console was the clear and obviously superior machine and nobody liked the rich kids who smugly proclaimed that they had all of them. These days buying a console sets you on a dark, dark path. Gone are the days of plug and play gaming. Now we live in an era of always online, advertising on your frontend (in…

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    Paypigs revolt after glitch reveals “cute goddess”‘ real face — and age "Her Royal Highness" Qiao Biluo's false online representation tricked Chinese men out of oodles of cash, and now they're trying to charge it back.

    July 31, 2019

    The World of Warcraft legacy server that is no more In closing Nostalrius, Blizzard finds itself the bad guy despite having the law on its side.

    June 17, 2016

    15 completely awesome old school video game commercials Blast to the past.

    May 24, 2020
  • The untold story of PlayStation Home, Sony’s most successful disaster Plagued by problems from the start, PlayStation Home never officially made it out of beta before it was shut down. But it was also very profitable. This is its story.

    The world’s introduction to PlayStation Home was technically at the Game Developers Conference in March of 2007, but most of us will remember it from Sony’s E3 conference that same year, where it featured in one of the most legendarily cringeworthy presentations in E3’s long history. The conference opened with a virtual version of Sony America executive Jack Tretton – stiff, weirdly animated, with a strange face and a dour expression – walking slowly towards the screen, showing off the new Home Square, which was sparsely populated with other avatars. “G’morning ladies, looking good,” says the incredibly nervous real Jack Tretton, with palpable awkwardness. Ten minutes later, showing off his…

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    The games that dare to sail the dark seas The humbling grandeur of the ocean: a place eternally unknowable, and indifferent to the fortunes of the seafarers it both sustains and destroys.

    June 23, 2017

    What Frostpunk could learn from real-life survival stories If you’ve idly wondered about the everyday lives of your little survivors, Ernest Shackleton’s failed Trans-Antarctic Expedition may prove a treasure chest of enrichment.

    May 18, 2018

    The 11 hardest survival simulators Casuals, stay away. These are the survival games that make staying alive difficult.

    May 26, 2019
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Recent features

  • Why Final Fantasy 7 is (still) unstoppable
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From the archive

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