Tag: Culture - Page 8
Soapbox Why Do We Treat Gaming Like a Chore?
Work, work, work
I've got to finish it otherwise I'll never clear my backlog. Recognise that? In this instance, 'it' doesn't refer to an important project or a piece of school work – but a game instead. Some of you won't have uttered a sentence like that, but I'd wager that there'll be more of you that have than haven't. The fact is that many of...
Weirdness Japanese Telly Has No Idea Who Shuhei Yoshida Is
They know he likes Space Invaders, though
Shuhei Yoshida, the affable executive in charge of Sony's Worldwide Studios, is one of the most high-profile names in games, but Japanese television doesn't have a clue who he is. The suit recently attended an exhibit about the history of video games, and was interviewed by a show called Mezamashi TV...
News PS4 Architect Mark Cerny Proves His Genius By Platinuming The Witness
Are you on the same intellectual plane?
Anyone who earns the Platinum in Jonathan Blow's brilliant The Witness deserves an honorary PhD. Mark Cerny, the architect behind the PlayStation 4, is the latest to 100 per cent the release, following in the footsteps of our very own Simon Fitzgerald. Better order the gowns, guys – it's graduation time. And...
Weirdness Ubisoft Chiselled a PS4 Out of Stone Because Far Cry Primal
Stoners
Reckon your PlayStation 4's a paperweight in its plastic guise? Well, publisher Ubisoft's crafted an even more useless version of Sony's console – out of stone. It's a publicity stunt for Far Cry Primal which we're totally playing into, but it is pretty cool. The company commissioned accredited master carver Nick Roberson to create the...
Feature A Brief History of Virtual Reality
Alex Boz tours the '90s VR graveyard
With the Oculus Rift and PlayStation VR well and truly on the way to our living rooms, virtual reality (VR) is the biggest news in gaming right now. But let's rewind the clock some two and a half decades, back when Sony was working on the Nintendo Play Station and the inventor of the Oculus Rift, Palmer Luckey,...
News Dress to Impress with Licensed Street Fighter V Clobber
Geek chic Masters
Street Fighter is one of the few franchises that's more than a game – it's a cultural touchstone. It's no surprise, then, to see merchandise manufacturers go crazy with licensed goods for the latest entry in the fighting franchise. Numskull, known for its seasonal Street Fighter knitwear, has gone particularly nuts ahead of the...
News Here's Hideo Kojima Hangin' Out with Norman Reedus
Quiet mountains
Hideo Kojima, you great big tease. The veteran director, fresh from his global tour with Mark Cerny, has posted a picture of himself hanging out with The Walking Dead star Norman Reedus. The picture is significant, of course, because the talented twosome were set to work together on Silent Hills, the cancelled PlayStation 4 survival...
News Football Teams Are Signing Pro FIFA Players Now
But the transfer window's closed?
Are you any good at FIFA? You may be getting a call from Pep Guardiola, Louis Van Gaal, or Jurgen Klopp any minute, because it looks like football teams are starting to sign up top gamers. BBC Newsbeat reports that Wolverhampton-based PlayStation pro David Bytheway – that ain't a real name, surely? – has been...
Weirdness Never Was a Story of More Fascination Than This of Xbox and PlayStation
Fortune's fool
The console wars may be awash with warriors angrily biting their thumbs, but the word star-cross'd springs to mind when observing the latest social media fad. This tragic tale of two adoring PlayStation and Xbox representatives actually did the Twitter rounds a couple of years ago, but it's made a comeback overnight – even prompting...
News Sony's Dropped a Clanger with This Let's Play Lark
Company tries to trademark YouTube term
Sony, why?! The early success of the PlayStation 4 can be assigned to the feel-good factor that the Japanese giant built around the format: the gamer-centric marketing, the agreeable policies, the Jack Tretton smackdown – so why the heck is the company jeapordising that by trying to trademark the popular...
Feature What Did We Learn from Hideo Kojima's Sony Tech Tour?
Ac!d trip
For the past week and a bit, Metal Gear maker Hideo Kojima has been touring the world with PlayStation 4 system architect Mark Cerny. The uber-intelligent twosome – who must surely have a combined IQ nearing the 300s – have been hitting the headquarters of practically all PlayStation studios,
News Let's Remember the Iconic PSone Start Screen Together
Sony Computer Entertainment presents
Much like Polygon Man at an E3 event eons ago, Sony Computer Entertainment is being taken out into the parking lot and shot. The Japanese giant announced today that it will be merging the iconic organisation with Sony Network Entertainment to create a new company called Sony Interactive Entertainment. It'
Reaction What Does the Death of Sony Computer Entertainment Mean?
Going through changes
Sony Computer Entertainment, the iconic company that gave birth to the billion dollar PlayStation brand, is dead – or, at least, it will be when the new financial year begins on 1st April. The Japanese giant has announced its intention today to merge the PlayStation maker with Sony Network Entertainment, a companion...
News Say Goodbye to Sony Computer Entertainment
PlayStation now operates under Sony Interactive Entertainment
This is not the news that we expected to wake up to on a chilly Tuesday morning: Sony Computer Entertainment is no more. Don't panic, PlayStation is very much alive – but the iconic organisation housing the billion dollar brand has been renamed Sony Interactive Entertainment. It's very...
Feature This Man's PS4 Collection Is Bigger Than Yours
Size matters
Hidden inside Valtteri Hyttinen's unassuming Finnish home lives a treasure: a PlayStation 4 collection so large that it spans an entire wall, and is growing by the day. The digital specialist lives and breathes Sony's new-gen box, spending his day building the PlayStation brand's social media presence, while his evenings are dedicated...
News Hideo Kojima's PlayStation World Tour Arrives in London
Rule, Britannia
Hideo Kojima's very public technology tour has touched down in London, where he'll presumably spend the start of next week checking out the latest titles from London Studio and Media Molecule. For those that haven't been keeping up, the Metal Gear maker has spent a chunk of
News Hideo Kojima's Having an Existential Crisis Over His Facial Hair
Should it stay or Hideo?
Now that Hideo Kojima's escaped from the clutches of Konami, the Metal Gear maker is allowed to worry about the little things again. And one question that's causing the auteur real anxiety at the moment is whether he should keep his facial hair. "Should I shave?" he asked on Twitter yesterday, adding a poll so that his 1.42...
News Konami's Going to Love This Metal Gear Solid Fan Remake
Snake! Snake! Snaaake!
Konami loves nothing more than a consultation with its legal team, and we suspect that the nefarious publisher will be huddled around a boardroom table right now pondering how it can shut down Shadow Moses, a fan remake of the original Metal Gear Solid game. The hobbyist upgrade's being helmed by Airam Hernandez in Unreal...
News These LEGO PlayStation Icons Are Too Darn Cool
Kratos! Lara Croft! PaRappa the Rapper!
We can probably all agree that LEGO's cooler than Shuhei Yoshida in an ice bath, but what if the blocky world were to merge with the PlayStation Nation? For its latest issue, Official PlayStation Magazine has commissioned a bunch of Sony-themed LEGO characters, which can be purchased from Minifigs.me. They're...
News Sony Attempts and Fails to Trademark Let's Play
What's up, it's your boy...
YouTubers need no longer fidget frantically, as Sony's request to trademark the term 'Let's Play' has been denied by the United States Patent and Trademark Office – but not because it's a popular phrase among gamers. Instead, it was denied use because of a similar trademark held since 2013 by Let'z Play of America, a...
Feature Sony Marks PlayStation Plus' Five Year Anniversary with Stats Plaques for Lifers
Life sentence
If you think that PlayStation Plus is bad now, this author can remember when the monthly update included a retro Mega Drive title, a PlayStation Mini, and a handful of PlayStation 3 themes. The service has changed exponentially since then, and as a reward for lifetime members sticking with the subscription model for all five years of...
Weirdness Police Arrest Man Who Urinated on Video Games
In a wee bit of trouble
If you've got to go, for God's sake don't relieve your bladder all over a bunch of video games. That's what one Target shopper did, as he was caught on CCTV urinating over a shelf of software and accessories. The incident took place on 5th January in Pennsylvania, and police have since brought the chap in for questioning...
News Final Fantasy XIII's Lightning Is a Louis Vuitton Fashion Model Now
Fabula, darling
That noise that you can hear is the sound of a thousand Push Square readers collectively grinding their teeth. Lightning, the protagonist of Square Enix's divisive Final Fantasy XIII story arc, has "agreed" – that's what the press release says – to become the face of the latest Louis Vuitton fashion line. Better than being a...
News Kaz Hirai Embraces Memes and GIFs During CES 2016 Presser
Yes we Kaz
The highlight of Sony's CES 2016 presser yesterday was Kaz Hirai presenting a slew of handpicked memes all based upon himself. The executive has admitted that the Japanese giant is willing to embrace its mistakes in the past, and he illustrated that again overnight, using some of parody account @KazHiraiCEO's tweets to show that the...
News Remember to Give Media Molecule Ten Birthday Bashings
British dev turns ten-years-old
Sony's experimental outfit Media Molecule is celebrating its tenth anniversary today – which must be a significant landmark when your cut your teeth on out-there titles like Dreams. The studio's first slam dunk was LittleBigPlanet, of course, which won a slew of awards following its release in 2008 – and spawned...
Soapbox Why I Love Strategy Guides
A game's best friend
Republished on Tuesday, 29th December 2015: We're bringing this article back from the archives as we look back at some of Push Square's features from 2015. The original text follows. Originally published on Monday, 3rd August 2015: Sometimes I think that strategy guides are a little bit misunderstood. I understand that spoilers...
Feature Meet the Man with 40,000 PlayStation Trophies
Platinum unlocked
Republished on Monday, 28th December 2015: We're bringing this article back from the archives as we look back at some of Push Square's features from 2015. The original text follows. Originally published on Monday, 24th August 2015: It's a warm yet rainy evening in New Hampshire, but Michael 'Roughdawg4' Sinclaire is uninterested...
Talking Point Did You Get Any PlayStation Gifts This Christmas?
Share 'em with us
It's Christmas Eve – actually, it's just gone midnight – and we don't have long to write this article, so you'll forgive us for excreting it out at the very last minute. But, we've written all of our Game of the Year stuff – keep reading the site over the coming week – and it's taken a lot of time. So, sorry this final...
News Fanart for Kojima Productions' Logo Has Already Started
No, really
Gamers around the globe are ditching their Quiet drawings in order to pen a new character: Kojima Productions' logo. We've only seen the medieval skull's head thus far, but studio founder Hideo Kojima did note in a tweet that the company has imagined the character's body as well. Rather than reveal it, however, he said that he'd prefer...
News How Would You Like to Win the Wonderful PS4 Life?
Have a go
You've seen the commercial, so you know that the life of a PlayStation 4 player is all about The Chemical Brothers and daring dance moves. Sony may not be able to guarantee you a guest role in the next Street Dance movie, but it is giving away a ton of goodies as part of its latest campaign. Prizes include a 1TB Star Wars Battlefront PS4,...
News What if Crash Bandicoot Got a Gritty PS4 Reboot?
It'd look a lot like this
It's nice to see the Rockstar editor being put to good use. Over on YouTube, user Pinkman has created a gritty Crash Bandicoot reboot using Grand Theft Auto V. In the clip, we see the 'coot smashing some human crates in order to grab some Wumpa Fruit, before indulging in some Crash Team Racing-esque high speed pursuits. Thi
News A Huge Happy Birthday to the PS4 on Its Second Birthday
Party like it's 2013
Much like a nipper, the PlayStation 4 has been walking the walk for a while, but on its second birthday, it's starting to talk the talk, too. For those of you that don't remember, on this day two years ago, Sony's new-gen system launched in North America. The rest of the world was made to wait a couple of weeks as the Japanese...
Weirdness Adult Site Sees Drop in Traffic on Fallout 4 Launch Day
High vaultage
Vault dwellers found a different kind of joystick to play with on Fallout 4's launch day, as adult site Pornhub – not linked for obvious reasons – reported a 10 per cent decline in traffic on the day of the role-playing game's release. Apparently page views dipped at 05:00AM on 10th November, around the time most people would have...
News Bloodborne, The Witcher 3, and Fallout 4 All Nominated for Game Awards 2015 Game of the Year
That's a tough one
Yep, Geoff Keighley is back in early December with the Game Awards 2015, and today, the event has gone ahead and announced which games will be competing for the grand prize: Game of the Year. The five nominees include PlayStation 4 exclusive Bloodborne, critically lauded The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, franchise finale Metal Gear Solid...
News Friends Pull Together to Buy Burgled Buddy a PS4
Heart warming
Being burgled is never a good thing, but it's even worse on the eve of Fallout 4. Sadly, that's exactly what happened to the New Zealander in the video embedded below – but fortunately he's got good friends. After being tricked by his mates into taking a trip to a local electronics store, the barefooted bros announce that they've all...
Weirdness After 40 Years, Sony's Finally Killing Off Betamax
Cassette decked
Here's one for our younger readers: before Netflix there were DVDs, and before DVDs there were VHS tapes. But before all of that, in 1975, there were Betamax cassettes. Sony created these as a means to record and playback video, but while the format was considered superior in some regards, it lost a very fierce war against JVC's VHS...
News Want to Play Fallout 4 All Day Tuesday? Pete Hines Has Your Back
Butcher Pete
For those few that are unaware, the hotly anticipated Fallout 4 releases tomorrow. Unfortunately, many of you may have other obligations like work or school to take care of before diving into the wastes. Have no fear, Pete Hines, vice president of PR and marketing for Bethesda, has taken the liberty of writing you a doctor's note:...
Weirdness PS4 Perv Slaps the Salami Over System in Store
#4TheFappers
We all like to twiddle our joysticks for entertainment – but when it comes to the PlayStation 4, the majority of us have our hands firmly on the DualShock 4. One saucy shopper had a very different piece of equipment between his fingers, though – as he was caught choking the chicken in front of the console in an electronics store. A...
Soapbox Why the Industry Is Getting Greedy (And How to Stop It)
Sam Brooke hashes out his views on gaming greed
Uncharted 4: A Thief's End. Rainbow Six: Siege. Street Fighter V. Payday 2. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. Destiny. Rise of the Tomb Raider. Assassin's Creed Syndicate. All of these games are full-pric
Here we go again
Bloody Hell, is it that time again? Recently, UK internet provider TalkTalk had its website taken down and its stored customer information accessed by supposed hackers. Panic ensued as the media got its grubby hands of the news, and then the whole thing turned out to not be quite as bad as anticipated. Of course, you can't have a...
Opinion We're So Sick of Saving the Bloody World
Holding out for a hero
Hands up if you've got a headache from saving the world yet again? Yeah, us too. One pet peeve that's had Push Square Towers irritatedly animated over the past few weeks is the fact that every single video game in existence seems to feel the need to go big. Well, we're tired of preventing the apocalypse, and we'd like to see...
News If Carlsberg Made Fallout Beer, It Would Be Available from Amazon Now
And it is
While this author would probably prefer an ice cold Nuka Cola, Carlsberg appears to have put a jagged lid on the Fallout 4 hype by announcing that a range of branded beers are available from Amazon.co.uk now. The lagers – inspired by Bethesda's upcoming role-playing game – come in packs of 12, and promise a "refreshing zesty hoppy...
News PlayStation Wishes the NES a Happy 30th Anniversary
Now you're playing with power
It's the tenth anniversary of PlayStation 2 classic Shadow of the Colossus' launch today – but it's the Nintendo Entertainment System's big 30th birthday as well. Acknowledging the event, Sony posted a brief message on Twitter to celebrate the North American release of the House of Mario's iconic grey slab. "Dear...
News PlayStation's Just Renamed a Theatre in Times Square
New York, New York
Could this generation be any more different to the last one? There were times during the PlayStation 3 era where Sony's flagship gaming brand felt like it'd been pushed into the background, but you can't avoid it these days. Case in point: the platform holder's just renamed Times Square's gigantic 2,150-capicity concert venue to...
News BioWare Shares More Mass Effect News That You Probably Don't Care About
Give us games or give us death
At this point, we're just desperate for something - anything - on Mass Effect: Andromeda, the next instalment in BioWare's sci-fi series. Heck, we'd go barmy over the announcement of a remastered PlayStation 4 trilogy, but for some reason, EA mustn't like the idea of relatively easy money. In any case, the point is...
Feature A Very Happy 20th Birthday to PlayStation
Birthday bashings
Pull out your party poppers, put on a paper hat, and pick out your best retro game tee – the PSone turns 20 today. Yes, we know that your attention just turned to a certain The Smiths song, but we're confident that this neverending anniversary is finally coming to a close. All the way back on 29th September, 1995, the original...
Weirdness Man Blames PlayStation for His Bad Driving
Jailed motorist didn't have a license
A 24-year-old man who took police on a 100mph pursuit through Lincolnshire has admitted that he learned to drive on a PlayStation. Adam Jones crashed his way through Grantham like he was playing Burnout Paradise, causing thousands of pounds worth of damage along the way. It was subsequently revealed that he was...
News Kinda Funny Games Returns to the PlayStation Podcasting Scene
Beyond the grave
Naturally we think that Push Square is the best PlayStation website on the net, but we're not oblivious to the great content available elsewhere. One of this author's favourites was always Podcast Beyond, the flagship IGN podcast featuring Greg Miller and Colin Moriarty. There's good news, then, for fans of the old show – as it's...
Talking Point What Is a Video Game?
The million dollar question
Video game. Noun. A game played by electronically manipulating images produced by a computer program on a monitor or other display. Video games are more diverse than they've ever been. As the market matures, we're starting to see new ideas introduced that challenge the very rules upon which the industry has been built...
News Want a Metal Gear Solid Story Refresher? This Site's Got Your Back
LaLiLuLeLo lifesaver
There's not a single person here at Push Square Towers that doesn't at least appreciate the Metal Gear Solid series, which is a testament to the property's quality seeing as we rarely ever agree. As good as the franchise is, though, we don't think that it could ever be described as fictionally consistent – so it's fortunate...
