Author: Trafficblast

It feels like a lifetime ago, but Final Fantasy VII Remake came out earlier this year to a great deal of acclaim. And as one of the year’s biggest game releases, it’s of course getting some solid Black Friday deals, which will see its price slashed by upwards of 50%, depending on exactly where you shop.

The best FFVII Remake deal we’ve spotted so far comes from Target, which will drop the RPG’s price down to a mere $25–the lowest price we’ve seen on the game since its launch in April. This deal goes live on November 22. Other retailers will have sales of their own, with Best Buy and Walmart offering it for just $30 if you’d prefer to shop at either of those stores (or if Target sells out). GameStop will have it for $35. This is a physical PS4 copy, so if you have a PS5 with a disc drive you’ll be able to play it on that system as well.

Final Fantasy VII Remake, as its name suggests, is a remake of the beloved PS1 RPG. It features new mechanics, massively improved visuals, and an incredible soundtrack, but its content doesn’t span the entirety of the original game–instead, it focuses on the Midgar portion of the game, diving more deeply into the stories and characters from that section. That doesn’t mean it’s short, however, as you can expect it to still take upwards of 40 hours to beat. It’s a terrific experience, as you can read about in our Final Fantasy VII Remake review, which scored the game a 10/10.

Remake is available exclusively on PS4, but as with almost all PS4 games, it’s playable on PS5 through backwards compatibility. An enhancement patch has not been released for that platform, but you should still benefit from improved loading times by playing on the new hardware.

All of the deals on Remake we’ve seen so far are for the physical editions, meaning this won’t be playable on a PS5 Digital edition. We’ll keep our eyes peeled for additional deals as they crop up–digital or otherwise–as we’re sure to get more deals, including a PSN Black Friday sale, as the month carries on.

GameSpot may get a commission from retail offers.

GameSpot may get a commission from retail offers.

GameSpot may get a commission from retail offers.

GameSpot may get a commission from retail offers.

After acquiring Fox’s entertainment assets, including Home Alone, Disney announced plans to reboot the iconic Christmas movie for its streaming service, Disney Plus. The original movie’s director, Chris Columbus, has now shared his thoughts on that as part of a 30th anniversary interview with Insider.

In short, Columbus does not think it’s a good idea. Disney hasn’t asked him to be involved, the director said, and he believes the new film is a “waste of time.”

“No, nobody got in touch with me about it, and it’s a waste of time as far as I’m concerned,” he said. “What’s the point? I’m a firm believer that you don’t remake films that have had the longevity of Home Alone. You’re not going to create lightning in a bottle again. It’s just not going to happen. So why do it? It’s like doing a paint-by-numbers version of a Disney animated film–a live-action version of that. What’s the point? It’s been done. Do your own thing. Even if you fail miserably, at least you have come up with something original.”

Columbus said he has been guilty of this, too, by making Home Alone 2, which he said was “basically a remake of Home Alone.” He said he enjoyed the stunts in the sequel, but he’s still not excited by Disney making a reboot.

Columbus also commented on the Ryan Reynolds adaptation of Home Alone, a stoner movie called “Stoned Alone” wherein Reynolds gets blazed in his house and becomes paranoid that someone is breaking in. Of the new Home Alone-related projects in the works, Columbus said, “Listen, have fun. I just feel, do something new. Life is short.”

For what it’s worth, Stoned Alone was pitched as an R-rated film before Fox’s sale to Disney. Whether or not the project is still going forward with the family friendly Disney is unknown.

As for the Disney Plus reboot, it will follow a similar structure to the original film. Here is the official description of the plot:

“The new Home Alone film will follow a husband and wife who go to war with a young boy, Max, who has stolen from them. Max is an energetic, witty nine-year-old boy with a mischievous side. He feels wise beyond his years and has the personality to easily converse with adults–plus the uncanny ability to relentlessly push their buttons. But, he also displays a sense of innocence and a kind heart, much like the original protagonist.”

Dan Mazer (Dirty Grandpa) is set to direct the upcoming movie, working from a script from Saturday Night Live veterans Streeter Seidell and Mikey Day.

The new Home Alone movie stars Kenan Thompson (Saturday Night Live), Ally Maki (Toy Story 4), and Chris Parnell (Archer), along with Archie Yates (Jojo Rabbit), Rob Delaney (Deadpool 2), and Ellie Kemper (Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt).

Dust off your 3DS and plug it back in the start charging–Nintendo’s beloved handheld has received its first firmware update in nearly a year. It’s not a major or important one, though–just a nice little reminder that the 3DS exists.

The new update, which takes the system to version 11.14.0-46U, contains a single update line that will be familiar to Nintendo fans: “Further improvements to overall system stability and other minor adjustments have been made to enhance the user experience.”

The wording, which is slightly different from the Switch’s equivalent, appears many times throughout the 3DS update log.

The previous firmware update for the console arrived on December 2, 2019, and focused on a StreetPass issue. The last “stability” update was on November 4, 2019.

In September, the 3DS was officially discontinued, meaning that Nintendo is no longer producing the portable console. The system sold just over 75 million units over the course of its lifetime–about half of what the Nintendo DS sold.

The 3DS had a lot of late-life great games that you might have missed after moving to Switch, including WarioWare Gold, Kirby’s Extra Epic Yarn, and Persona Q2. For more, check out GameSpot’s 3DS game review page.

The upcoming “Snyder Cut” of Justice League (now called Justice League: The Director’s Cut) is set to run for four hours, but the original plan was for an even longer film–or, depending on how you look at it, two much shorter films. In an interview with The Film Junkee, Snyder reveals that at one point he wanted Justice League to be two films, released a month apart.

Zack Snyder ultimately left Justice League following a family tragedy, and the film was completed by Joss Whedon. The finished film changed many details from Snyder’s planned film and ran for under two hours. “Even the director’s cut of the movie was shorter than my cut,” he reveals. “Yes, this is my cut of the movie, but there was a cut that I created that I said, ‘this is too much for the studio.'”

While Snyder’s movie was meant to be two hours long, the original version he planned would have run for four hours, which he knew Warner Bros. would not let him do. “I did have this idea,” he says. “Oh, maybe we could just split it in half and make it into two two-hour movies.”

“My first idea was like, you showed two hours, and then there’s like, maybe a month, and then the next two hours come out,” he continues. “That was one of my ideas.” Ultimately, that did not happen.

Reshoots have taken place for the upcoming cut of Justice League, although they reportedly only add up to a few minutes of new footage. Much of the film’s huge $70 million budget will be spent on post-production for footage shot before Snyder left the film.

Jared Leto’s controversial Joker will return for Justice League, and Ezra Miller recently shot new footage of his character, The Flash, from the set of Fantastic Beasts 3.

For more on the upcoming cut of Justice League, here’s everything else we know about it.

The PS5 remake of Demon’s Souls retains one of the original’s more complex gameplay systems and it remains just as enigmatic. The World Tendency system in Demon’s Souls alters the state of the many realms of Boletaria based on your actions, and the challenge they present, for better or worse. Depending on your choices and mistakes, you could find yourself exploring a dungeon that has increased in difficulty, yet also yields more significant rewards.

On the surface, World Tendency may seem like an odd take on a videogame morality system. But it helps to know what it involves as you may want to make some drastic choices in order to shift the balance from one side to the other. In this quick rundown on World Tendency, we’ll break down just what’s going on with Demon’s Souls’ more complex systems and how this intricate framework can greatly alter your game.

What Is World Tendency In Demon’s Souls?

In Demon’s Souls, your actions and performance will determine enemy aggression, rare item drop-rates, and even instigate encounters with hidden characters. All of these elements are tied into the World Tendency system. Each Archstone for the game’s five realms is assigned parameters that shift between White and Black Tendency, along with the other shades in between. Depending on your interactions with key characters, the circumstances in how you die, or even how you can help or hinder other players online, you’ll see a difference in the realm’s world state. This change is shown off as an icon on the HUD in the top left or in the remake’s new World Tendency sub-menu that shows each realm’s current state and your character’s tendency.

How Do World Tendencies Change The Game?

From the beginning, it won’t seem like World Tendency has much of an impact on your game. But over time, you’ll notice that it can potentially make or break adventures through the realms in the late game and once you meet more of the critical figures of Demon’s Souls’ story. When you start the game, your World Tendency will be set in the neutral state between White and Black. Once you die during your ensuing runs through the world while in body form, you’ll enter soul form. Soul form is when your character has a faint blue glow and when your health is cut by half. When you enter soul form, the current influence of the realm you’re in will see a slight shift towards Black Tendency. If you keep dying in body form or make evil choices when it comes to the fates of key characters, you’ll dip further into Black Tendency.

To put it simply, World Tendency can influence how difficult the state of a specific realm can be and what kind of rewards you can get out of it. If you aren’t careful and keep running into repeated deaths as a human, you could see your current realm dip further towards Black Tendency, which will increase the aggressiveness of foes and lower the drop rates of some items. So, being reckless and dying repeatedly can potentially make your game all the more difficult.

Another side-effect of the dueling tendencies is that events occur during a specific shift towards either Pure Black or Pure White. One of the earliest World Tendency events you can find in the game appears on the first stage in the Boletarian Palace. If you have Pure White Tendency, you can find a gate downstairs from the first checkpoint open. This pathway will lead to an encounter with Executioner Matilda, who will be hostile towards you. Defeating her will award you with some rare items, adding some incentive to shift the balance from one side to another.

What Are The Tendencies And How Can I Change It?

Both White and Pure Black World Tendencies represent the various threads that will influence the world of Demon’s Souls. Each side of the extreme has its pros and cons, and in some cases, you’ll want to dip further towards one side to trigger some encounters and gain some added perks. Here’s a quick explanation on how the different tendencies work.

Neutral: At the beginning of the game, you’ll start with Neutral influence on each of the five realms. Within neutral tendency, which shows up as a grey icon on the HUD and in the Tendency menu, you’ll receive no bonuses, nor will you trigger any encounters. This normal tendency is the game in its standard form. While this can undoubtedly be preferable for many of the game’s more difficult realms, you’ll often be faced with instances of death or will have to make an important decision, one way or another, don’t get too comfortable with staying neutral for long.

White: This the tendency you’ll more than often want to stay in. Enemies will be the least aggressive and will have less health, and drop rates for healing and crafting items will be more common. Dipping further to Pure White tends to trigger character-specific events and open pathways to some closed-off sections. To shift to pure white, you should remain in body form as long as you can while defeating bosses, helping allies as a blue phantom, kill invading players (who only appear while you are in body form), and defeating bosses in the game.

Black: Pure Black is Demon’s Souls at its most brutal. Not only are enemies more challenging to fight, drop rates for some items are significantly lower. Once you shift closer to Pure Black, the changed state will also put you in a position to be invaded by enemies at a more regular rate while in body form. The upside to putting yourself in Pure Black tendency is that certain items and equipment can drop, and there will be a boost to souls gained from fallen enemies.

Final Advice

The most challenging aspect of the World Tendency system is coming to grips with how unusual and often unclear its messaging can be. It’s a strange system, and thankfully, the remake makes certain aspects a bit more clear. Still, it can be tough to keep track of the meta-changes to the world while also dealing with deadly traps, powerful foes, and seemingly harmless NPCs who might have some evil intent. The sooner you can come to grips with the system, the easier it will be for you to understand your odds of survival in Boletaria and how you can manipulate the systems to shift the balance in your favor.

Godfall makes a good first impression. Even if you’re playing on a moderately powerful PC, as I did, it’s clear from the opening moments that developer Counterplay Games has endeavored to show off advancements in visual fidelity, no doubt in light of new hardware such as the PlayStation 5. From the way sparks fly to the myriad particles that coat every inch of its action and the reflectiveness of its gaudy gold and marble halls, Godfall wants you to know that next gen is here. Beyond the visual spectacle, however, lies a game that’s immediately familiar and over-reliant on an amalgamation of loot-driven games from the past eight years or so.

Godfall’s mixture of loot progression and third-person melee combat has been described by Counterplay Games as a new type of genre: the looter-slasher. The name holds up insofar as you loot and slash things, but there’s nothing about Godfall that feels intrinsically new. Diablo, Monster Hunter, and Warframe make up a portion of its overt inspirations, but it manages to avoid feeling completely derivative by pulling from so many different influences at once. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this approach, especially since it mixes in a few of its own ideas as well. The issues Godfall faces occur outside of combat, where its structure and gameplay loop are decidedly uninspired.

The whole game takes place across three distinct realms: Earth, Water, and Air. Upon entering each biome, you’re given a brief tour of the area before being tasked with finding some kind of door that’s locked by a specific number of MacGuffins. From here, you have to return to previously visited locations and defeat a number of mid-bosses–some of which are unique, but most of which are repeats of fights you’ve already had. Once you’ve slain each of these enemies and acquired the requisite amount of MacGuffins, you can open the door and fight that realm’s boss. Then you simply ascend an elevator and repeat the whole process again in the next realm.

As you can imagine, this rigid framework quickly devolves into tedium and wears out its welcome long before the final credits roll around nine hours in. To make matters worse, Godfall’s endgame revolves around yet more fights against the same bosses you’ve already clashed steel with before. There are some new wrinkles to this endgame content, including ways to earn new loot, a reward system that grants temporary buffs, and the prospect of failing and having to start over, but the core conceit of repeating battles to unlock loot to repeat more battles is not an enticing one when that’s all there is to it.

Part of this tedium is due to routine level and quest design that does little more than shuffle you from one battle to the next. Your objective rarely deviates from the basic task of killing everything in sight, aside from a select few outliers where you might have to destroy an object as well. You have no interaction with the world around you, and there’s no nuance to indicate a sense of history in each locale. Enemies simply mill about waiting to die–their entire purpose served by being vanquished at your hands–and the environments, for as good as they look, end up feeling like hollow set dressing. The threadbare story provides little context either, offering just enough of a reason for all the bloodshed. The end goal is to kill your brother before he can become a god and bring about the apocalypse. At one point it looks as though the narrative might add some depth by musing on the potential for power to corrupt those who have no need for it, but this is dropped just as soon as it arrives in favor of a predictable sequel tease.

Godfall is a game built on monotony that would fall apart completely if the combat weren’t there to prop it up. Your melee repertoire consists of light and heavy attacks, a snappy dodge, and a shield that can both block and parry incoming attacks. There’s the usual assortment of gear rarities, with common, uncommon, rare, and legendary loot to find, while your weapon arsenal features everything from giant greatswords to nimble dual blades. Each weapon type is diversified by the range, speed, and cadence of its moveset, but they all share the same four-button combo and an array of abilities that can be unlocked via a modest skill tree. Whichever weapon type you opt for will come down to personal preference, particularly since Godfall’s combat is meaty and satisfying no matter which one you choose, with a palpable sense of skull-crushing weight behind each and every blow.

It can also be surprisingly measured due to the fact you can’t interrupt attack animations if you need to block or dodge. This works well on paper, forcing you to learn enemy patterns and be deliberate in your actions, but it belies Godfall’s emphasis on aggression. Being patient works against bosses and in one-on-one encounters, but you spend the vast majority of the game fighting mobs where speed is of the essence. You need to quickly cut through ranged enemies or healers before dealing with anyone else, and this approach is antithetical to the way defending works. There’s even a Rampage mechanic that rewards you for staying on the front foot with a 20% damage increase. However, these mechanics are undermined by the fact that dying in Godfall is so inconsequential that it’s actually advantageous a lot of the time. Falling in battle simply respawns you back where you died, with all of the enemies right where you left them, whether that means they’re dead or damaged. Doing so also replenishes all of your healing items, so there’s little reason to avoid letting your health bar reach zero unless you want to keep hold of any of the energy you’ve built up. This changes during boss fights, but even these are generously checkpointed each time you deplete a chunk of the boss’ health.

Fortunately, there is some meaningful depth beyond the combat’s familiar basics. Every weapon type has two unique variants of special attacks called Southern and Northern Techniques. You can execute these by spending energy that’s gradually accumulated during the heat of battle. Performing a Northern Technique with the longsword, for example, will launch you into a rapid flurry of strikes that cuts through any foes around you, while the polearm’s Southern Technique sends you into a leaping ground slam that functions similarly to an AOE attack. Aside from being flashy displays of power, these techniques are also a vital part of Godfall’s Soulshatter mechanic. By using light attacks and Northern Techniques, you can apply Soulshatter buildup to an enemy’s health bar before switching to heavy attacks and Southern Techniques to bank all of that volatile energy and dish it out in the form of destructive Soulshatter damage.

There are a number of other abilities you can unlock throughout the game as well, such as a Weak Point skill that lets you aim the cursor at highlighted enemy weak spots to deal extra damage. This adds an element of finesse to those moments when you’re simply wailing on a group of enemies, forcing you to course-correct and hone in on a specific point. There are also Polarity Attacks that encourage you to swap between both of your equipped weapons in the midst of battle by rewarding you with a shockwave attack and extra damage for a brief period. It’s these physical abilities that really stand out during the chaos of Godfall’s combat. Some loot has a chance to apply different status effects like bleeding, or add fire and electric damage on top of your physical attacks, but none of this is particularly noticeable. You know when you’ve killed an enemy using Soulshatter damage because they explode in a bright dust cloud, but status effects just get lost in the noise.

Godfall is a game built on monotony that would fall apart completely if the combat weren’t there to prop it up.

As a result, Godfall’s loot is defined by basic number crunching–where gear is equipped according to the highest digits and little else. Your preference for a particular weapon type will factor into this, but finding a legendary warhammer is only exciting because your damage numbers grow in size. A legendary weapon doesn’t function any differently to a common one; they both still have the same combo and rhythm to their attacks. There’s still an inherent endorphin rush that comes from seeing that golden orb burst forth from a defeated enemy, but this mostly feels like muscle memory that’s accrued from playing other loot-heavy games. Seeing numbers grow is always a good thing, but it does nothing to change or evolve the flow of combat.

Valorplates are similarly disappointing. These armor sets come with slightly different stats and various Archon abilities–which are essentially ultimates–but the stats and passive buffs they apply are still barely perceptible, and there are only three Archon abilities split amongst its 12 Valorplates. They’re varied from a visual perspective, offering different styles on Godfall’s cosmic knights aesthetic, and this does allow you to look different from one another when playing in co-op. The game is naturally better with friends–even if there’s little synergy shared between your attacks and abilities–but you will need friends if you want to play cooperatively, since there is no matchmaking.

Even if you can play with others, Godfall’s meaty combat eventually begins to wear thin after the umpteenth version of the same fight. This is a shallow game bolstered by decent combat that struggles to bear the weight of an entire game. Uninteresting loot mixed with a monotonous and grindy structure is not a good combination, and for as satisfying and fun as it can often be to hack your way through one battle after another, there’s not enough here to sustain that enjoyment for more than a few hours.

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