The prolific and influential comedy writer-director Judd Apatow is not letting 2020 close out with adding a new project to the pipeline: He is now reportedly developing a “pandemic comedy” for Netflix. The untitled film will “follow a group of actors and actresses stuck inside a pandemic bubble at a hotel attempting to complete a film,” according to Variety. This will be Apatow’s first feature film with the streaming service.
Apatow will be co-writing with Pam Brady (South Park), and his longtime producing partner Barry Mendel will be executive producing. Mendel and Apatow have worked together on hit comedies for over a decade, beginning with Funny People and continuing their tradition of personal, poignant, and rites of passage stories with Bridesmaids, This Is 40, Trainwreck, and The Big Sick.
Of anyone to attempt a pandemic comedy, Apatow definitely particularly well-suited to tackle it in such a manner given his background in TV with Freaks And Geeks–it basically sounds like a film-length bottle episode, or a sitcom convention where an entire episode takes place in one set or location. And depending on your temperament, a comedic approach to the pandemic might be more appealing than, say, Michael Bay’s upcoming Songbird–a thriller that imagines COVIDs 20 through 23 as the virus develops a taste for human brain tissue. That is a direction, most likely, Apatow will not be steering this new film towards.
In contrast to when many assumed the coronavirus’ spread to the US earlier this year would mean a prolonged stoppage or lengthy pause in new TV and films, it seems we have now turned the corner from “Zoom shows” made during the pandemic (like HBO’s Coastal Elites or Freeform’s Love In The Time Of Corona) to now, hopefully safely, having somewhat meta stories being told about COVID while it’s still playing out.
The new console generation has introduced a frustrating problem as some PS5 owners have realized they are accidentally playing the PS4 versions of certain games. Publisher Activision has outlined how Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War owners can ensure they are playing is the PlayStation 5 version.
From the PS5’s Dashboard, highlight Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War and scroll down to highlight “Play.” Select the three dots icon and open that menu. From there, select “PS5 | Full | Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War.” This will ensure that the game version is the PS5 one.
How To Ensure You’re Playing PS5 Call Of Duty: Black Ops Cold War
Highlight the game tile on the Dashboard.
Scroll down and highlight “Play.”
Select the 3 dots and open the menu.
Select “PS5 | Full | Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War.”
Launch the game.
It’s a bizarre quandary to have in the first place, with the PlayStation 5 sometimes preferring to download the PS4 version of a game. Sony has not yet addressed the situation, but a fix is among the items on our PS5 wishlist.
To make sure you’re playing the next-gen version of #BlackOpsColdWar on PS5: 1. Highlight the game tile on the Dashboard 2. Scroll down and highlight “Play” 3. Select the 3 dots and open the menu 4. Select “PS5 | Full | Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War” 5. Launch and enjoy!
In our Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War review-in-progress, we scored the game an 8/10. While we still need time with multiplayer and Zombies, we were impressed with this year’s offerings–especially when it came to the features used by the DualSense controller.
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In prep for this review I dusted off my PlayStation 3 and spent about a week replaying through the original 2009 Demon’s Souls. My main takeaway from that experience was, “Man, as fantastic as this game is, it feels old.” And I don’t just mean graphically: you can only roll in four directions, character controls feel loose, and just overall, there’s a lot of jank. But Bluepoint – the team that so expertly remade Shadow of the Colossus in 2018 – has addressed just about all of those major issues and more in the absolutely gorgeous PlayStation 5 remake, resulting in a game that feels much tighter to control and one that brings FromSoftware’s neglected original Souls game back to the forefront, reminding us what a strong foundation the Dark Souls series was built upon.
Like the rest of the Souls series, the appeal of Demon’s Souls is that it’s an action-RPG that prides itself on difficult, cerebral, and methodical combat, as well as extraordinarily deep character build customization. In combat, every action poses a risk, whether it’s committing to an attack and leaving yourself vulnerable in the start-up and recovery of it, or committing to defense and sacrificing a portion of your stamina to avoid taking damage. Rather than relying mostly on reflexes, Demon’s Souls relies more on making smart decisions both in and out of combat, and making the right decisions in order to overcome its many tough challenges feels incredibly rewarding in ways few other games can match.
Demon’s Souls may be the game that kicked off the Souls subgenre of action-RPGs, but it is the ways in which it’s different from the Dark Souls games that really make it stand out. The biggest is that rather than being one contiguous open world, Demon’s Souls is split into five isolated worlds, each made up of three to four sublevels, each offering their own unique rewards and challenges. The thing I love so much about this structure is how easy it becomes to just pack up, leave, and try out a new area if you find yourself struggling in the one you’re currently in. Each level is difficult, but in very different ways, and never for reasons as simple or as boring as the enemies simply just being stronger.
World 1 is tough because you frequently have to contend with an obnoxious dragon that spends its whole day roasting each of the bridges you need to cross in order to proceed; World 2’s enemies are resistant to most damage types outside of piercing; World 3 is a labyrinth that’s easy to get lost in and is guarded by tough mind flayers that can kill you in just one or two hits; World 4 has highly aggressive skeletons that are also resistant to most weapons outside of maces and hammers; and World 5 has a ton of enemies that are easy to kill, but have a nasty habit of swarming you with rapid hits and wild attack patterns. Not to mention the whole “lake of poison” thing.
What’s clever about this is that Demon’s Souls’ structure makes every playthrough feel different because you’re able to approach each world in new ways. For my first playthrough, I went with a magic-focused build and went to world 3 first so I could stock up on magic-replenishing consumables and unlock the NPC that grants access to the most powerful spells. But in my second playthrough with a more dexterity-driven character I bounced from world to world, picking up useful items and gear from each one before committing to beating any of them. It’s this flexibility that makes Demon’s Souls so distinctive among the Souls games.
[poilib element=”quoteBox” parameters=”excerpt=Demon%E2%80%99s%20Souls%20features%20some%20of%20the%20most%20memorable%20bosses%20of%20any%20of%20FromSoftware%E2%80%99s%20games.”]Demon’s Souls also features some of the most memorable bosses of any of FromSoftware’s games, and certainly some of most mechanically interesting ones. Many feel like experiments to really push the limit of what a boss could be; of course, not all are successful. The Dragon God was a disappointingly gimmicky boss fight in 2009, and annoyingly it’s just as bad in the PS5 remake. But others, like the emotional and story-driven battle against Maiden Astrea, or the epic fight against the Storm King that has you picking up a special weapon to shoot giant slicing wind attacks at the godforsaken manta rays that had been making your life a living hell for the last three hours, are absolute classics.
All of this is true for Bluepoint’s remake, which largely stays true to the spirit of the original Demon’s Souls, both for better and for worse. Not all of the ways Demon’s Souls differentiates itself from the rest of the Souls series are positive ones. Demon’s Souls is exceptionally grindy in often frustrating, time-wasting ways. If you run out of health-restoring grass, you’ll need to either farm it by repeatedly killing specific enemies in specific worlds that drop it, or you’ll need to farm souls (that you could have used to improve your character) and purchase it from a merchant. Weapon upgrading is also needlessly convoluted, with 16 different types of upgrade materials to find and make sense of, and almost every weapon type requiring different materials in order to upgrade them. Dark Souls addressed both these issues with the introduction of Estus Flasks and a simplification of the weapon upgrade system, and going back to how it used to be made me remember how much of an improvement Dark Souls was in those regards.
The Quality of Life
The real stars of the show here, though, are the litany of smaller quality-of-life upgrades that make me never want to even think of going back to Demon’s Souls on the PS3. There’s so many to touch upon, but the long list includes: The addition of a tool belt that lets you equip up to four situationally useful items in a submenu that’s accessible with the touchpad; the ability to use archstones like a bonfire and reset the enemies without having to go back to the Nexus; being able to see the durability of your weapon in the HUD; being able to see what the next item you have equipped is; and all of this is on top of a much cleaner and more intuitive menu UI that sacrifices some of the original’s unique visual style in favor of simplicity and readability.
I need to give a special mention as well to the new ability to send items to your storage box without having to return to the Nexus. Item burden is a huge factor in Demon’s Souls, and in the original, when you picked up something that you had no space for you’d have to either make room for it by permanently destroying something in your inventory or you’d have to just leave it and convince yourself that you didn’t really need whatever it was anyway. And then you’d also have to trek back to the archstone just so you could offload any unnecessary items. This is an elegant fix that still keeps the inventory management without any of the frustration.
There’s still an annoyingly common tendency to use a shove attack when I don’t mean to, and I wish the developers had done something to better explain World Tendency to newcomers. But those nitpicks notwithstanding, Bluepoint did an excellent job of updating Demon’s Souls to modern standards without changing the core of its gameplay.
One other area that Demon’s Souls obviously benefits by virtue of being on a console with an SSD is a substantial reduction in load times. Rarely will you ever wait more than five seconds in between deaths or while teleporting to a new location before you’re back in the action. I can’t overstate how huge this is for a game like Demon’s Souls, in which you’re expected to die over and over again and also to repeatedly reset a level for the purpose of farming.
The DualSense controller is much bigger than a DualShock 3, which makes it a tiny bit less comfortable to use the infamous “claw grip” that is almost required in a game like Demon’s Souls, but my hands adjusted over the course of X hours it took me to beat it. Most notable, though, is the way the haptics react to you being hit. When you block a big shot with your shield, you feel that strong jolt localized entirely on the left side of the controller; when you run over a fallen vase and it shatters you hear and feel that distinct impact; and when you ride an elevator, there’s an almost roller coaster-esque rumble that accurately imitates the churning of gears. It’s incredibly cool.
Also, the provided in-game tip videos are fantastic tools that give progressively more specific hints. Those can either point you in the right direction if you’re lost in a stage or give you crucial tips against tough bosses to help you figure out a proper strategy to deal with them.
Sights and Sounds
As one of the first games available exclusively on the PlayStation 5, it’s no surprise that Demon’s Souls is breathtaking to look at. There is a staggering level of attention to detail here. Enemies display looks of fear, anger, and desperation, and react realistically to every hit; Blood spatter sticks to your armor, weapons, and body; just about everything you walk through or on reacts naturally to your physical presence, whether its a puddle, box, vase, or a fallen enemy’s armor; fat jiggles on the grotesque Vanguard Demon when you make impact with a weapon. The list goes on and on.
It is all around just a magnificent showcase of the power of the PlayStation 5 and an enticing taste and what’s to come if things can look this good on a launch game. Bluepoint definitely took more liberties with the art style and soundtrack than it did with the gameplay, and personally I love the art direction, even though I will say that I miss the jovial mystique of the PS3’s Fat Official compared to the remake’s, which looks like a radiation experiment gone horribly wrong. The soundtrack, in comparison to the mostly somber and lo-key music of the original, feels much louder and more bombastic during boss fights, which I dug – but it is so different that I can definitely understand people preferring the original.
Demon’s Souls offers two visual modes labelled “Cinematic” and “Performance.” It’s the usual split that we’ve come to expect at this point, with the cinematic mode targeting 30fps with a true 4K resolution, and the performance mode keeping a consistent 60fps at 1440p, which is then upscaled to 4K. Personally, I’ve always been a framerate over fidelity guy, so I played the whole thing in performance mode and never looked back. That said, cinematic mode is definitely a stunner if you don’t mind sacrificing half the frames.
Summoned Souls
Of course, it wouldn’t be a Souls game without asynchronous multiplayer. If you’re familiar with how multiplayer has worked in other Souls games, Demon’s Souls should come as no surprise: Players can leave messages to give hints, point out secrets, or absolutely troll the heck out of you; you can play cooperatively with the tried-and-true method of leaving and activating summon signs; you can invade other players who are running the risk of going through a level while in human form; and you can lay down a red summon sign for some good ol’ fashioned consensual PVP.
I’ve always kind of been lukewarm on Souls multiplayer, and Demon’s Souls is no exception. My attempts in trying to get summoned in co-op were met with a ton of waiting and very little payoff – especially since without the covenant system added in Dark Souls, there’s little incentive to offer your help outside of the fuzzy feeling in your belly that you get for doing a good deed. My one success in getting summoned for PVP didn’t fare much better as I got summoned for the Old Monk boss battle, only to have it end abruptly when the player I invaded never even made it to the door. After that, I simply lost the will to sit and wait for multiplayer in general unless I was coordinating with a friend.
A big Halo Infinite community update is in the works, but there are currently no plans for the game to be at The Video Game Awards, 343 Industries confirmed.
In the weekly discussion thread on the Halo subreddit, 343 Industries community director Brian Jarrard stopped by to share that plans for a community update are in the works, but not in time for the VGAs.
“Full disclosure we don’t have anything planned for the VGAs but are hoping to offer at least a high-level update within the next few weeks so we can kind of restart this journey together after the holidays,” Jarrard writes.
“Putting together something like a demo or a big beat for the VGAs is an enormous amount of work and would cause challenges with the current milestones of the holidays,” Jarrard added.
Presently, Jarrard says 343 is still “going through the huge cascade of implications and ramifications” that appeared after the studio announced it will delay Halo Infinite to 2021. The new Master Chief adventure was supposed to be a launch title for the Xbox Series X, but the developers felt it required more time to get right.
Of particular note is Jarrard’s use of the word “restart” to describe the official press around Halo Infinite. After a tepid gameplay demo reveal, 343 has taken Halo Infinite back into development and hired Halo series veterans like Joseph Staten to bring the title “back on track.”
It’s unclear what the current state of Halo Infinite is, the developers are clearly taking the feedback from the gameplay reveal, which was criticized for its art style and fidelity, during this summer’s Xbox Games showcase seriously.
“Old Town Road” singer Lil Nas X recently performed multiple in-game concerts inside the massively popular MMO Roblox, and now we have some numbers that speak to how much of a success the event was.
The developer told The Wall Street Journal that the concert series picked up 33 million views over the course of the rapper’s four, 10-minute sets where he debuted a new single, “Holiday.” The official page on Roblox’s website for the event now states that the viewership numbers have climbed to 34 million.
Rolling Stone reported that the Lil Nas X event in Roblox was a long time in the making. The site reported that Roblox Corp, Lil Nas X, and his label, Columbia Records, spent nearly eight months working on nailing down the specifics of the in-game concert. Columbia CEO Ron Perry and marketing boss Ryan Ruden are said to have personally pitched the idea to Lil Nas X with the aim of targeting the game’s younger audience. Before this, Ruden met with Roblox developers in October 2019 to discuss the possibility of such an event.
Whatever the case, Ruden said the aim with the Lil Nas X concert in Roblox was to find “new and innovative ways to reach and find and to create communities around the new music of the artist.”
Blizzard has revealed new details about Overwatch‘s Symmetra with the release of a new short story titled “Stone by Stone.” In Christie Golden’s tale, Symmetra is sent by Vishkar Corp. to fix a PR fiasco caused by the accidental destruction of a sacred Omnic statue. While in the village, she encounters Zenyatta, the Omnic monk, and learns what she must do to correct Vishkar’s mistake.
A new Symmetra skin was revealed at the end of the comic, featuring a yellow design that contrasts with Symmetra’s typical blue-colored abilities. The skin’s new design is also tied to the short story and the bridge she establishes with the Omnic village and faith. Blizzard will likely reveal more details on how to obtain Symmetra’s new skin soon.
Symmetra previously received a short comic introducing her, as well as her employment with the mega-corporation Vishkar. In “A Better World,” the hard-light architech faces her own doubts around the dubious tactics Vishkar undertakes to achieve its goals. She joined Vishkar to improve the circumstances of the world, but soon realizes that the ends do not justify the means. In one mission, Vishkar blows up a building and injures a little girl in a favela. As a result, Symmetra appears to be doubtful of who Vishkar actually benefits and what her work with them means.
In other Overwatch news, Overwatch 2 is on the way with an unknown release date. Echo is supposedly the last hero before the sequel is released. The character is another damage dealer in a long lineup of damage heroes, but Blizzard has promised that more tanks and support characters are on the way. BlizzCon takes place on February 21, so we’ll likely hear more news about Overwatch 2 then.
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The PS5’s Rest mode is supposed to make it easier for players to pick up where they left off, just like its PS4 incarnation. Unfortunately, several PS5 owners–including multiple GameSpot staffers–have reported the console’s Rest mode appears to be causing a variety of technical issues, from persistent crashes to outright wiping saves.
Most users who have experienced these issues have been forced to rebuild their PS5’s database, similar to what happens when you accidentally unplug the system or experience a power outage. However, there appears to be no solution to the save-wiping issue. Some users have even reported that Rest mode can brick your PS5, though it’s not clear if that’s actually the case. It seems the vast majority of these complaints involve Spider-Man: Miles Morales, which led Insomniac’s James Stevenson to say that they’re investigating the issue.
Seems like putting a PS5 into rest mode while Spider-Man Remastered is running crashes the whole system, forcing that “repair your external drive” process when you start back up. At least that’s how it’s been for me the few times I’ve done that today.
Quick note on the PS5. Apparently sleep mode makes the system unreliable and rando crash. Had Godfall crash the system 3 times within in the span of an hour. The fix, give a fresh restart from the main menu and then don’t let it go into sleep mode until it’s patched. 👍👍
Put my PS5 into rest mode, and when I booted it up, the console had completely shut off, and lost 2 hours of progress in Demon’s Souls (including the Tower Knight fight), and there was an error syncing my cloud save. I’m not mad.
We’ve reached out to Sony for comment. It’s also worth noting that several GameSpot staffers have reported no issues with Rest mode. However, until Sony can acknowledge and look into these issues, it’s probably best to turn off Rest Mode altogether. To do that, go to Settings, Power Saving, and then select the Set Time Until PS5 Enters Rest Mode option. From there, select Don’t Put In Rest Mode.
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When discussing what the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X do better at launch compared to one another, there’s one feature Microsoft’s next-gen consoles have that’s absent on Sony’s: the Quick Resume ability to hop between games without fully exiting them. But the PS5’s Activities Cards may be the next best thing for getting you into games faster than ever before on a PlayStation console.
We’ve known since their introduction that these new Cards would allow you to jump into parts of a game nearly instantly, but as noted in a now-viral tweet by @TheAP99, specifically using the Cards from the PS5’s main UI offers a lot more flexibility in jumping to specific points in various games.
In TheAP99’s video, you can see the use of the Cards in a way that’s always been an option but one not made as apparent by PlayStation. In the original showcase of the PS5’s new UI, the focus on Cards was primarily around their use while in-game, such as with Sackboy: A Big Adventure, as players could hop around to different levels via the Cards in the PS5’s new Control Center.
However, as the video points out, each game will also have Activities Cards living on their respective PS5 dashboard pages, you just need to navigate below the play and Trophies buttons (a region that many may not dare enter given how slowly everything below the fold could run on PS4). By pressing “Resume” on any of these cards, you can bypass main menus, intro screens, and more and get directly to the action. That’s certainly been an advertised feature of the Cards – to get you to different parts of your games quicker than ever before. But for players looking to make that jump from one game to the next, that functionality is there, it’s just not the most immediately obvious option, as most of your interactions with Cards are likely to be via the Control Center.
Again, it’s worth noting that this is not an exact function compared to Quick Resume – you’re still exiting a game, and loading into another, but if you’re open to jumping into the PS5’s UI, you can get directly to the moment in a game you’re looking for more quickly than just starting up the game by pressing “play” on its page. But, for example, I right now on my PS5 am playing Demon’s Souls, and can navigate to the PS5 dashboard to pick Cards for Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered on its page, or to different levels via Cards on Sackboy: A Big Adventure’s page.
PlayStation 5 is now available in select regions, with a global launch following shortly on November 19. Those lucky enough to secure a preorder finally have their hands on the excellent DualSense controller and are getting their first taste of the next generation with Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, or one of several other launch games.
Many others, unfortunately, are stuck waiting for a restock. Rather than sit around refreshing retail websites, we’re entertaining ourselves by building our dream PS5 setup and calculating how much it’d cost to “max out” our next-gen experience.
To do this, we’ve compiled a list of all Sony’s official PS5-compatible hardware and accessories (no software or subscriptions) and noted the cost for the U.S., U.K., and Australian markets.
PlayStation 5 is available in two versions, one with a disc drive and one without. The PlayStation 5 Digital Edition costs $100 USD less, but for the sake of “maxing out” our console, we’re choosing the more expensive, disc-based option.
The DualSense Charging Station holds two controllers at a time, so we’re adding two to ensure all four of our controllers stay charged and ready to go.
Sony’s official PS5 headset is designed to take advantage of the console’s new Tempest 3D positional audio. IGN’s Pulse 3D Wireless Headset review says it gives games “a sense of space and place that most other systems do not have, even with surround sound,” making it a must-have for our setup.
For the full PlayStation experience, we’re going to need a PSVR headset. While availability and bundle contents vary based on region, these appear to be the lowest introductory prices as of November 2020.
*Includes PSVR, PlayStation Camera, a camera adapter, two PlayStation Move controllers, and Marvel’s Iron Man VR.
**Includes PSVR, PlayStation Camera, and PlayStation VR Worlds. (These bundles don’t include a camera adapter, which is required for PSVR on PS5; they’re available for free through Sony.)
Our “maxed out” PS5 — a console, three extra controllers, two charging stations, a Pulse 3D headset, one media remote, the HD Camera, and PSVR — comes in at $1,310 USD / £1,105 / AU$1,910, which is only slightly more than you’d pay for just a PS5 on the resale market.
Were you able to secure a PS5 on launch day? If so, which accessories did you opt for? Let us know in the comments!
Those who’ve yet to find a console can keep an eye on our PS5 buying guide, where we’ll continue to update you on availability. In the meantime, check out IGN’s PS5 review for our in-depth thoughts on Sony’s new console.
Bluepoint’s Demon’s Souls remake debuted on the PS5 November 12 and players are now able to discover Boletaria on the newest console generation, whether it’s again or for the very first time. But there’s one question that still needs to be answered as players head into their respective journeys: how long is it?
The answer to this question depends on several factors, including how much you’re focusing on mainline story content vs side missions, your experience with the series, and your overall ability to get a feel for it. Of course, everyone’s play style is also different, so your mileage will vary, but after playing in a variety of styles, here’s what we found.
How Long Is Demon’s Souls?
Critical path: 30 hours
Completionist: 40 hours
Lore Hunter: 50 hours
Folks who focus mostly on story content will probably wrap up their runs at around the 30 hour mark. Those looking to thoroughly explore both the main story and side content will likely finish at closer to 40 hours. Players who are more intimately familiar with the Souls series can expect an easier go of it, clocking in at around 20 hours. And, if you, like me, suck at Souls games, your clear time is looking to be somewhere around 50 hours. Don’t worry, slow and steady wins the race.
No matter your skill level or how long it takes you to get through Demon’s Souls, we’ve got your back as you battle your way through Boletaria, a journey our review called “a gripping gameplay experience that oscillates between exhilarating, nerve-wracking, and downright heartbreaking; and a faithful recreation of the seminal title that birthed the Souls-like subgenre.” Check out our beginner’s guide to help you through the start of the game, and get the skinny on the best spots to farm souls so you can save up for your dream gear.
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