PlayStation fans can rejoice, as the much-requested PSN ID change feature is finally coming to PS4 this week. Changing your PSN ID will be free for the first time; each subsequent change will cost $10 / £8, while PS Plus subscribers get a reduction to $5 / £4. The news is good, but there’s a catch: not every PS4 game might not play nicely with your new ID, and in some cases the problems could be significant.
As stated on the PlayStation Blog, “As a result of the preview program, we’ve found an instance where a game did not fully support the feature.” Sid Shuman, PlayStation’s director of social media, clarified that any game published on or after April 1, 2018 should support the feature. However, not every game has been tested with the feature implemented.
Sony has provided a tentative list of games that could present issues for those who change their PSN IDs. Sony says a “large majority of most actively played PS4 games support the feature,” and while you can rollback the change, you’ll want to be aware of the potential for issues.
There are two ways to change your PSN ID: on the PS4 itself or via a web browser. Once you’ve done so, be mindful when jumping into the games below, which are separated into those that have been found to have issues and those with “critical issues.”
Games With Issues Identified
Changing your PSN ID may cause the previous ID to remain visible or disappear entirely, user accounts to unlink, and settings to return to default in these games. Sony suggests that signing out and signing back in should resolve these non-critical issues.
Absolver: Downfall
Assassin’s Creed IV Black Flag
Big City Stories
Bloodborne
Call of Duty: Ghosts
Crossout
Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin
Dark Souls III
Dragon Quest Builders
FIFA 17 Standard Edition
Gauntlet: Slayer Edition
God Eater 2 Rage Burst
Grand Theft Auto V
Gundam Versus
Guns Up!
Injustice 2 – Standard Edition
Killzone Shadow Fall
Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite
MLB The Show 17
Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4
Naruto Shippuden: Storm Trilogy
Naruto Storm: Road to Boruto Expansion
NBA 2K19
PlayStation VR Worlds
Rock Band 4
Rocksmith 2014 Edition – Remastered
The Last of Us Remastered
Titanfall 2
Trackmania Turbo
Trove
Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End
UNO
Warframe
WipEout Omega Collection
Games With Critical Issues
Changing your PSN ID may cause you to lose progress and/or in-game currency in these games. Additionally, some parts of the game may function properly. Sony doesn’t recommend changing your ID if you want to keep entitlements and Trophies as it’s “possible to incur permanent game errors or data loss.”
Bungie has announced the next event for Destiny 2 is called The Revelry. The spring-themed event will begin on April 16 and continue until May 6, adding content and a new Exotic weapon to the game. A new trailer detailing the event has also been released. It can be viewed below.
The Revelry grants access to a new area called Verdant Forest, which–like Festival of the Lost’s Haunted Forest–adds objective-based fights that you need to clear in order to face off against an onslaught of bosses. Although Verdant Forest can be tackled alone, Bungie advises to fight “with a team.”
During the event, you’ll also be given a Reveler’s Tonic. The tonic can be filled with Reveler’s Essence by killing the Verdant Forest’s bosses or clearing certain side quests. Once filled, the tonic can be used to reduce the cooldown on grenades, melee attacks, or class abilities. The potency of the tonic can be increased as well, by equipping pieces of The Revelry’s new Inaugural Revelry or Vernal Growth armor sets. The effects of these armor pieces and the your tonic will apply in all game modes except for Private Matches during the entirety of The Revelry event.
You will also be able to exchange the Reveler’s Essence you collect for limited-time rewards, “including world drops, Enhancement Cores, and ornaments for the Inaugural Revelry helmet.” The latter will grow in size by equipping more pieces of the Inaugural Revelry or Vernal Growth armor sets. Essence can also be exchanged for a new Exotic kinetic fusion rifle called Arbalest. Bungie describes the firearm as “the first weapon of its kind,” and “does extra damage against enemy shields.”
During The Revelry, drop rates for Bright Engrams will be doubled, and players at max level will earn one every time they level up. Limited-time Revelry Engrams will be available as well, the images of which are posted above.
It’s been a long time coming, but Sony is finally rolling out the much-requested PSN ID change feature this week. From April 10 (April 11 in Europe), PS4 users will have the option to change their PSN IDs as many times as they’d like either through the console itself or a web browser. Here’s how the process works.
The first time you change your PSN ID will be free, but each subsequent change will carry a $10 / £8 fee. If you have a PlayStation Plus subscription, you’ll pay half that, so each change will cost you $5 / £4. As previously mentioned, there are no limits to the number of times you can change your PSN ID, and you can always revert back to any previous ID at no charge by contacting PlayStation support.
To change your PSN ID through your PS4, first go to the Settings tab and select Account Management. From there, choose Account Information, then Profile, and finally Online ID. Input the PSN ID you’d like to use and follow the on-screen prompts to finish the process. To change your ID through a web browser, first log in to your PSN account, then select PSN Profile. Click the Edit button next to your PSN ID and you’ll be able to change it. Follow the remaining prompts to complete the change.
As previously noted, you’ll only be able to change your PSN ID either through a PS4 console or a browser; you can’t do so on PS3 or Vita. Moreover, child accounts cannot change their ID. If you do change yours, you’ll have the option to display your old ID next to your new one on your profile for up to 30 days to help your friends notice the change. You can read more about the process on the PlayStation Blog.
Another caveat to keep in mind is that not all PS4 games will support ID changes. While any title published on or after April 1, 2018 should display your new ID in-game, Sony says it discovered one instance “where a [recent] game did not fully support the feature.” A small handful of games also have “critical issues” that may potentially result in the loss of game progress and other data if you do change your ID. You can see the full list of games that support PSN ID changes here.
For a limited time, you can get some pretty sweet discounts on select video games and accessories at Newegg, which is offering a 20% off promo code now through tomorrow, April 11 or until supplies run out. The promo code to use is EMCTYUT27.
This promotion includes some of this year’s biggest releases, like Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, which is discounted to $48 with the promo code; The Division 2, also available for $48; Kingdom Hearts 3, which is marked down to $38; and Devil May Cry 5‘s Deluxe edition, which is down to $56 for Xbox One. Notably, you can grab two of 2018’s best games for remarkably cheap: God of War for $32 and Red Dead Redemption 2 for $30, both on PS4.
There’s also a small selection of consoles and accessories on sale, including the PlayStation Classic for just $32 (as a reminder, it launched at $100 in December), a few PSVR bundles, gaming headsets, and wireless controllers.
You certainly can’t say that Zanki Zero: Last Beginning is not unique. How many other games out there are first-person, real-time, tile-based roguelike horror dungeon crawls featuring in-depth survival mechanics, ensemble character drama, and a post-apocalyptic sci-fi story about clones and the last remnants of humanity? I definitely can’t think of any. But unique doesn’t always equal good, and in the case of Zanki Zero, its interesting, genre-melding concepts wind up a bit hobbled by some not-so-great execution.
Zanki Zero begins as a rogue’s gallery of eight characters find themselves on a strange tropical island with only a few rundown facilities. They all have no idea why they’re here, how they got there, or what connection they all have. But things soon take a turn for the even weirder: TVs across the island start playing a bizarre educational cartoon at set intervals, explaining that the eight are the last remnants of humanity and must work together to survive and build a new future for the human race. Oh, and they’re all actually clones, experience rapid aging, and die after 13 days of life–assuming nothing else kills them first. But it’s okay, because one of the few functioning things on the island is an Extend machine that can clone them after they die, effectively meaning they can live and die forever.
And die they will, because survival in this dilapidated paradise is no picnic. When you begin the game, you barely have any functional facilities to do things like cook and sleep, and you need to collect material in order to build them. Not only that, but you need to effectively micromanage the health of every character. On top of a typical health meter, they also have a stamina meter (which drains from merely existing and goes down faster when doing strenuous activities or carrying lots of items), a stress meter, and even a bladder meter. Letting one element get out of control can have cascading effects; if a character can’t hold it anymore and wets themselves, they become embarrassed and stressed, which makes fighting enemies tougher, which leads to more rapid stamina loss for them and their teammates, which leads to health loss, which leads to death. Scavenging and using food and relief items and facilities like toilets helps, but carrying too much leaves a character overburdened and unable to move, and as time passes, characters age, and the amount they can carry changes.
If that all sounds like a lot to take in, that’s because it really is. The heavy survival elements of Zanki Zero get dumped on you quite early in the game, and with little in the way of resources and experience, managing everything can get extremely rough. And that’s all before you factor in exploration and combat. The game offers multiple difficulty levels (that can be changed mid-game to your liking) to help offset this, but it’s still pretty rough waters in the early game as you try to come to grips with how much you need to micromanage. While there are some tutorials, they are inadequate, amounting to info-dumps that are tough to take in when you’re already struggling with juggling everything else. Once you finally have all of the island’s facilities built and can stock a small safety net of resources, the constant micromanagement becomes far less daunting and even quite enjoyable as you watch your ragtag bunch grow from helpless castaways to capable survivors.
All those important survival elements aren’t even the core focus of the game, either–it’s also a first-person, real-time dungeon crawler. At the behest of the mysterious TV characters, the cast explores urban ruins that drift to the shores of the island to find new parts for their Extend machine and finally remove the fatal rapid-aging flaw from their cloned selves. Each of the ruins is tied to one or more of the cast members’ lives, and you’ll see glimpses of traumatic events from their pasts in each one that reveals more about who they are and, perhaps, why they are here. The unfolding story and revelations throughout the varied environments push you to move forward and discover the secrets of the characters’ hellish situation. You won’t get more story without a struggle, however; the ruins are laden with hazards like mutated animals and trap switches. If the challenge of basic survival and rapid old age doesn’t kill you, the threats in the ruins certainly will.
But character death can have its advantages. Sure, you have to drag them back to the Extend machine and spend your limited stash of “points” earned from dungeon exploration to revive them in a child body. But when you revive them, you can also give them a bonus called “Shigabane:”: based on their life experiences and how they died, they get advantages in their new clone form. For example, dying at middle age from being gored by a giant boar while poisoned will result in the revived clone taking reduced damage from boars, getting poison resistance, and adding an extra day to their lifespan at middle age. It’s a great system that doesn’t remove all of the sting from death but still leaves you feeling like you’re making progress through your efforts.
Unfortunately, Zanki Zero’s combat is easily the worst element of the game. It attempts to marry turn-based, tile-hopping roguelike combat with real-time elements like charge attacks, group combos, and attack cooldowns, but it winds up constantly feeling sluggish and unresponsive. Worse, there’s not much in the way of strategy in most of the fights; you usually want to maneuver behind or to the side of an enemy while charging attacks, whacking them when opportunity strikes, then scurry away to avoid retaliation, charge again, and repeat. (Or, if you have a ranged weapon, you plink away with that.) An additional element where you use an aiming reticle to target specific body parts of an enemy just makes things messier, as you have to spend valuable time fidgeting with awkward aiming controls. It’s the same reticle you use to examine things in the environment, so if your reticle isn’t in the right place (say, you just examined something else not long ago), your attacks can simply miss entirely. It’s a shame that combat’s such a weird-feeling mess, because it drags down the fun of exploring these urban ruins, finding interesting items and bits left behind, and learning about the characters and the world.
Uniqueness is one of Zanki Zero’s biggest selling points, but its myriad ambitions and ideas aren’t enough to obscure the elements that don’t work as well. While the novelty of the game, its interesting story, and engaging exploration do a lot to carry it, it falters in some crucial spots that drag down the whole.
Fans of A Song of Ice and Fire, the book series on which HBO’s insanely popular Game of Thrones TV show is based, have been waiting for the next book in the series–The Winds of Winter–since the last book, A Dance with Dragons, was published back in 2011. With the show’s final season looming, fans await any news about the next book more eagerly than ever.
Luckily, there’s some good, if vague, news on that front: Author George R.R. Martin stated during a recent interview with Entertainment Tonight that his writing has “been going very well lately.”
As the author has stated many times before, he’s given up on trying to guess exactly when he’ll be done writing, as fans tend to lash out when he provides dates that then come and go without a new release. “It’ll be done when it’s done,” Martin characteristically told ET on the red carpet for the show’s Season 8 premiere. Then he added: “It’s been going very well lately, so knock wood.”
ET, which is one of GameSpot’s sister sites, debuted the clip from the interview in the first episode of its weekly Game of Thrones show Theories and Thrones, hosted by myself and ET’s Leanne Aguilera. You can watch the full episode, including the interview with Martin, below.
The Winds of Winter wasn’t the only topic of discussion. Martin also said of all the storylines dropped from the show, he misses Lady Stoneheart the most–a feeling that’s been echoed by many fans ever since the vengeful character was left out of Game of Thrones Season 4. But Martin said he understands why she was cut.
“Even with a novel of ordinary size, when you adapt it for television and film, usually it involves cutting and simplifying, and my books are not books of ordinary length,” he said. “If we included everything from the books we’d still be on Season 1. It would have been an eight-year-long Season 1. There are hard choices sometimes, but that’s the business.”
Finally, he dodged the question of whether the show is hurtling toward the same ending he has planned in the books: “I don’t want to spoil my books or the show, so watch both and read the book, and you decide,” the author said.
There’s still no projected release date for The Winds of Winter, but with the show finally building toward a conclusion, fans can hope that Martin will be able to focus on writing and get it done. After that, he’ll just have to write yet another book to draw the series to a close as it was originally intended. Sigh.
Indivisible is an upcoming action-RPG from the team behind Skullgirls headed to PS4, Xbox One, PC, and Switch. Get a good look at exploration and combat here!
