Bloodborne review: The joy of relearning what you already know

PS4 exclusive rewrites the <i>Dark Souls</i> basics but remembers its roots.

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[arkiel]

Between this and Final Fantasy XV, I guess I'll be buying a PS4 tonight. :/

I held out as long as I could. Please don't think ill of me.

 

[arkiel]

marm0lade[/url]":1a00pwy2]Why is a confusing and lacking story OK for a game like Bloodborne, but not OK for Destiny? Destiny is praised for the same exact things Blooborne is - gameplay and environment, yet critics consider it's lack of story a major fault that significantly impacted reviews. Bloodborne gets a pass?

Because Bloodborne's story is inherently tied to the setting of the game, leaving the story largely inferred, and that story is much more interesting, detailed, and involved when compared to a bunch of anonymous human and alien ruins and yet another spin on dystopian architecture that looks in most cases overly-busy and nonfunctional?

Because most of Bungie's games present a setting where coherence is a realistic expectation, compared to the Souls and Borne games, where characters are scattered hither and yon, worlds dying, with most characters hollow or undead, mad or divine or lying.

 

[arkiel]

Nillaz[/url]":27u726ch]I can easily accept someone just not being into painfully challenging games, but I'm skeptical of limited time arguments. They just don't make much sense to me.

If the time interval between opportunities to play the game is such that the skills you have developed to progress in the game have dulled to the point where you can no longer progress in the game, then its really no longer an efficient use of time.

Best example of that for me is FFXIII. Sat down to finish the last two hours and had no idea what I was doing anymore.

 

[arkiel]

Nillaz[/url]":2kuadmwm]

arkiel[/url]":2kuadmwm]

Nillaz[/url]":2kuadmwm]I can easily accept someone just not being into painfully challenging games, but I'm skeptical of limited time arguments. They just don't make much sense to me.

If the time interval between opportunities to play the game is such that the skills you have developed to progress in the game have dulled to the point where you can no longer progress in the game, then its really no longer an efficient use of time.

Best example of that for me is FFXIII. Sat down to finish the last two hours and had no idea what I was doing anymore.

Fair enough, I can get behind this. If the timespan between play sessions is sufficiently long as to have you forget WTF you were even doing in the first place or has sufficiently dulled your gameplay skills to the point of frustration I can see that as not being enjoyable. Do you regularly go so long between sessions?

Me? If there's a particular spike in difficulty, I might get disgusted and forget about the game for a while.

I think the most recent example would be Vladis Story: Abyssal City, where I checked out on the final boss and found myself one month later without any idea about how I was supposed to be doing. The simpler the gameplay, the less this is a risk. I can pick up Skyrim or Binding of Isaac anytime, but stuff like Souls (and Borne, I expect) require too much prep work. Where things are, what the stats do, what the build you were working on was for, what your exploration goals were... imagine coming back to Super Metroid after a month and having a head full of vague ideas about where your new abilities could be used to access items and new areas. Bleh.

And then there are games like Hotline Miami, where the difficulty ramps up to hone player skill, rather than a deepening of mechanics. I expect it would take a lot of work to start cold halfway through that game and actually relearn how to play it from there.