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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[Evan E]

Nillaz[/url]":2unhzd21]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.

I've been trying, unsuccessfully, to find time to get back to playing Shadow of Mordor for the last two weeks. I started it at launch, and I haven't gotten past the first half (although I did play all the way through Alien Isolation during that time, in what is for me a concentrated period of two weeks' gaming). Some people have less free time than you; is that really all that surprising?

I finally gave up on Demon's Souls because, while I loved a lot of the gameplay, and really loved the level design (World Three was amazing), I was spending far too much time going over and over and over the same areas without getting any further before real life curtailed game playing for a week or three. From Software should absolutely make the games they want to make, but they'd have gotten my money for Dark Souls 1 & 2 if there had been a difficulty slider that cut out a lot of the grinding.

 

[groghunter]

alanmies[/url]":5xoffecr]

ivantod[/url]":5xoffecr]Just wanted to mention that there ARE in fact shields in Bloodborne, well A shield anyway--look here. Don't know any more details since I'm in EU so the game is not released until Friday and haven't had a chance to play it myself yet.

In the UK, you mean. Rest of the EU gets it in about three hours. *)

(For some historical reasons it seems most releases are Tue->US, Wed->EU, Thu-JP, Fri-UK. Whatever historical reasons they may be, and why they still apply in the global world we live in now, I have no idea.)

*) In my time zone. Wednesday anyway.

Becus 'Murica. followed by (expletive replaced with "Funk" at the behest of the MPAA/FCC) Yea.

 

[StilesCrisis]

Nillaz[/url]":1fadzxxt]
I get it that it might take longer to play through than for someone without any time encumberances, but the same can be said of just about any game with any degree of complexity. Is there some sort of time limit that you set for yourself in regards to how long you can enjoy a game for? A week? A month?

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.

I would love the opportunity to play games for hours on end, but my lifestyle doesn't allow for it; I have a wife, a family, a job, and need to balance game time with many other demands. In general when I'm gaming, I tend to have 90 minutes in a session, and I get to play a few times a week. I think 4-5 hours of gameplay in a week is pretty typical. If I'm really into a game, I start sacrificing sleep or other hobbies for it, and I can squeeze in a bit more time, but I can't burn the candle at both ends indefinitely. This may be hard to understand if you are a single guy, but my weekends and evenings really aren't "mine"—they are a shared resource. I never game when my kids are awake, and it's rare that I do when my wife is awake either, because it feels selfish to simultaneously hog the television and ignore her. Every family is different in this regard, but that's how we live. (I did game a lot more as a single guy, but obviously I had a lot more free time and fewer responsibilities.)

I personally have no interest in a Souls or Bloodborne game. I don't think it would be rewarding in 90 minute slices spread out over 6 months, and the opportunity cost is huge; I already don't have time to play every major game that comes out, so just imagine what adding a 6 month speed-bump into my backlog would look like! I prefer campaign/story-focused games that I can clear in 10-20 hours, like The Last of Us or Bioshock Infinite. I can pick those up for an evening, make tangible progress (e.g. clear 1-2 chapters), and then put it down when I reach a story beat. If I'm playing a game and I spend an entire 90 minute play session stuck on a single difficulty spike, and make no progress, odds are good that I will put that game back into my backlog and move on.

 

[StilesCrisis]

alanmies[/url]":294rvsdp]
(For some historical reasons it seems most releases are Tue->US, Wed->EU, Thu-JP, Fri-UK. Whatever historical reasons they may be, and why they still apply in the global world we live in now, I have no idea.)

If your game has multiple data centers spread across the globe, and a single server team that is responsible for managing all of them, it is cruel and unusual to launch a title across all regions in one day. Even in a "smooth" game launch, where it seems from the outside like everything held up and was stable, there's a team of engineers behind the scenes making that happen and fixing little problems before they become big ones.

 

[alanmies]

StilesCrisis[/url]":2u3eld2q]

alanmies[/url]":2u3eld2q]
(For some historical reasons it seems most releases are Tue->US, Wed->EU, Thu-JP, Fri-UK. Whatever historical reasons they may be, and why they still apply in the global world we live in now, I have no idea.)

If your game has multiple data centers spread across the globe, and a single server team that is responsible for managing all of them, it is cruel and unusual to launch a title across all regions in one day. Even in a "smooth" game launch, where it seems from the outside like everything held up and was stable, there's a team of engineers behind the scenes making that happen and fixing little problems before they become big ones.

Sure, but there was something I read a while back (while long enough that I really can't recall where it was) that at least the UK Friday thing had something to do with how game retailers traditionally operated. Or somesuch. Oh well, at least for me, playable in 2h20min and counting.

 

[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.

 

[Kyuu]

StilesCrisis[/url]":3gyrwjn7]
I would love the opportunity to play games for hours on end, but my lifestyle doesn't allow for it; I have a wife, a family, a job, and need to balance game time with many other demands. *snip* If I'm playing a game and I spend an entire 90 minute play session stuck on a single difficulty spike, and make no progress, odds are good that I will put that game back into my backlog and move on.

That's great. There's nothing wrong with that. I'm soon to be in the same boat (baby on the way).

But obviously the team behind the Souls and now Bloodbourne intentionally make games with punishing difficulty. It's their desire, their raison d'etre, as it were, along with the brooding atmosphere and stories largely inferred from the game world and gameplay itself. Making a slider or an easier difficulty setting would go against just about everything these games are about. Heck, the game worlds themselves would make less sense since the brutal difficulty and death itself are part and parcel of them and the stories.

The arguments about time limits are completely, 100% legitimate, and no one (asides from some jackhole elitists) would claim otherwise. But a development company that has no interest in catering to those who don't want to spend their limited gaming time working through their intentionally difficult games is also legitimate. These obviously aren't meant to be the sort of games that appeal to a mass-market in the first place. If they were just after as much of everyone's money as possible, they would make entirely different games.

 

[Nillaz]

arkiel[/url]":dn96sqaf]

Nillaz[/url]":dn96sqaf]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?

 

[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.

 

[mogbert]

Then, I'm afraid, like all the 'Souls' games, I will be giving this a skip. I've gotten past the point where I find being frustrated is fun. Personally, if I die in a game, I fell like I've done something wrong, or am just pretty bad at it. A game where you die regularly as par for the course is the antithesis of that.

It's not you... it's me.
And by 'me', I mean 'you'.

 

[groghunter]

arkiel[/url]":2z312y5f]

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.

Quite a few early to mid 2000's PC FPSes got dropped by me for 6 months or so halfway though. Some were brutal to pick back up. I remember F.E.A.R. being particularly nasty, as well as Bioshock. In fact, I think I never finished F.E.A.R. because of it.

 

[Dante G]

TimtheTaxMan[/url]":1me960yq]Really wish this game and the souls games had a difficulty slider. Those of us who have full time jobs and a family can't devote the kind of time into this game that it requires and it is a shame, because the setting and gameplay really appeal to me. I am also a big Kings Field fan.

I know I'll probably get a lot of hate for this comment because these games seem to draw in elitists like crazy. They can't stand the idea of someone playing it differently when a slider doesn't affect them or their difficulty at all.

edit spelling

I'm in the same boat. I was able to beat Demon Souls. I enjoyed Dark Souls a lot, but I got stuck in a fight against a boss that had two bosses in one (Ornstein and Smough). By the time I gave up I had already logged 50 hours in the character. I didn't get to experience the game after that fight and that's the reason I didn't buy Dark Souls 2.

It'd be great if you could switch difficulty settings for when the game is just too tough. Specially if it's a story related boss.

 

[Marcos2247]

Kyuu[/url]":16tg7rqz]But obviously the team behind the Souls and now Bloodbourne intentionally make games with punishing difficulty.

"Punishing difficulty" shouldn't be one term.
Those are two seperate things. A game can be difficult without being punishing. In fact, most are. Fortunately.

Dark Souls is for the most part not difficult. Once you find out how to beat the bosses, they're fairly easy. It's just that there's usually not a bonfire directly before the boss fight. So to learn the boss's weakness, you have to grind your way through the minions time and time again.
It's not difficult, it's punishing.

I remember back in '99 when "Aliens vs. Predator" came out missing a quick save feature and everybody hated the game for it. Nobody wanted to replay a whole level just for dying in sight of the exit. The first patch for the game enabled quick saves.

I remember all those sidescrollers in the 80s where you played for 2 hours to get to the end boss who killed you on first sneeze and you had to start over. The games weren't difficult, they were punishing.

Now Souls comes along and everybody's got a crush on what amounts to terrible spacing of checkpoints.

 

[Pantagruel]

mogbert[/url]":1qj777ju]Then, I'm afraid, like all the 'Souls' games, I will be giving this a skip. I've gotten past the point where I find being frustrated is fun. Personally, if I die in a game, I fell like I've done something wrong, or am just pretty bad at it. A game where you die regularly as par for the course is the antithesis of that.

It's not you... it's me.
And by 'me', I mean 'you'.

Call it pretentious, but I seriously believe Souls games are all about dealing with failure. The gameplay, the story, everything is geared towards the theme of failure and how you can overcome it. A good game, just like a good movie or novel, can make you contemplate over some facet of human condition. In the case of Souls, it happens to be failure and limitation.

 

[evan_s]

The Dark souls games and this sound interesting but I also know that they don't really fit my personality or my available gaming time now. I do enjoy a challenge and overcoming it but there is a fine line between that and frustration. I think these games would be over that line for me especially with a wife and three year old. I'm not sure I'd be able to make any meaningful progress in the 30-90 minutes I typically get to play in one sitting and sometimes those can be infrequent so I'd forget how to beat things and just get even more frustrated.

It reminds me of one of the Prince of Persia games where they had a mechanic where you ran along a wall and then decided to add in attacking an npc while on the wall. They had you do it once by a save point so you could practice it and then didn't do it again for a while and when they did do it again it was at the end of a longish sequence of collapsing running and jumping puzzles with the platform you had to do the wall run off of also collapsing. Getting lucky on the wall run once certainly didn't make me a master at it and the sequence wasn't hard but it was long enough that you still had to pay attention or you'd end up making a mistake and wasting one of your rewinds you wanted to save to make the wall run at the end. I did actually get the attack right once only to find I had started my wall run too early so I didn't make it to the platform on the other side. Never did finish that particular game after getting stuck and frustrated there.

 

[Vycia]

Pantagruel[/url]":1pyvpqbb]
Call it pretentious, but I seriously believe Souls games are all about dealing with failure. The gameplay, the story, everything is geared towards the theme of failure and how you can overcome it. A good game, just like a good movie or novel, can make you contemplate over some facet of human condition. In the case of Souls, it happens to be failure and limitation.

Yes, I think this is an important point. People want to experience the game without the high difficulty, but the difficulty is a fundamental part of the experience. If you take it away, your experience of a Souls game is greatly diminished. It's like asking to play The Last of Us without the cutscenes or dialogue. You may still derive some pleasure from the gunplay and stealth mechanics, but it wouldn't be anything special. You'd be better of playing Gears of War or something less story-focused.

The much-touted atmostphere of Souls games relies to a large extent on the challenge. Enemy AI is dumb as dirt most of the time - if they couldn't kill you in a matter of moments, they wouldn't be all that scary. If you're life weren't constantly in danger, you wouldn't need to worry so much about what's around the next corner.

 

[Sufinsil]

Nillaz[/url]":1fka7nao]

arkiel[/url]":1fka7nao]

Nillaz[/url]":1fka7nao]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?

I recently put in Shadows of Mordor. It was an hour or so of relearning and much death. And if its a game that has a involving story, you get more frustrated and just do something else. One reason I never end up completing many games.

 

[Drakkenmensch]

Sufinsil[/url]":1h6vz163]

Nillaz[/url]":1h6vz163]

arkiel[/url]":1h6vz163]

Nillaz[/url]":1h6vz163]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?

I recently put in Shadows of Mordor. It was an hour or so of relearning and much death. And if its a game that has a involving story, you get more frustrated and just do something else. One reason I never end up completing many games.

I lost count how many times I had to restart a Zelda game from the start because I put it down for a few weeks or months and totally lost the thread of where I was in the game.

 

[Tictacs Ogre]

[trollhide]It isn't an Ars Souls series article without TimtheTaxMan petitioning for an easy mode and calling everyone who disagrees elitists.[/trollhide]

 

[shopao]

esoel_[/url]":15b68c07]

TimtheTaxMan[/url]":15b68c07]

esoel_[/url]":15b68c07]

TimtheTaxMan[/url]":15b68c07]Really wish this game and the souls games had a difficulty slider. Those of us who have full time jobs and a family can't devote the kind of time into this game that is requires and it is a shame because the setting and gameplay really appeal to me. I am also a big King's Field fan.

I know I'll probably get a lot of hate for this comment because these games seem to draw in elitists like crazy. They can't stand the idea of someone playing it differently when a slider doesn't affect them or their difficulty at all.

That would probably be hard to reconcile with the hybrid single/multi - player nature of these games.

I'm not sure how. A ton of other games seem to pull it off just fine.

I don't know a ton of other games with this kind of hybrid experience. But if you do please share, I would be interested in trying them!

How about something like Dragon's Dogma's pawn system, where I can hire AI characters either built by other players, or pre-built into the game. I always thought that was how the summoning in Dark Souls worked, especially if you were offline.

Monster Hunter also feels like a sort of hybrid. I have single player quests and multiplayer quests that are effectively the same, and the multiplayer quests scale up in difficulty depending on how many additional players you have. On single-player quests I can have a companion AI (albeit one that functions a bit differently than another player) that helps out as well. Progress is also shared between the single and multiplayer guild quests.

Hmm, I just mentioned 2 Capcom games... weird.

 

[lastpawn]

TimtheTaxMan[/url]":uzloz7es]Really wish this game and the souls games had a difficulty slider. Those of us who have full time jobs and a family can't devote the kind of time into this game that it requires and it is a shame, because the setting and gameplay really appeal to me. I am also a big Kings Field fan.

I know I'll probably get a lot of hate for this comment because these games seem to draw in elitists like crazy. They can't stand the idea of someone playing it differently when a slider doesn't affect them or their difficulty at all.

I'd like to suggest something that may sound crazy, but bear with me: Souls difficulty is an integral part of the game. This is not to say that From shouldn't include a difficulty slider, but to say that you can't take the difficult out of Souls any more than you could take jumping out of Mario.

Another way of putting this is to say that a game's mechanics (including difficulty) are a constitutive part of the overall game. In many games, this aspect of gaming is underutilized. But not so in Souls games. There, the difficulty creates, enhances and supports the overall themes of the game: loneliness, desperation, triumph.

When From makes a game, they make it so that the difficulty is just as integral to the game as the art style, lore, dialogue, and so on. If From made easier or harder versions of the game, this would not only take time away from crafting a very tight overall narrative for which they're famous, but be at odds with their overall artistic vision of what the game is about. Sorry to play the artistic vision card, but there it is. Check out MrBtongue's excellent youtube commentary on Dark Souls to see what I mean.

While I won't deny that some or even many Souls players are elitists, the point is that elitism isn't the only reason to keep these games challenging. As a final note, I have a job and a family and find time for Souls the same way I find time for everything else I do on the side. It takes a bit longer than when I was a teenager, but it's doable.

 

[bluesdrivemonster]

I'll posit this: why do you need to rush through a game? Any game?

 

[JamesHulsmann]

Kyuu[/url]":1hstqdj4]

StilesCrisis[/url]":1hstqdj4]
I would love the opportunity to play games for hours on end, but my lifestyle doesn't allow for it; I have a wife, a family, a job, and need to balance game time with many other demands. *snip* If I'm playing a game and I spend an entire 90 minute play session stuck on a single difficulty spike, and make no progress, odds are good that I will put that game back into my backlog and move on.

That's great. There's nothing wrong with that. I'm soon to be in the same boat (baby on the way).

But obviously the team behind the Souls and now Bloodbourne intentionally make games with punishing difficulty. It's their desire, their raison d'etre, as it were, along with the brooding atmosphere and stories largely inferred from the game world and gameplay itself. Making a slider or an easier difficulty setting would go against just about everything these games are about. Heck, the game worlds themselves would make less sense since the brutal difficulty and death itself are part and parcel of them and the stories.

The arguments about time limits are completely, 100% legitimate, and no one (asides from some jackhole elitists) would claim otherwise. But a development company that has no interest in catering to those who don't want to spend their limited gaming time working through their intentionally difficult games is also legitimate. These obviously aren't meant to be the sort of games that appeal to a mass-market in the first place. If they were just after as much of everyone's money as possible, they would make entirely different games.

LOL!

You know NOTHING about FROM Software - or at least you know very little about Miyazaki and just about anything he has said since Demon's Souls came out.

He has stated over and over and over again that the games are not meant to be punishing or unfair, and certainly that they are not difficult just for the sake of it.

The valley and peaks of difficulty are in these games in order to elicit certain emotional reactions from players - the fear their character would feel before a boss fight and that great release and feeling of accomplishment after winning that fight (if the game is easy, these feelings wont be shared by the player or will be to a much lesser extent).

He also approaches game design by not assuming that the person who picks up the game controller is a moron - he gives the player a lot of credit.

=============

Anyway, the reason there is no difficulty slider is because the game is carefully balanced so that a competent player will be feeling exactly what Miyazaki wants when he wants. Like any other piece of art, you cannot have a slider for the participant (there are not violence or humor sliders for movies or books, for instance). Like all art - take it or leave it, just as it is presented.

There are plenty of other games out there that are just games - Souls-games do not need to be like them.

=============

Shame I don't have a PS4...

 

[heftysmurf]

First playthroughs are typically not too difficult, I've found. With a bit of grinding (yeah it's the term people don't like it) they typically become quite manageable, with the exception of the occasional bullshit area (like the Tomb of Giants).

Beyond that you know what you've done and you're voluntarily placing your cock on the block. No crying when the axe drops.

 

[Lwio]

A simple setting that switches the respawn of the creatures on and off after you die.

 

[Kassad]

Marcos2247[/url]":3oxu2qhu]

Kyuu[/url]":3oxu2qhu]But obviously the team behind the Souls and now Bloodbourne intentionally make games with punishing difficulty.

"Punishing difficulty" shouldn't be one term.
Those are two seperate things. A game can be difficult without being punishing. In fact, most are. Fortunately.

Dark Souls is for the most part not difficult. Once you find out how to beat the bosses, they're fairly easy. It's just that there's usually not a bonfire directly before the boss fight. So to learn the boss's weakness, you have to grind your way through the minions time and time again.
It's not difficult, it's punishing.

I remember back in '99 when "Aliens vs. Predator" came out missing a quick save feature and everybody hated the game for it. Nobody wanted to replay a whole level just for dying in sight of the exit. The first patch for the game enabled quick saves.

I remember all those sidescrollers in the 80s where you played for 2 hours to get to the end boss who killed you on first sneeze and you had to start over. The games weren't difficult, they were punishing.

Now Souls comes along and everybody's got a crush on what amounts to terrible spacing of checkpoints.

I'd say 'terrible' here is subjective. The impact of death can vary greatly, from permadeath games where you start the whole game over to games where you rewind a few seconds and try over. Both ends of the scale and everything in between is okay, there's no objectively bad or wrong way to do this.

If the designer wants to instill some sense of fear of death in a single player game, often the only way to accomplish this is to make death genuinely punishing rather than just a speed bump. Obviously most people don't like being punished, but a lot of people get their kicks out of trying to stay alive when you really, really, don't want your character to die. This is similar to racing games where you've raced for half an hour and managed to wry that nr.1 position, but know one mistake could cost you the entire race. Simply put - the more there is on the line, the bigger the adrenaline rush.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I haven't had trouble with finding healing items, they seem to be on every other corpse and I didn't need them much until I reached the cleric demon. So far i've found this much easier to get into than Dark Souls (the only other souls game i've played). In that game I had no clue if an enemy was too strong for me until he pounded me into the dirt whereas this game seems to be a little better at telegraphing difficulty before the fight starts. The only things I dislike are the loading times (i've heard that will be fixed in the next patch) and the sound design, which unfortunately seems to be copied directly from Dark Souls. It sounds good enough till you get through the sewers and the "walking through water" effect is the exact same sound played over and over, it really takes me out of the game. The environments are crazy detailed and I would love to just admire them but this is a horror game and I'm always peeking around the next corner to avoid an ambush.

 

[ElectricBlue]

marm0lade[/url]":2rutgbft]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?

I agree that gameplay is the strength of both games but the difference with respect to story is in the game's intent. Bloodborne has no opening cutscene, it has no Speaker you go to talk to after the first mission to tell you why your efforts are so damned important. You have no A-list celeb VA companion muttering monotone lines of why this particular NPC needs killing so badly. Instead you have no idea who you are, why you're there other than you're a hunter and this is the night of the hunt, get to it. And while Bloodborne may lack story it certainly does not lack content the way Destiny does. I suspect I will not be fighting through the exact same areas with remixed enemies in 40 hours. Destiny would've been a lot better if they took a similar track I think.

 

[Kurtz79]

TimtheTaxMan[/url]":12zuti0j]Really wish this game and the souls games had a difficulty slider. Those of us who have full time jobs and a family can't devote the kind of time into this game that it requires and it is a shame, because the setting and gameplay really appeal to me. I am also a big Kings Field fan.

I know I'll probably get a lot of hate for this comment because these games seem to draw in elitists like crazy. They can't stand the idea of someone playing it differently when a slider doesn't affect them or their difficulty at all.

edit spelling

I'm sorry, but the difficulty is what makes the game special.

Most people, me included, would lower the difficulty after the first dozen of deaths, if given the option, and this would make for a much lesser sense of achievement.

The sense of relief and accomplishment experienced when finally opening the tower door at the end of the initial bridge in the original Demon's Souls, after hours of grueling deaths is absolutely unique, especially compared to many modern games where the player is on autopilot, and the challenge is akin to going through a checklist of tasks.

I'm glad they are sticking with this design decision, there are so many games available today that is kind of pointless complaining that this one in particular does not meet your particular needs.

Besides, I have a full-time job, and it's not like I have a set number of games I have to finish each year prescribed by a doctor, if a game that I enjoy it's particularly long/hard it will simply mean I will play fewer games in the same interval.

 

[TimtheTaxMan]

BINARYGOD[/url]":112ybrt6]

Kyuu[/url]":112ybrt6]

StilesCrisis[/url]":112ybrt6]
I would love the opportunity to play games for hours on end, but my lifestyle doesn't allow for it; I have a wife, a family, a job, and need to balance game time with many other demands. *snip* If I'm playing a game and I spend an entire 90 minute play session stuck on a single difficulty spike, and make no progress, odds are good that I will put that game back into my backlog and move on.

That's great. There's nothing wrong with that. I'm soon to be in the same boat (baby on the way).

But obviously the team behind the Souls and now Bloodbourne intentionally make games with punishing difficulty. It's their desire, their raison d'etre, as it were, along with the brooding atmosphere and stories largely inferred from the game world and gameplay itself. Making a slider or an easier difficulty setting would go against just about everything these games are about. Heck, the game worlds themselves would make less sense since the brutal difficulty and death itself are part and parcel of them and the stories.

The arguments about time limits are completely, 100% legitimate, and no one (asides from some jackhole elitists) would claim otherwise. But a development company that has no interest in catering to those who don't want to spend their limited gaming time working through their intentionally difficult games is also legitimate. These obviously aren't meant to be the sort of games that appeal to a mass-market in the first place. If they were just after as much of everyone's money as possible, they would make entirely different games.

LOL!

You know NOTHING about FROM Software - or at least you know very little about Miyazaki and just about anything he has said since Demon's Souls came out.

He has stated over and over and over again that the games are not meant to be punishing or unfair, and certainly that they are not difficult just for the sake of it.

The valley and peaks of difficulty are in these games in order to elicit certain emotional reactions from players - the fear their character would feel before a boss fight and that great release and feeling of accomplishment after winning that fight (if the game is easy, these feelings wont be shared by the player or will be to a much lesser extent).

He also approaches game design by not assuming that the person who picks up the game controller is a moron - he gives the player a lot of credit.

=============

Anyway, the reason there is no difficulty slider is because the game is carefully balanced so that a competent player will be feeling exactly what Miyazaki wants when he wants. Like any other piece of art, you cannot have a slider for the participant (there are not violence or humor sliders for movies or books, for instance). Like all art - take it or leave it, just as it is presented.

There are plenty of other games out there that are just games - Souls-games do not need to be like them.

=============

Shame I don't have a PS4...

I agree 100% that the experience would be different on easy mode than it would be on hard. All games are like that, but the point is to have a choice. Sure the easy players wouldn't have the same sense of dread or accomplishment as the hard players, but they also wouldn't have the same level of frustration. I'm sure many would make that trade off. In fact, as the game is currently unplayable for a large chunk of gamers due to lack of time, it seems silly to enforce a level of difficultly that doesn't let them experience anything, much less your vision. The solution is to make a difficulty slider and put the word recommended next to the level you think players ought to play, but allow them the choice if due to lack of time of skill they need some flexibility.

I think From Software caters to the hardcore crowd who would go bananas if easy mode players got to play THEIR game. That is, of course, their choice but they are leaving behind a ton of people who would love to play their games, but can't simply due to a simple fix that affects no one.

 

[TimtheTaxMan]

Tictacs Ogre[/url]":exg9yp1s]It isn't an Ars Souls series article without TimtheTaxMan petitioning for an easy mode and calling everyone who disagrees elitists.

Well it is difficult to deny that this game does have more than its fair share of elitists. I have also yet to hear a rational argument as to why the OPTION to make it easier would be a bad thing.

I guess I am a bit passionate about this because as a huge Kings Field fan, I know and love From Software's art and game play style, but the super hardcore direction they took it cuts out a huge swath of gamers like me.

 

[ElectricBlue]

TimtheTaxMan[/url]":3rs847li]

BINARYGOD[/url]":3rs847li]

Kyuu[/url]":3rs847li]

StilesCrisis[/url]":3rs847li]
I would love the opportunity to play games for hours on end, but my lifestyle doesn't allow for it; I have a wife, a family, a job, and need to balance game time with many other demands. *snip* If I'm playing a game and I spend an entire 90 minute play session stuck on a single difficulty spike, and make no progress, odds are good that I will put that game back into my backlog and move on.

That's great. There's nothing wrong with that. I'm soon to be in the same boat (baby on the way).

But obviously the team behind the Souls and now Bloodbourne intentionally make games with punishing difficulty. It's their desire, their raison d'etre, as it were, along with the brooding atmosphere and stories largely inferred from the game world and gameplay itself. Making a slider or an easier difficulty setting would go against just about everything these games are about. Heck, the game worlds themselves would make less sense since the brutal difficulty and death itself are part and parcel of them and the stories.

The arguments about time limits are completely, 100% legitimate, and no one (asides from some jackhole elitists) would claim otherwise. But a development company that has no interest in catering to those who don't want to spend their limited gaming time working through their intentionally difficult games is also legitimate. These obviously aren't meant to be the sort of games that appeal to a mass-market in the first place. If they were just after as much of everyone's money as possible, they would make entirely different games.

LOL!

You know NOTHING about FROM Software - or at least you know very little about Miyazaki and just about anything he has said since Demon's Souls came out.

He has stated over and over and over again that the games are not meant to be punishing or unfair, and certainly that they are not difficult just for the sake of it.

The valley and peaks of difficulty are in these games in order to elicit certain emotional reactions from players - the fear their character would feel before a boss fight and that great release and feeling of accomplishment after winning that fight (if the game is easy, these feelings wont be shared by the player or will be to a much lesser extent).

He also approaches game design by not assuming that the person who picks up the game controller is a moron - he gives the player a lot of credit.

=============

Anyway, the reason there is no difficulty slider is because the game is carefully balanced so that a competent player will be feeling exactly what Miyazaki wants when he wants. Like any other piece of art, you cannot have a slider for the participant (there are not violence or humor sliders for movies or books, for instance). Like all art - take it or leave it, just as it is presented.

There are plenty of other games out there that are just games - Souls-games do not need to be like them.

=============

Shame I don't have a PS4...

I agree 100% that the experience would be different on easy mode than it would be on hard. All games are like that, but the point is to have a choice. Sure the easy players wouldn't have the same sense of dread or accomplishment as the hard players, but they also wouldn't have the same level of frustration. I'm sure many would make that trade off. In fact, as the game is currently unplayable for a large chunk of gamers due to lack of time, it seems silly to enforce a level of difficultly that doesn't let them experience anything, much less your vision. The solution is to make a difficulty slider and put the world recommended next to the level you think players ought to play, but allow them the choice if due to lack of time of skill they need some flexibility.

I think From Software caters to the hardcore crowd who would go bananas if easy mode players got to play THEIR game. That is, of course, their choice but they are leaving behind a ton of people who would love to play their games, but can't simply due to a simple fix that affects no one.

A difficulty slider would break the game, which requires you to read enemy movement and dodge and parry. Without that you might as well go play God of War or some other character action game. Not every game is for you. Not every game must appeal to the lowest common denominator.

 

[Kurtz79]

ivantod[/url]":17oaanq3]Just wanted to mention that there ARE in fact shields in Bloodborne, well A shield anyway--look here. Don't know any more details since I'm in EU so the game is not released until Friday and haven't had a chance to play it myself yet.

Reviews say that shields exist but they are useless in practice (also because you have to give up the firearm).

Also, in EU the game is out today.

 

[TimtheTaxMan]

ElectricBlue[/url]":2y8ny2pl]

TimtheTaxMan[/url]":2y8ny2pl]

BINARYGOD[/url]":2y8ny2pl]

Kyuu[/url]":2y8ny2pl]

StilesCrisis[/url]":2y8ny2pl]
I would love the opportunity to play games for hours on end, but my lifestyle doesn't allow for it; I have a wife, a family, a job, and need to balance game time with many other demands. *snip* If I'm playing a game and I spend an entire 90 minute play session stuck on a single difficulty spike, and make no progress, odds are good that I will put that game back into my backlog and move on.

That's great. There's nothing wrong with that. I'm soon to be in the same boat (baby on the way).

But obviously the team behind the Souls and now Bloodbourne intentionally make games with punishing difficulty. It's their desire, their raison d'etre, as it were, along with the brooding atmosphere and stories largely inferred from the game world and gameplay itself. Making a slider or an easier difficulty setting would go against just about everything these games are about. Heck, the game worlds themselves would make less sense since the brutal difficulty and death itself are part and parcel of them and the stories.

The arguments about time limits are completely, 100% legitimate, and no one (asides from some jackhole elitists) would claim otherwise. But a development company that has no interest in catering to those who don't want to spend their limited gaming time working through their intentionally difficult games is also legitimate. These obviously aren't meant to be the sort of games that appeal to a mass-market in the first place. If they were just after as much of everyone's money as possible, they would make entirely different games.

LOL!

You know NOTHING about FROM Software - or at least you know very little about Miyazaki and just about anything he has said since Demon's Souls came out.

He has stated over and over and over again that the games are not meant to be punishing or unfair, and certainly that they are not difficult just for the sake of it.

The valley and peaks of difficulty are in these games in order to elicit certain emotional reactions from players - the fear their character would feel before a boss fight and that great release and feeling of accomplishment after winning that fight (if the game is easy, these feelings wont be shared by the player or will be to a much lesser extent).

He also approaches game design by not assuming that the person who picks up the game controller is a moron - he gives the player a lot of credit.

=============

Anyway, the reason there is no difficulty slider is because the game is carefully balanced so that a competent player will be feeling exactly what Miyazaki wants when he wants. Like any other piece of art, you cannot have a slider for the participant (there are not violence or humor sliders for movies or books, for instance). Like all art - take it or leave it, just as it is presented.

There are plenty of other games out there that are just games - Souls-games do not need to be like them.

=============

Shame I don't have a PS4...

I agree 100% that the experience would be different on easy mode than it would be on hard. All games are like that, but the point is to have a choice. Sure the easy players wouldn't have the same sense of dread or accomplishment as the hard players, but they also wouldn't have the same level of frustration. I'm sure many would make that trade off. In fact, as the game is currently unplayable for a large chunk of gamers due to lack of time, it seems silly to enforce a level of difficultly that doesn't let them experience anything, much less your vision. The solution is to make a difficulty slider and put the world recommended next to the level you think players ought to play, but allow them the choice if due to lack of time of skill they need some flexibility.

I think From Software caters to the hardcore crowd who would go bananas if easy mode players got to play THEIR game. That is, of course, their choice but they are leaving behind a ton of people who would love to play their games, but can't simply due to a simple fix that affects no one.

A difficulty slider would break the game, which requires you to read enemy movement and dodge and parry. Without that you might as well go play God of War or some other character action game. Not every game is for you. Not every game must appeal to the lowest common denominator.

I sure it would break the game for you. That's why it would be optional. Don't want easy mode, don't use it.

 

[ElectricBlue]

TimtheTaxMan[/url]":1bpczeim]

ElectricBlue[/url]":1bpczeim]

TimtheTaxMan[/url]":1bpczeim]

BINARYGOD[/url]":1bpczeim]

Kyuu[/url]":1bpczeim]

StilesCrisis[/url]":1bpczeim]
I would love the opportunity to play games for hours on end, but my lifestyle doesn't allow for it; I have a wife, a family, a job, and need to balance game time with many other demands. *snip* If I'm playing a game and I spend an entire 90 minute play session stuck on a single difficulty spike, and make no progress, odds are good that I will put that game back into my backlog and move on.

That's great. There's nothing wrong with that. I'm soon to be in the same boat (baby on the way).

But obviously the team behind the Souls and now Bloodbourne intentionally make games with punishing difficulty. It's their desire, their raison d'etre, as it were, along with the brooding atmosphere and stories largely inferred from the game world and gameplay itself. Making a slider or an easier difficulty setting would go against just about everything these games are about. Heck, the game worlds themselves would make less sense since the brutal difficulty and death itself are part and parcel of them and the stories.

The arguments about time limits are completely, 100% legitimate, and no one (asides from some jackhole elitists) would claim otherwise. But a development company that has no interest in catering to those who don't want to spend their limited gaming time working through their intentionally difficult games is also legitimate. These obviously aren't meant to be the sort of games that appeal to a mass-market in the first place. If they were just after as much of everyone's money as possible, they would make entirely different games.

LOL!

You know NOTHING about FROM Software - or at least you know very little about Miyazaki and just about anything he has said since Demon's Souls came out.

He has stated over and over and over again that the games are not meant to be punishing or unfair, and certainly that they are not difficult just for the sake of it.

The valley and peaks of difficulty are in these games in order to elicit certain emotional reactions from players - the fear their character would feel before a boss fight and that great release and feeling of accomplishment after winning that fight (if the game is easy, these feelings wont be shared by the player or will be to a much lesser extent).

He also approaches game design by not assuming that the person who picks up the game controller is a moron - he gives the player a lot of credit.

=============

Anyway, the reason there is no difficulty slider is because the game is carefully balanced so that a competent player will be feeling exactly what Miyazaki wants when he wants. Like any other piece of art, you cannot have a slider for the participant (there are not violence or humor sliders for movies or books, for instance). Like all art - take it or leave it, just as it is presented.

There are plenty of other games out there that are just games - Souls-games do not need to be like them.

=============

Shame I don't have a PS4...

I agree 100% that the experience would be different on easy mode than it would be on hard. All games are like that, but the point is to have a choice. Sure the easy players wouldn't have the same sense of dread or accomplishment as the hard players, but they also wouldn't have the same level of frustration. I'm sure many would make that trade off. In fact, as the game is currently unplayable for a large chunk of gamers due to lack of time, it seems silly to enforce a level of difficultly that doesn't let them experience anything, much less your vision. The solution is to make a difficulty slider and put the world recommended next to the level you think players ought to play, but allow them the choice if due to lack of time of skill they need some flexibility.

I think From Software caters to the hardcore crowd who would go bananas if easy mode players got to play THEIR game. That is, of course, their choice but they are leaving behind a ton of people who would love to play their games, but can't simply due to a simple fix that affects no one.

A difficulty slider would break the game, which requires you to read enemy movement and dodge and parry. Without that you might as well go play God of War or some other character action game. Not every game is for you. Not every game must appeal to the lowest common denominator.

I sure it would break the game for you. That's why it would be optional. Don't want easy mode, don't use it.

No it would break the game for you, for the reasons I outlined above. There's no reason to play a souls game if you aren't interested in engaging with the systems that make it a souls game.

 

[bluesdrivemonster]

Yeah, there's a shield, found it after the area of the second boss. Haven't used it as in terms of Souls shield it's the lowest of the lot, but I can see a use for it.

Spoiler

Shield, take miniscule damage from enemy, regain as much as you can more than you've lost. I'll try it out sometime.

 

[TimtheTaxMan]

ElectricBlue[/url]":2rp0q9nv]


No it would break the game for you, for the reasons I outlined above. There's no reason to play a souls game if you aren't interested in engaging with the systems that make it a souls game.

I think I can decide for myself how to have fun in a game...Thanks.

 

[vawwyakr]

[trollhide]The PS4 fanboyism is strong on this site. OMG I neeeeed to justify the purchase of my shitbox so therefore I think exclusives are a good thing (and it's not a corporation just trapping me in their platform)!![/trollhide]

 

[Kurtz79]

vawwyakr[/url]":1b3zrcvj]The PS4 fanboyism is strong on this site. OMG I neeeeed to justify the purchase of my shitbox so therefore I think exclusives are a good thing (and it's not a corporation just trapping me in their platform)!!

Butthurt ?

I'm sorry, take it easy, it's just a game.

 

[ElectricBlue]

vawwyakr[/url]":sauurtms]The PS4 fanboyism is strong on this site. OMG I neeeeed to justify the purchase of my shitbox so therefore I think exclusives are a good thing (and it's not a corporation just trapping me in their platform)!!

Sony Japan helped develop the game but I guess they should port it to your favorite thing out of the goodness of their hearts.