Bloodborne: Or How Playing Games in Your 30's is a different vibe. · 10:37pm Oct 20th, 2023
I hated souls games. I now want to play all of them.
My PS4 had this critical issue where it would simply eject a disk mid game. As you could imagine, it's not exactly a fun play experience when your console just ejects a disk. Like, unprompted.
So, in a moment of impulsive weakness, I sold my PS4 to a gamestop to pick up a PS5 on sale. Being able to play my ps4 catalogue, and even upgrade some of the ps4 versions to ps5 has been truely a wonderful experience.
it's also allowed me to actually tackle Bloodborne in a somewhat meaningful way. I feel like I want to write a whole blog on the brilliance of the game from my point of view because that seems to be the hot thing on the internet, but I want to air one sort of... thought, about my whole experience.
I've been loving the game. Really. Truely. But I can't help but have this feeling that it's... well, soul-less. All gameplay. But then we get to some of the cutscenes, and the brilliant subtle writing that you have to figure out from items on the ground and the whole game just "clicks" into being one of the best gaming experiences I've ever had.
But... I kinda wish the game held my hand on that more.
Not in terms of the difficulty. The adage of "you have to just get good." really does apply here to souls games. Once you "figure out" how to play the games, they get quite a bit easier.
However, when it comes to the -really fucking cool- story in the game.... i wish they said the quiet parts out loud more. I'm a tired, grumpy millenial that just wants to play a brutally hard game to unwind after a hard day of work. You can do... more exposition. More than just finding cryptic clues on notes on the ground. Or even having to -learn- that you need to press Square on items in your inventory to learn more lore.
I understand needing to learn how to "play" a game, and now im beginning to get a taste for how to "enjoy" a souls game. But NGL I wish there was a better way other than outright spoilering yourself to learn "about" a souls game.
I mean, VattiVidya has to earn money somehow...
Haven't gotten very far into Elden Ring myself. That sounds like a frustrating issue to have (the disk ejecting thing).
My PS4 had the same issue. It turned out that the heat had warped the eject thingy. Fixed it by turning the PS4 vertical.
mood
https://youtu.be/-xwoGzZVk7w
I played like every Soulsborne and every souls-like game i got my hands on for years... and I love every second of it!
But here is the thing:
Recently I played Lies of P and Lord of the Fallen... and I noticed one thing: I became old! I have lots of problems with the bosses now, my reflexes are too slow and to win the battles, I have to learn every movement of every boss now because I can't rely on my instincts anymore.
The good news is: Bloodborne teaches you how to play all the other souls games in a more active, fun way, so getting that under your belt is a good thing. And yes I did steal this idea directly from Hbomb, but he's correct so I'm allowed.
That said, yes. There are a bunch of things across the Soulsborne games where I was like "oh yes a note that said so would have been nice" but then, sometimes, I look down the screen a few inches and there's a little button icon legend telling me the exact thing I wanted to know for the last 20 hours but I missed because I was too focused on other things. Most recently the item comparison widows in Elden Ring.
Hyperfocus isn't always a great thing :(
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This comment gives me life and is me. Exactly me. Even down to Hbomb.