Bloodbourne

I've had my PS4 since late November last year, I picked up Little Big Planet 3, The Uncharted Collection & Bloodbourne. I don't really plan on talking about the other two a lot, since I don't have enough to say to warrant a write up - plus this is a Bloodbourne post. So I'll say this, Little Big planet 3 is fun, I only ever play it with my friends - I doubt I'll ever complete it - the amount of DLC is insane and it all costs too much. Uncharted is a pretty standard cover based shooter, but getting 3 games I've never played free with my console isn't something to complain about.

With Dark Souls 3 so close it's obviously time to start talking about Bloodbourne. Keep in mind that this is based of my experience quite far into it's launch- mainly the loading time patch.

I often spend a lot of my time watching Let's Play's or reading up on the lore of the Dark Souls & Bloodbourne lore - Smarter people than me have put the tid-bits of information together to understand the larger picture of the universes but building your own head cannon you're playing is a very satisfying experience. Playing Bloodbourne had me asking a lot more questions about the world than DS1 or DS2 - mainly because the setting in general really appealed to me. The Gothic Lovecraftian atmosphere was seriously my jam - it has to be my biggest compliment to Bloodbourne. The sound design really gets me good too, I can't compliment it enough it terms of how the game world feels and sounds.

The biggest change to the gameplay VS your standard souls game is the speed of it, it's a much much faster paced game. Healing is quicker, attacking is quicker and dying is quicker. Personally, I find this change to make the game more difficult. I'm much more accustomed to the slower more deliberate play style of the Dark Souls series, Some bosses in Bloodbourne feel like they have moves that are designed to hit you no matter what, as this instalment of the game features something called the regain system. This gives you a small window of opportunity to recover HP after being hit by attacking an enemy. The game punishes you for thinking before you act, waiting for a sane time to attack isn't something that you'll find yourself doing too often - particularly in the old hunters DLC. This isn't a bad thing, the community seems pretty evenly split in regards to if this makes the game easier to play or harder. I'm too old to have the reaction speed required to keep up with Bloodbourne, but I do hope to have a screenshot of all those sweet sweet trophies at some point in the future.

I've thoroughly enjoyed the game up until this point, I'm now working my way through the end game hard mode content. Unfortunately, the PVP aspect doesn't really come into it at all for me. Fighting another player just takes far too long - it's so easy to heal and so hard to punish someone for doing so that many fights just end up being who can parry the other person faster - if neither of you are lagging into the dirt that is. It must be said that I had a much better time with the PVP in Dark Souls 2 than I've ever had in any of the other games. Sadly, the NPC's - whilst cool - just don't appear enough. There isn't enough talking to these guys, they all seem like interesting people, but they have nothing to really say after you've got their one or two story dialogues.

If I was forced to compare DS1 to Bloodbourne I'd have to say DS1 wins out. I love the story and setting of Bloodbourne more than DS1, but the actual moment to moment gameplay is superior in the older games I think.

Told ya