Bloodborne

I was hoping to play The Devil in Me this Halloween. Instead, it’s been moved to November. I am going to be very pressed for new game time come mid-November! So sitting back with a couple of days’ holiday left, I wondered what I should play. I haven’t touched my video game backlog. This has been annoying me. The Witcher is kind of Halloween-like, but so long to play. Then I remembered Bloodborne.

In 2015, the PlayStation 4 exclusive that everyone was talking about was Bloodborne. Not only was it FromSoftware’s latest, but it was a big change of pace for the company. In place of Dark Soul’s measured combat, Bloodborne changed things to a frantic pace. I got a copy a few months after it came out, got to the Cleric Beast and walked away.

Not because I wasn’t enjoying the game, but because I didn’t have time to sit and get into it. This is the usual lie every gamer tells themselves – I will come back to it later. Well, 7 years later and needing a Halloween game, I sat down to Bloodborne again!

Fresh off my Elden Ring Platinum, playing Bloodborne again has been in the back of my mind for a while. The Lovecraftian type horror mixed with FromSoftware’s magnificent world-building felt like a great mix. And with some time to myself, I could get into the swing of playing before I went back to work.

Luckily for me, I have already beaten my last attempt. I have defeated the Cleric Beast, and Father Gascoigne, the first bosses of the game. It did take me a couple of false starts to get into the swing of things, but I think I have a handle on the world. Well, I thought I did. Then I got lifted by an invisible force and almost crushed to death. Welcome to Bloodborne?

Either way, I am having fun making small excursions around Yharnam. I don’t know if I will make a Platinum run on Bloodborne, but I am feeling semi-confident in finishing it at long last. One feature of Elden Ring that I appreciated was the ability to summon AI companions in battle. In Bloodborne, there is a cooperative feature but it’s largely humans only.

I will deal with that when I get there. Until then, at night when I can appreciate the darkness of the game without glare, I will keep belting away. With any luck, I can beat the final boss on Halloween night!

I only managed one solid session of Bloodborne this week. But it was a really fun one, especially as I realised I knew the area of the game I was up to. I was at the part of Bloodborne where Rob Pearson from PlayStation Access stopped playing! Machine gun man was a pain, but I had some prior knowledge on how to beat him.

This area was a lot of fun to play in. There were a bunch of ambushes from werewolves. Well, I call them werewolves. They apparently have their own name, Scourge Beasts. But if you haven’t delved into Bloodborne’s lore it’s a bit hard to explain. Running from werewolves everyone can understand.

For many, being ambushed by werewolves doesn’t sound like fun. But while exploring this area, the jumpscares kept me on my toes and allowed exploring new areas. It was tense without being frustrating and gave me a sense of going the ‘right’ way without waypoints. Yes, I jumped out of my chair a few times. But exploring the new areas and finding shortcuts and secrets was so satisfying.

I also discovered something that I didn’t know Bloodborne did – I can summon AI help. An NPC I met earlier helped me with the beast. And I ended up needing it! Giving a boss two targets allows you to make mistakes you can recover from. It gives you that little bit of breathing space to learn the boss’s tells.

People say you should beat bosses like this “on your own or you aren’t doing it properly”. Well, to those people I say you had to learn somewhere too. I recognise the skill required to solo these games, but that doesn’t mean everyone has to do it that way. It doesn’t make Bloodborne any easier. Help like this helps the learning curve, that’s all.

After a few tries, I finally defeated the Blood-starved Beast. Another boss down!

Unfortunately, I definitely won’t be finishing Bloodborne by Halloween proper. Travel and a heavy week mean I have about 15 play hours to finish the game on my first attempt. I am at about 6 hours and barely made a dent into the trophy list! But I am fully intending to finish Bloodborne finally.

It may not be a Platinum run, but I am missing into getting back into more of it this week. Rabbit doesn’t understand why anyone would play these games, and I will say they aren’t for everyone. But when you get into them, you tend to fall for all of them.

I was hoping to finish Bloodborne for Halloween. Travel and work were two small factors that I forgot to account for though. The good news, I am still enjoying Bloodborne and I did get to play. The downside – so many new games are coming that I also really want to play!

One of those games already got in my way last week. You will read my thoughts on that below. Coming back after not playing Bloodborne for a week, I was worried my muscle memory was already suffering. So Sunday morning I jumped in and did a spot of cheeky exploration.

The good news – I was happy that the controls didn’t have to be relearned. The bad news – I am now locked into mastering a platform section. Gravity is Bloodborne’s unsung boss character!

I managed some new armour and found a funny path back to Cathedral Ward. Found some new enemies, met some old ones and got smacked by them. The biggest advantage is the one that warped me to the gaol – I call them sack guys – no longer freak me out. I can’t beat them easily, but I win far more often than I get stomped now. That’s progress in Bloodborne!

During the week I should be able to go back to beating an area/boss or two a week. The key to FromSoftware games, not just Bloodborne, is chipping away at them. Consistency – that’s the key.

The biggest thing is there is a good chance I won’t try for Platinum in Bloodborne at all though. Dual-playing Bloodborne with God of War Ragnarok or Callisto Protocol is a pretty big ask. Mario + Rabbids, Pokemon, Dark Pictures Anthology – sure. And I want to play all these games over the next couple of months!