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fareehaandspaniards · 8 months

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Hey Faree! I don't remember if you answer this before but how and when did you discover & play Bloodborne for the first time?

Ooooh, it's quite a story! ("What a story, Mark")

Until this summer, I had only heard about Bloodborne, seen art and sometimes read stuff, but since the console is a very expensive thing, I didn’t even think about having one. Although, remembering now, I always came across BB somewhere on the internet, and I quietly envied the owners of the PlayStation 4. Especially Gehrman and Maria fascinated me... I started shipping them back then, only relying on wiki info about them xd

Around last year, my husband and I plunged into Fromsoftware games, starting with DS 3 and beating Elden Ring 3 times (all with perfectly cleared map, seriously, we visited ALL places in game we could find). And then unexpectedly one of our friends lent us a console for a while - the opportunity arose to get acquainted with a very interesting game. Finally Bloodborne was so close!

First playthrough was tough, we were excited, confused, searching for lore (in-game notes were quite a something what I couldn't understand - I thought back then "I feel a good story, but still don't understand what is going on). I was screaming from excitement on a Micolash boss fight (Cut-scene was amazing, his voice and everything ooooof) while my husband tried to break the gamepad out of indignation xD Right before Orphan of Kos (Only Orphan, Gehrman and Moon Presence left to finish the game) the console showed a bug and deleted all the saves... And the characters. Well, that's all. I was shocked, because I loved my Guillermo with all my soul, I even wrote first fanfic about him and Micolash... And time came for the console had to be given back to friend.

The game became so dear that we took all the money and ran out in the evening to buy a console. We decided that it was better to eat instant noodles than live without BB (a family of gamers is a disaster). We got the console through resale (a little cheaper), so the instant noodles were served with mayonnaise! xd

There was euphoria. I recreated Guillermo 6 times, trying to replicate his face looking at the photo I made (Gehrman moment lmao) Q_Q I succeeded, it was my lovely good hunter again, and I even took a photo of all the settings of his appearance to not to lose him again. According to my old tradition, his class was Waste of Skin, but that's another story 😏

Then we went to earn platinum, and I got down to Chalice dungeons, which I had sworn not to go into before, because after Elden Ring I was already sick of dungeons. But the desire for platinum and then the desperation to find the Ring of Betrothal (we're playing offline, so no glyphs) made me beat Queen Yharnam, and go to a few more dungeons after that! (Everything for Micolash yeah) Local Amygdala was a challenge, and Guillermo died more than 80 times (not a single boss was that hard in BB I swear. Only Midir in DS3 made me suffer like that, he took 130 attemtps, making me cry), but surprisingly there was no anger or depression, although Laurence after 5th attempt made me flame up of anger xD

Bloodborne has sunk into my heart so much that I put it on a par with FF9 - the game of my childhood and probably my life.

It’s also funny that long time ago (maybe a few years) I have found a cool art on Pinterest and it depicted a character who immediately caught my attention. I just couldn’t understand what means the cage on his head and what fandom he is from. Pinterest didn’t help to identify who it was - it gave only errors and closed the page with art, leaving me without any explanations. So I met Micolash long before the game, and... Majestic™ captivated me even then xD

#ask #I'd put here actually another screenshot #but no Wi-Fi at the moment so I am sharing only what I have on my phone...#my hunter #my stuff #bloodborne #thanks fantomette for the ask #<3 #i was screaming taking a photo of Guillermo with Ring #I spent more than a week to find it

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legionofpotatoes · 3 years

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we decided to watch all story cutscenes from the new resident evil village videogame on a whim, since it’s not really our cup of tea gameplay-wise but seems to be this massive zeitgeist moment that made us morbidly curious. And I know how much everyone cares about my thoughts on things I know very little about, so. let’s get into it huh gamers. and yeah spoilers?

for context, I’ve only played resident evil 4 and a small portion of 5. I also read the wikipedia entry for 7’s plot recently. all this to say I was only vaguely aware of how tonally wacky the series was going in

I also completely gave up following the plot of the mutagens’ soap opera, so that paid off in spades here as you might imagine

anyway so that baby in the intro. that baby’s head is just massive. humongous toddlerdome. when ethan finds the baby’s head in a jar later on. there is no way that head would fit into that jar. bad game design. no not even game design. basic stuff. one hundred years in prison for jar modeler

if I see a single functional hetero marriage in video games I will cry tears of joy. I understand their misery is kind of The Point irt them badly working through the hillbilly romp trauma but like. sheesh. at least set that up as an emotional story goal the plot will help resolve. but nope they start off miserable and it goes nowhere

I know I know the mia thing has a huge wrinkle in it but like. not really in terms of dramatic function?? set up a happy end to the re7 nightmare (miranda can keep up appearances for all she cares) and then take that all away from angry griffin mcelroy for manpain. it will still absolutely work to set up the dramatic forward momentum. why throw in this cliche Hollywood Tension in their marriage if you’re not going to address it oh maybe because it’s normalized as automatically interesting because nuclear families are a self-propagating pit of a very narrow chance at emotional happiness relying on social stigma to preserve their empty function oops my baggage slipped in yikes abort mission

I called him griffin mcelroy because I saw his face on twitter and. yeah. I will continue to do this occasionally. my house my rules

... fuck the reason I’m hung up on this is specifically because the rest of the game is so tonally dexterous (which is a shining point to me! more on that later!), and yet they felt weirdly compelled to create the aesthetic trapping of a family-at-odds trope without following it through too well. a sign of both the good and the bad stuff to come

but listen the real reason why I wanted to talk about any of this is to nitpick the fascinating backwards-engineered nucleus of the entire thing; in that this game essentially creates a melting pot of just SO many disparate horror tropes and then makes a no-holds-barred unhinged effort at weaving thick lore to piece them all together. it is truly a sight to behold. like straight up you got your backwoods fright night situation, your gothic castle vampires, your rural-industrial werewolves, and don’t forget your bloated swamp monsters over there, with then a hard left turn into robotic body horror, and the entire ass subgenre of Creepy Doll writ large, and the bloodborne tentacle monsters, and a hellboy angel bossfight, which rides on the coattails of a mech-on-mech pacific rim bonanza, and just jesus henry christ slow down

almost all of these are textural hijack jobs that don’t really get into the metaphor plain of any of those settings but the game sort-of makes an argument that the texture IS the point and revels in it. It is kind of admirable almost. The same reason why the intro felt boxed in and unmotivated is also why the rest of the game just blasts off of its hinges to the point of complete and self-indulgent tonal abandon. I kinda loved that about it. lady dimitrescu made sure to hold her hat down as she bent forward in mahogany doorways and then suddenly she’s a giant gore dragon and you settle in your temp role as dark souls man with Gun to take her ass down. Excellent??

this rhino rampage impulse to gobble up every horror aesthetic known to man comes to head when the game wrestles with its FPS trappings in what is the most hilarious solution in creating visceral player damage moments. Since most cinematics and the entire game is in first person, that leaves precious little real estate for the devs to work with if they really want to sell griffin’s physical crucible. To wit. This dude’s forearms. Specifically just the forearms. They are MASSACRED throughout the story. The poor man lives out the silent hill dimension of a hand model. by the end cutscene he looks like a neatly dressed desk clerk who had decided to stick both his grabbers into garbage disposal grinders just a few hours prior. like in addition to everything else it manages to rope in that tinge of slapstick violence into its general grievous genre collection except this time it IS for a lack of trying! truly incredible

but wait his miracle clawbacks from everything his poor paws go through are retroactively explained away, yes, but far too vaguely and far too late to console me as I sat and watched everyone’s favorite baby brother reattach an entirely severed hand to his wrist stump by just. placing it on there. and giving it a lil twist ‘n pop terminator-style. and then willing his fingers back into motion right in front of my bulging eyes. this game just does not care. it does not give a shit. and boy howdy will it work to make that into one of its strongest suits

cause generally speaking resident evil was THE premiere vanilla zombie content destinaysh for like a decade, right? and as the rest of the world and mainstream media started encroaching and bloodying its blue ocean it went and just exploded in every single conceivable horror trope direction like a smilodon on catnip. truly, genuinely fascinating franchise moves

yeah the big vampire milf is hot. other news; grass... green. although I do love the implication that her closet is just identical white dresses on a rack. cartoon network-level queen shit

apropos of nothing I’ve said there’s also this hobo dante-devimaycry-magneto man, and I can’t believe this sentence makes sense. anyway he made that “boulder-punching asshole” joke referring to chris redfield and it was probably the only easter egg that really landed for me and boy did it land hard. I have not seen him punch the boulder in re5, mind. I had only heard about how funny it is from friends. and here this dude was, probably in the same exact mindset as me, trying to grapple with that insane mental image. with you on that ian mckellen, loud and clear

I advocate vehemently against the shallow pursuit of hyper photorealism in art direction but I gotta admit it works really in favor of immersive horror like this. the european village shacks especially gave me super unchill flashbacks to my rural countryside retreat in western georgia. I could smell the linoleum dude. not cool

faces are weird in this game. can’t place it. nice textures, good animation, but the modeling template is... uuh strange? and the hair. it has that clustered-flat-clumpy look that harkens to something very specific and unpleasant but I just don’t know what. sue me

griffin’s mental aptitude to take all this shit in stride and end every seemingly traumatizing bossfight involving some fucking eldritch being yet unseen through mortal eyes by essentially throwing out an MCU quip is just. What the fuck dude? I mean that was funny how you casually yelled the f-word at a god damn werewolf that you considered a fairy tale an hour ago but are you like, all right?? it was swinging a sledgehammer the size of a bus at you, ethan

oh oh the vampires are afraid of cold and your last name is winters. I get it haha

Pro Gamer Nitpick: boss fights seemed a bit unnecessarily long?? idk why the youtuber we picked decided the ENTIRE propeller man fight counted towards the vital story scenes he was stitching together, but man mr big daddy lite there really had some get up and go huh??

why are they saying dimitrescu.. like that. is it really how you say that word or is the english language relapsing into its fetish for ending every single word with a consonant at all costs

I’m not saying it’s a dramatic miss of a twist in context of all that’s going on, but the “you died in the last game actually and have been DC’s clayface ever since” revelation is low-key. it’s. it’s just funny to me, I dont know what to say. century-old god-witch fails her evil plan after she mistakenly removes heart from what was definitely NOT just some white guy with eight fingers after all

chris realizing he’s about to become the player character and immediately swapping out his tsundere trenchcoat for the muscletight sex haver sweater

the little bluetooth speaker-sized pipe bomb he taped to his knife was nuclear?? really??? I must have missed something because that is just too good. I buy it though I totally buy it. chris just got them fun-sized nukes in his car trunk for, you guessed it, Situations

anyway this is all for now just wanted to briefly touch on how unexpectedly funny and tonally irreverent this seemingly serious game turned out to be. did not articulate any cathartic story beats whatsoever but my god it had fun connecting those plot points. he just fucking put his severed hand back on his stump and it Just Worked todd howard get in here

#text #another one in my bulleted review series with no rhyme or reason #sorry resident evil fans this could be a painful read pls turn away #i know almost nothing about it but i am gonna be super fake familiar and critical of this one hey ho

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mattgambler · 5 years

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My thoughts on Sekiro - Shadows Die Twice

TLDR: I talk about what I liked and disliked about Sekiro and why it in my eyes is probably* the best game From Software has released to date. Which means I also compare it to Dark Souls a lot.

*I havent played Demon Souls or Bloodborne, so I cant really talk about those. As someone who played through all three Dark Souls games as well as several other soulslikes on stream, I always stood by the unpopular opinion that Dark Souls 1 is a good game, but also a vastly overrated one - with one of the most unbearable fanbases out there, right up there with Undertale, albeit for very different reasons. My opinion is of course strongly coloured by my interactions with diehard fans of Dark Souls, both on stream as well as everywhere else on the Internet, but at the end of the day I never hated Dark Souls. I wouldnt have played through all three games otherwise. I *did* hate smaller aspects, like the fact that I ended up entering the tomb of the giants without ever finding a lantern and therefore being forced to crawl through that place in near complete darkness until I found the emergency lantern in there, simply because I was unlucky enough to have none of the necromancers drop one for me. Or how the curse mechanic in the sewers got me trapped in a place that i already struggled with, but now with only 50% of my original HP. Or the entire “Git Gud” mentality that is so grossly abused to defend poor game design that the travesty that is camera control in the Ornstein and Smough fight looks like a piece of art in comparison. Onionbro and Solaire would weep if they knew. There were other things that I didnt enjoy, like what the Souls games count as a story, but I have an easier time pinning that down as personal preference and something that just isnt for me. Vaatividya makes good videos. The tomb of the giants without a lantern however, that just shouldnt exist in any game, not to mention a game that is glorified to such an extent that it could get its dick sucked every day by a different dude without running out for centuries. Can you taste that sweaty salt yet? Along comes Sekiro, a game by the same dev studio, with the same feel, minus many of the things that I have hated and criticized for several years now. Guess what, I like it. This isnt a review, Im not trying to tell you if you should buy, Im not telling you that there are no microtransactions in the game or what framerate it isnt capped at. There are tons of videos online that jump-attacked all over that on day 1 of release or earlier. Im telling you why, in my opinion, this game is so vastly superior to Dark Souls that it simply warms my heart. Let me start a list and then never finish it: - You can swim - You can jump - You can talk - You dont immediately die when you fall off a cliff - You cant accidentally walk over a cliff like a moron, at least most of the time. - You can’t simply rely on dodgerolls and invincibility frames all the time - You can understand the story without having to go to Youtube to have it explained to you by someone - You can’t kill strong enemies simply by chain parrying them over and over, or at least it is hell of a lot harder - You can’t simply kill strong enemies by knocking them off a cliff (I think) - You can’t abuse magic for an immediate easy mode - You can’t abuse coop for an immediate easy mode

... I’m getting a little unfair here, I know. I actually think coop is a cool feature, even though I personally never used it and even the multiplayer pvp invasions are an original and interesting concept, although I’m not personally into it. Magic is cool too, although poorly balanced and therefore in my opinion less interesting. The reason I added those last two points to my unfinished list is not because I dislike them, but because of the lately relevant “does Sekiro need an easy mode” controversy. Especially the most elitist diehard fans of the souls franchise strongly disagree with the addition of an easy mode, which is funny... ... given that Dark Souls 1 has several. Personally I dont think Sekiro NEEDS an easy mode, but it sure wouldnt hurt anyone. I personally wouldnt have minded playing on a lower difficulty, I had three or four bosses greatly overstay their welcome before I finally managed to smash their asslike faces in. ...but Im rambling. On a surface level, just looking at the feel of combat, movement and overall story coherence Sekiro is already miles ahead, but I can understand that it therefore feels less like a Souls game and that not everyone will like that. I can understand and respect that. DarkSouls 1, as well as 2 and maybe even 3, have a couple of features that I greatly appreciate and that partly even surpass Sekiro in my otherwise overly critical eyes. Dark Souls 1 has the best and most memorable map in my opinion. Dark Souls 2 has incredible DLCs, especially Frozen Eleum Loyce was awesome and beautiful, with the minor exception of that retarded snow zebra area and how you would respawn *before* the loading screen to get there again instead of after. I also liked the Pursuers concept a lot, as well as the idea of despawning mobs if you killed them often enough. I dont remember much about DS3, it was okay as far as Im concerned but I enjoyed it the least out of the three, probably because of burnout as I had played through all three (blind) in a row. Im mentioning all of this because I want to clarify that in my eyes Sekiro is not THE TIMELESS MASTERPIECE NOBODY WILL EVER SURPASS that Darksouls 1 is often celebrated as. But in many ways it is headed in a direction that makes more sense to me than “if you are not enjoying it then you are doing it wrong and you should maybe think for once”. (Not that Sekiro streamers werent told exactly that just the same) Let me tell you, there were many instances in Sekiro where I also didnt think, didnt consider every possible option the game had given me, honestly Im pretty sure I sucked most of the time, in the eyes of your usual GITGUD-Bro. But I struggled, I improved, I succeded, and I had a way better time during it all, even though I did the same shit in the Souls games as well. Just without falling off edges in waist-high water every 10 minutes, or being invaded by some bowing edgelord, or losing 50% of my max hp as punishment for dying to the wrong enemy. There is this myth going around online that Dark Souls might be a harsh mistress, but at least a fair one. The one spreading that rumour must have been the Bed of Chaos herself, because that is nothing but horseshit. Sekiro isnt exactly fair all the time either, there are many moments in the game that feel all too familiar in their GOTCHA nature. Like how the game conveniently places the key to one of the hardest areas of the early game in your path so you go check it out just to get crucified there by Lady Butterfly and a special drunkard, just for you to learn after finally breaking both of them that you would have had a way easier time if you had simply ignored that area and soldiered on on your original path. Sure, one could have simply abandoned that area and returned later, but how many of you did? I sure didnt. The game likes to oneshot-kill you if you fail to dodge the wrong attack, be it a giant carp, a giant snake, or a giant TERROR man. Even worse, in Sekiro you cant even get your souls back! You die, you lose 50%. ALso 50% of your cash. Suck it. Im not particularly happy about that myself and Im not sure what the motivation behind that design decision was, but you take the good with the bad, right? Another thing that Sekiro does that I dont understand is how the game has you collect loot. Every time you kill an enemy you need to hold a button to collect. You can kill several in an area and then grab everything at once if they arent too far apart, but at the end of the day it eludes me why From Software didnt simply go for autocollecting instead. It’s not a big deal (even though I would forget about picking up loot every now and then) but at the same time it isnt adding any enjoyment to the game either, no matter how hard I try and emphasize with whatever a gamer who likes this might possibly think. It is not hard, its is not really relevant, and I cant think of a single advantage it has over autocollecting. Maybe holding that button is supposed to feel rewarding? I consider it meaningless at best and tedious busywork at worst. At the same time the game introduces a stealth system that actually means something, while at the same time keeping it both well integrated as well as completely optional. Im truly impressed by how that is even possible. I also like the immortality mechanic, that results in you only truly dying if you go down twice, and even refreshes that revive if you kill enough enemies inbetween deaths. It doesnt help that much, as it doesnt refill your estus fl.... healing gourds, but it allows for a little bit more practice against tough enemies before you die, a little bit more lenience while exploring in an area where it is easy to fall, a little bit more standing power in a world where a giant carp can simply eat you. I appreciate it and it is far from making the game anything close to easy. Its more like an extra gourding flask. I could keep going and praise this (surprisingly satisfying enemy style and variety given the setting) or criticize that (less replayability because of fewer possible weapons and builds), but at the end of the day my opinion is crystalclear - Sekiro is stunningly beautiful, very enjoyable, hard as fuck, and while I have heard people say that “it is not a true soulslike”, I have to shrug and agree. It is better.

#sekiro #DARK SOULS #Matt Gambler #high difficulty #soulslike

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