Dark Souls 3: No Deaths Run FINALE

Welp, I beat Dark Souls 3 without dying. It took just under 40 hours in the one playthrough, and about a bazillion failed playthroughs where I would start a new game any time I died.

The only rules were to beat every boss in the game without dying. It wasn't about getting 100% of all of the items and secrets, and it was not a speed-run. It was just to see if I could do it.

Here's footage of the last boss fight in this run. Obviously there are late-game spoilers:





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Light Up The Night

I got the platinum trophy in Fallout 4. Makes it the 3rd game I've been able to do that in(besides Dark Souls 2 and Bloodborne).

I bought The Last Guardian. I probably should not have splurged this month. I plan to donate to stuff like the ACLU, and I want to send something to Flint, Michigan, since I hear they still don't have clean drinking water because of their scumbag government.

...I mean, I guess this will be a monthly thing, so I guess it doesn't matter which month I splurge on something for myself.

...God, I really hope the resistance going on right now isn't a fad. I've depended on the United States to be stronger than I am, in the event of a global catastrophe. I really don't want that to be another thing I regretted believing in.


I'm also only just now getting acquainted with the work of The Protomen. I regret not listening to their stuff sooner.


END OF LINE

~A.H.

Fave Things Of 2015: Part 2

Part 1 of my list of... things of 2015 can be found here.

Now, onto some of the stuff last year that DIDN'T make me want to commit suicide!

5. Furiosa

Image altered to be less orange.

I wasn't crazy about Mad Max: Fury Road. I think I just got bored with the ceaseless car-chasing. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but eventually it felt like I was watching the same 30 seconds of movie over and over again. It didn't feel like there was any tension, and the title character of the movie is so thinly characterized that they might as well have replaced Tom Hardy with a dog.

But Charlize Theron as Furiosa is all kinds of kick-ass. I think a part of me has been waiting for that character to show up on film for a long time.

MORE BELOW THE BREAK:

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Bloodborne: "Bronze Medal"

Alright, so it turns out it is at least theoretically possible for me to beat vanilla Bloodborne without dying. But throw in the DLC, and any ideas of survivability go completely to shit.

Why do I keep trying to beat one of the Souls games without dying, you might ask?

It keeps my mind off of the election.


END OF LINE

~A.H.

Bloodborne: "Iron Woman"

Two months ago, I tried to beat Dark Souls 2 without dying. I failed several times.

Last month, I tried to beat Dark Souls 1 with as few mandatory deaths as possible(there are parts in the game where it's unavoidable). I failed many times.

This month, I almost beat Bloodborne without dying. I was only 7 bosses away from completing my goal. On my 27th attempt, a random human enemy in the DLC killed me. He staggered me from behind while I was healing. He shot me with this gun, which in this game does little damage but can stun enemies while they're in the middle of an attack animation.

The problem is that this enemy is supposed to have abilities and equipment and attacks that you, the player also have. But you cannot stagger enemies from behind just by shooting them. I've tried. It's not a feature.


Turns out, you can stagger enemies that use the same healing items as you, while they're healing. I learned this the hardest way possible. And this guy was rushing me, so I needed to heal or else his next attack was going to kill me anyway. So it was hopeless.

But then, why did he fire his gun if he was close enough to use his melee weapon?

My point is fuck this game.

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Bloodborne: "The Old Hunters"

The standalone DLC pack for Bloodborne came out, and to my surprise it seems like it was built around my criticisms of the main game. It has interesting environments, better enemy variety and placement, a bigger focus on level hazards, and a greater amount of player expression through new and unique weapons and armour. Now everyone doesn't look like the same character. There's even a voiced narrator that actually tries to explain what the fuck is happening and why. It's still all balderdash, it's obvious From Software creates art assets in a vacuum, separate from any context or reason. But flimsy, half-hearted exposition near the end by a throwaway, nameless NPC is better than what Bloodborne offered before, which was literally nothing.

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Bloodborne: "Chalice Dungeons"

Bloodborne is two games:

The first is a generic 3D brawler. You mash the attack button at every enemy, and then you do the same thing. And then you do it again. You do this for nine million years, and it never becomes exciting or interesting. The world is drab and lifeless, all of the levels are forgettable, there are no meaningful interactions and there's too much damned level grinding. There are obstacles that have solutions so obtuse, so nonsensically beyond what any sane person would ever think to do, I'd swear it was made by Tim Schaefer.

Basically, it's Castlevania 2: Simon's Quest.

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"Bloodborne" Review

by Alex Hill

2/5 

There is something inherently wrong with Bloodborne's design philosophy. It is an inelegant, lopsided creature. It limps in the foosteps of the Dark Souls series, capturing little of their spark of genius. It throws away many of the conveniences and accomplishments of its' predecessors, in exchange for time-wasting nonsense.

You play as whoever, you go to some place or whatever, and then you're a squid. That's the entire plot of Bloodborne. There's no room for role-playing or head-canons. I never really felt like a part of the world it presented, the way Dark Souls allowed. You show up, you kill a bunch of things, you kill some more things, The End. There's no investment, there's no intrigue, there's no significant or interesting lore. Doom offered a richer narrative in its' between-stages loading screens. The people who tell you to read between the lines think that seeing something others can't will somehow make it profound. In that sense, Bloodborne is about its' own fans.

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