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" 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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E3 2013: Playstation 4

So, let's recap:

The Xbox One requires an always-online connection, or else after 24 hours it will brick itself and prevent you from playing games. You have to pay a fee to let a friend borrow a game, or to play a used game. The Kinect is mandatory and always listening/watching everything you do, like Orwell's Eye of Sauron. It costs $500.

The Playstation 4 doesn't pull any of that crap, and it costs a hundred dollars less.

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Sony, Ladies And Gentlemen...

Sony patented a thing where they could literally halt your game, at any given moment, right when you're trying to have fun... so they can show you an unskippable commercial. Remember how stupid and out-of-place that Verizon commercial was in Alan Wake? Now image it happened right when you were in the middle of an important fight or something.


I want you to understand something. I mean to really stop and think about this for a moment: These guys are still employed, but the people who made Kingdoms of Amalur are all out of a job now. That is the world we live in.

END OF LINE

~A.H.

The Tester: "Egoraptor"

"The Tester" makes me mad, more than a Reality show should.

Reality TV is, by its definition a hollow, bitter creature, a frankenstein assembled after the fact in the misguided attempt by producers and editors to make something "interesting". They make people out to be demons for our amusement. They toy with the hopes of participants who perhaps aren't aware of the backstage machinations already in play to make them fall before the stage is even set.

We, as a people, have decided we are okay with that. Despite the fact that the whole point of "Reality" television is that it's supposed to be... you know, REAL. Or real-er than, say, an episode of Cheers. They manipulate the order of things to make artificial conflict, because some sleazebag in a suit believes that's the only way to make "real life" interesting.

...Which the inexplicable success of cake shows has proven that no, that's bullshit, we really will watch any culturally worthless garbage, even if it doesn't have drama or shouting. If fiction uses lies to tell the truth, reality tv abuses the truth to tell bullshit.

Handhelds: "AA Games"

An interesting(to me at least) blog post about the rise and fall of level design in video games got me thinking. Big games cost more, so they take fewer risks. It takes longer to make levels, so they can't be as complex or time-consuming to make or play, so we get prettier levels that aren't as fun. Dirt-cheap iPad games have only superficial, passing substance while on the bus or something. They don't have the budget or motivation to make something more than immediate satisfactory impulses.

Where did the fun go? When did we trade the artistic integrity and adventurous spirit of this medium for more brown pixels? Where is the middle ground? Where are the games that aren't AAA, big-budget bald space-marine shooters? Where are the games that aren't about matching coloured gems? Where are the products that can tell a story with unorthodox settings and staples, on a budget that isn't retarded, doesn't need to rely on the most expensive, time-consuming technology to look good, and can still be loads of fun? Where are the games big enough to be about something, but not so big that they have to circumsize the creative heart and soul?

The answer came to me while playing Mega Man Zero Collection on the Nintendo DS. The handhelds!

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