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Late to the party: Dark Souls Remastered

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Spoiler warning: this article is an account of my experience with Dark Souls Remastered and may contain references to characters, locations, items and/or concepts from the game.

It’s no secret that FromSoftware have made some of the most celebrated action RPGs of recent times, with Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls, Bloodborne and Elden Ring proving to be particularly popular with fans and critics alike. I’ve made attempts to try some of these games but with varying results. I ended up with two copies of the original Dark Souls for Xbox 360 (the second was a giveaway from Xbox Live) and never really saw anything beyond the Capra Demon. However, I reached the credits of the game’s sequels, earned the platinum in Bloodborne and dedicated nearly 200 hours to completing Elden Ring. With this in mind, Dark Souls Remastered was always something I wanted to pick up, and this year’s Steam Summer Sale provided the perfect opportunity. I particularly wanted to own a PC copy because it’s more likely to remain accessible when compared to the download that’s on an Xbox 360 in an attic somewhere, and I do a lot of browsing and streaming on my PC so it’s often running anyway. Thus, I’ve been pouring tens of hours into Dark Souls Remastered – and I’m delighted to report that the experience has been much more agreeable.

The plan

Whilst I have written words about how other From games should be celebrated for their individuality, I can’t pretend that my experiences with those games hasn’t helped me to enjoy this one. However, I can also feel a distinct lack of compromise in Dark Souls Remastered. Dark Souls 3 and Bloodborne were snappier and more varied, and really allowed you to have fun in the environments. Dark Souls 2 was pretty bloated and you could feel a few cut corners, but there were concessions for players – such as limited enemy respawns if you were genuinely struggling in one area. Dark Souls Remastered is slower and more deliberate than Bloodborne or Dark Souls 3, and is less keen on compromising its experience than Dark Souls 2. However, this also made it one of the hardest games for me to get into, because I had to play on the game’s terms and not my own. Well, for a while. You do quickly level up and improve if you can retain your souls, and this helps to mould your character. Soon you can take more hits, carry heavier equipment and benefit more from damage scaling – as long as you can keep a firm grip on the souls you’re carrying. And whilst I’m usually terrible at memorising geography in 3D environments, I will say that the repeated runs through the same areas do help me internalise a map to an extent.

As with most of my other playthroughs of FromSoft’s games, I opted to build a tanky Strength character (my final stats had Endurance and Strength at 33, with Vitality bumped up to 35.) I would sacrifice a fast roll for sturdier armour, give myself the equip load to carry bulkier kit, and sometimes I even embraced the two-handed approach to fighting. My best friends were the Claymore, Zweihander, Man-serpent Greatsword and (once I could finally wield it) the fantastic Great Club, which seemed to be pretty good at flattening most things in its path. I also enjoyed the Elite Knight’s set and Gargoyle’s Shield for a bit, although I was compromising my roll of course. To its credit, Dark Souls Remastered does do a great job of making you feel empowered if you have been putting the work into your upgrades and levels. When you’re making significant dents in a boss health bar because you put the time into saving for those upgrade materials, or when you finally reach the stat requirements for a new weapon, it never stops feeling exciting. It’s like the loop of levelling and improving gear is its own secondary game that runs underneath the adventure.

The developing journey in Dark Souls Remastered

Dark Souls Remastered promotional image, showing the player character at a bonfire.

And what an adventure. Having finally progressed past the Capra Demon I can see what everyone was raving about, because the experience really does get better and better. The Undead zones at the start are a slog, and Blighttown and Sen’s get frustrating, but Ornstein & Smough was an unbelievable encounter (I discovered that letting Ornstein come to me whilst Smough chilled at the back helped a lot) and I felt like the subsequent zones flew by as I just wanted to see more and more. The likes of Nito and Seath were really nicely-tuned challenges, and the Four Kings saw me start eating Humanity towards the end as I just needed a little more from my items to push me over the finish line. Whilst writing this article I hadn’t quite beaten the game yet, but in the middle of drafting I went back in and dealt with the final boss – albeit in a bit of a haze as it was past midnight. (Said final boss was a bit anticlimactic as I kept getting his pathfinding stuck on a little tree in the arena, and would wait for him to whiff his command grab before punishing.) Looking at the whole experience, one thing that comes to mind is that the middle of the game was so much fun and some effort needs to be made in order to get past the first few zones, but the payoff definitely makes the effort worthwhile. After Ornstein & Smough, the likes of Nito, Seath and Sif were perfectly pitched in terms of challenge and I saw myself making a lot of progress; as if the game is at its most arduous at the beginning, but eventually accelerates towards the finish line. I’m even willing to criticise Bloodborne a bit for the same kind of feeling; those first few hours can be miserable. When you’re still getting used to that game and spending so long in that Central Yharnam map – running past the same bonfire and the same enemies – it can feel more like work than it really needs to. And the Undead zones in Dark Souls Remastered are just as repetitive and uninspiring.

It’s another one of those games where the satisfaction of making progress and switching off for the night battles with the desire to keep going and finding out what’s up next. I would have thought that the entire game would have been spoiled to death by now, but the firsthand experience still held value. The discoveries you don’t know about – a new blacksmith around the corner, a bonfire behind a secret wall – feel great, and even the things you’ve been spoiled on are shaped by your own skill and character building. My tank character can withstand a few blows in a skirmish, but he wasn’t elegantly rolling out of danger in any of the encounters, and any panicked escape from something like a Hellkite Drake’s fire breath was a comedic sight. On the other hand, my character was lopping chunks off the health bars of Ornstein and Smough, so the investment was worthwhile. I think Bloodborne’s the only game where I’ve really been invested enough to go through it again with different builds, but there’s plenty in Dark Souls Remastered to invite replay too, as long as you’re finding the experience enjoyable and worth the replay.

Enabling easy mode

And here’s where I make a confession – I’ve been getting a bit of help with my Dark Souls Remastered experience, and making it less of a struggle. I made two decisions pretty early on; one that was kind of tame and something a little spicier that could invite the rage-clicks. My first decision was that I would use the Notes app in Steam’s overlay to write down anything that I may forget after I put the game down. Weapons I need to upgrade, areas I need to explore, even notes on enemy attack patterns. It’s a bit awkward because my shortcut to open the Steam overlay shares keys with some in-game functionality and sometimes has me inadvertently healing my character, but if I open my inventory beforehand I can prevent this erroneous input. I do think that there’s an interesting discussion to be had about games that limit information and knowledge, and players that might not have a brilliant memory – one of the best features of Elden Ring wasn’t just the map you could open, it was the selection of symbols that you could stamp on the map for future reference. The equivalent in Dark Souls Remastered was me writing directions as if I was operating Google Maps. So that was the tame modifier. Next is the spicy decision: I started making backups of my saves. Particularly at a bonfire, or when finishing a play session – and I did this purely to keep my experience from falling apart. I had heard the horror stories of characters getting cursed and being in one-hit kill thresholds and not having a Lordvessel (allowing players to warp between bonfires), and I sympathised with players losing tens of hours of progress as their only option is to start the game from the beginning again. After playing more of the game I found that the threat of being “soft-locked” does diminish over time as you open up more shortcuts and obtain powerful items, but in the early game it can be brutal. Fans of Dark Souls want to evangelise the experience to newcomers, but if there’s anything that will ensure that a player won’t touch the game again, it’s the feeling of being permanently punished after what has been a large investment of personal time. Generally, however, the notes proved to be more useful than the backups as time went on, and the idea of quitting, copying a backup over, and reloading was so tedious that it quickly became a last resort.

(Addendum: whilst drafting this article I did some research and found that making backups in this manner will also protect players from hackers who can supposedly invade a game and start killing NPCs, and this practice of backing up saves was generally encouraged on Steam discussion boards, so even without my personal stipulations it seems to be worth considering if you’re intending to dive into the online experience.)

Not that the backups were really needed in the end. During the early game of Dark Souls Remastered you quickly unlock the Female Undead Merchant who sells items for curing curse, and if you have a few of those and a homeward bone or two then you can compensate for the situation. Another instance where I would just about forgive a backup save includes racing towards the next bonfire you can see and being too underpowered for whatever you’ve walked into, but the player has to take a bit of blame for that. It’s the kind of thing where you still have to be expected to take some responsibility for how you manage your experience with a game – and if a player misuses that responsibility, that’s on them. “You cheated yourself”, etc.

Dark Souls Remastered – in summary

Dark Souls Remastered promotional image, showing a view of Anor Londo

If anyone’s still here after reading such blasphemy, you’re probably keen to know what I thought about the experience as a whole. I feel like this playthrough has been thirteen or fourteen years in the making, and has been one of the largest outstanding items on my hypothetical “gaming bucket list” for a while. Ultimately, I probably liked this more than Dark Souls 2, but would be more willing to replay Bloodborne or Dark Souls 3 because of the way both games provide a challenge whilst also offering enough breadcrumbs to ensure that I remain engaged. (And Elden Ring is almost its own conversation, but it’s still a brilliant entry point and one of the better games.) At the same time, I can see this totally blowing minds if it’s someone’s first introduction to From’s “dark fantasy action RPG” formula. I think that picking favourites is always going to be a matter of personal preference; after all, the appeal of shared experiences is why I’ve published all of this – and why you’ve been reading it.

Also, I feel like any measures a player takes to be able to continue enjoying the game they want to play should be encouraged. Some players create safeguards against the fear of having to restart the entire game; others could spend time running up and down a zone for experience so that their character gets stronger, or they could summon help at every opportunity, or try to perfect a skip so that they can ignore part of a game, or – yes – download external tools and mods to tailor the experience. A conversation with someone who took steps to continue enjoying something is far more interesting than the conversation with someone who only saw a fraction of the experience. Furthermore, if a player isn’t skilled at the base experience, taking these measures will at worst change the experience from “impossible” to “challenging”, rather than “challenging” to “easy”. Anyway, that’s how I stumbled through Dark Souls Remastered, how I completed my adventure with the Dark Souls trilogy, and how I finally got to see everything beyond that Capra Demon who halted my progress more than a decade ago.

Dark Souls Remastered is available now for PS4, Xbox One, PC and Nintendo Switch.

Preview: Elden Ring beta impressions

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Over the weekend I was fortunate enough to take part in the Elden Ring beta and take a look at From Software‘s latest dark fantasy action RPG. I’ve always had mixed experiences with their other games, but there have been enough enjoyable experiences to keep me interested in whatever they do next. Elden Ring will be released on last-gen and current-gen consoles – as well as PC – in 2022, and I don’t doubt that it will devour hundreds of hours of fans’ lives as they pick apart the world and face whatever challenges await them. I don’t own a current-gen console yet, and my PC will be able to run the game in theory, but if I can enjoy it on a last-gen platform like the PS4 I was using this weekend, that will be more than enough. What follows is a short account of my experiences with the Elden Ring beta (during the hours when I was able to play) – I’ll try not to use too many references to other From games so that readers don’t get too lost, but stop reading now if you want to go into the final game blind.

Guidance in the Elden Ring beta

Elden Ring beta

As you start the Elden Ring beta, your journey as the “Tarnished” begins quite abruptly. You configure your options and pick your player class (classes are essentially initial “character builds” with stat points distributed between various attributes – although you’ll gain more points to spend as you level up throughout the game), and then you’re dropped into the first environment and discover your first site of grace – essentially a checkpoint that you can activate to replenish health, level up (when possible) and manage certain aspects of your character’s belongings. The first location you’re in is a well-lit cave area, and after a few run-ins with enemies, you open the door to Limgrave and get your first chance to explore part of the game’s striking open world. It’s here where you discover a site of grace that reveals a “grace guidance” system – golden rays that flow from a site of grace and give a vague hint of where players might want to direct themselves. It’s a nice way of giving players a gentle nudge in a particular direction, but since the Elden Ring beta was broken up into limited time slots I imagine a lot of players wanted to find their own paths.

The open world provided in the Elden Ring beta was more of a chunk of the open world than a full experience – players eventually found themselves rubbing up against impassable walls – but there was still plenty to see and do. A map is available from the outset and highlights various points of interest. Furthermore, players are able to place markers on the map that act as custom waypoints. When your character dies in Elden Ring, they have the option to respawn at the last site of grace that the player visited. The experience points gained from battle are lost if not spent, but can be retrieved if a player navigates from the site of grace to the location where they died. Not only does this emphasise the importance of studying the map for safe routes between a site of grace and a player’s unspent experience, but it also encourages players to know their surroundings. I would often pre-emptively create custom markers close to where I wanted to go, if I could see various enemies patrolling and didn’t rate my chances of survival. At least this way, I had a record of where I was trying to go, and I prevented myself from blindly wandering about the place.

Trusty steed

Elden Ring beta

As you explore the world, you can run into enemies hanging out on their own, “patrols” of enemies that need to be approached methodically, and larger enemies that feel more like mini-bosses. The basics of combat have you equipping armour, weapons and shields, attacking and blocking as necessary, or manoeuvring and rolling to create space for your character. The class I used was an “Enchanted Knight” and had limited magic projectiles in addition to their armour, shield and sword. The resource management and the large groups of enemies can lead to overwhelming situations, but the open world allows players to plan their attacks more carefully, whether that means avoiding enemies entirely or taking them by surprise. Players also have access to a “spectral steed”, which is essentially a horse that can be summoned to allow greater mobility around the world. Sometimes this is useful when you just want to get to a custom marker you’ve placed, but it also helps players who want to make a quick retreat. Whether you’re retreating or just covering ground, there are various items that can be discovered, such as upgrade materials or things that can be traded. In a way, I can say that I rarely felt like my time spent with the Elden Ring beta was “wasted” – even when I wasn’t figuring out a particular enemy encounter, I was still finding new areas as I explored the map, or picking up things that I found on the ground.

One aspect of the open world that I find most interesting is the presence of various caves and catacombs. Sprinkled around the environment are entrances where you can head underground and explore what’s essentially a self-contained dungeon – one where you can navigate your way around, deal with enemy encounters, maybe find items and ultimately face a boss for a chance to grab more rewards. I found that the range of challenge presented on the plains of the open world could be overwhelming at times – maybe I’d just be dealing with a few human enemies, but then I’d head in a different direction and run into a dragon. The caves and catacombs, on the other hand, can be treated as something to be taken in isolation. They’re tight and satisfying challenges and I hope that completing more catacomb experiences will allow players to explore the open world with more confidence. When the full game is released and those impassable walls fall, I’m already considering the possibility of seeking out more of these underground entrances and building my character through these experiences.

The Elden Ring beta – a positive start

I think that if you’ve never been too keen on From’s games because of their reputation for challenge, it might be worth considering Elden Ring. No matter what I was struggling to do in one area, it wasn’t long before I found myself being distracted by another part of the map. The map and custom markers prevent players from being completely on their own (and as mentioned, they’re a great “mental checkpoint” if you don’t rate your chances of surviving an area), and there will surely be a healthy community for co-op multiplayer when the full game is out. If the open world is dense enough to keep players busy with manageable activities as they build up their characters in preparation for more formidable ordeals, it could be a great experience.

The Elden Ring beta was played on PS4 for this article – the full game will be released on February 25th 2021 for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series and PC. More information can be found at Bandai Namco’s website.

The contradictions of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

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With my current playthrough reflecting many evenings of exploration and combat, there’s no denying that Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice has a certain compelling nature to it. Whether you’re attempting to defeat one of the generals or just trying to reach a location safely, a lot of the gameplay is tuned to a point where the player is more likely to try again than switch off. Obviously, different players have certain limits to patience and perseverance, but personally I’ve found the difficulty curve to be pitched quite well. However, I can’t help but feel like certain aspects of the gameplay design are at odds with others – that a player can begin to see mechanical contradictions of Sekiro – and that’s a weird observation to make when From Software are so adept at creating experiences that feel…connected.

Sekiro’s gameplay contradictions

Contradictions of Sekiro - image 1

So: you are able to grapple around the environment, sneak up on enemies or create more space if things are getting dicey – it allows for a freeform, tactical approach to combat right up until you’re locked in a boss arena with no grapple points, or a foe’s health resets if you stray too far. You’re able to replenish your stock of healing items at an idol for free but have to grind out cash for spirit emblems – essentially your ammunition for special gear. And as long as you find an area that you can safely battle in, grinding isn’t challenging, or fun – it’s grinding. Grappling around the environment is enjoyable but it’s only possible at certain points, and you sometimes feel like some obvious areas in the environment would benefit from those points. Deathblows feel weirdly inconsistent; one stealthy leap towards an unsuspecting fodder enemy can trigger the prompt, but it’s suddenly much more picky when facing a certain miniboss. Expendable items or skills that make you harder to detect will (of course) be ignored in certain encounters, and reviving after death seems empowering at first but soon may as well be multiple parts of one lifebar (admittedly, this makes sense for a game that needs to ensure that boss encounters feel challenging, but slightly diminishes the importance implied by the narrative.) Blocking attacks for posture gains would suggest that the game will reward your patience, but damage from enemy attacks can be so high that a long posture war can be over in a heartbeat when your lifebar is decimated by a new attack you haven’t seen. Back-to-back bosses are expected in a From game, but it removes the narrative impact when the boss who suffers a dramatic cutscene death moments before is suddenly back for more. You get tutorial tips for a move called the “lightning counter”, but only after an attack that you can use it against kills you instantly; unless I missed something, the game never introduces it in a practical learning environment.

Contradictions of Sekiro – a bad thing?

Contradictions of Sekiro - image 2

And so on. And sure, this is all part of the intended “vision”, and you shouldn’t criticise a game for not being something it was never trying to be, but to me it feels like a vision riddled with contradiction from a producer who has created other visions where everything made sense and the individual parts complemented each other. There have been From games in the past where it felt like all of the gameplay mechanics available to you were viable all of the time, and where you had so many options that you could pick an approach to gameplay that worked for you and use it until the endgame. What if Sekiro designed every boss encounter to have a dangerous but viable route through lesser enemies and environmental hazards which, when navigated, would secure a deathblow opportunity? What if the item that made you harder to detect opened up a new enemy moveset where their attacks were more uncertain? What if the deathblow range had a better visual identity? What if an opponent’s single-hit instakill was replaced with death by 1000 cuts that you could theoretically counter? I understand the need to limit abilities that would reduce the impact of certain encounters, but if more encounters incorporated more of the gameplay mechanics smartly – rather than making them redundant – it would result in an experience that’s much more cohesive and less peppered with contradictions. And I still love Sekiro – as I write this I’m pretty much at the endgame, and it’s consumed most of my gaming time lately – but From Software have created better worlds and experiences in the past that have less contradictions. Their other games have done more with less – less gameplay options available to the player, but options that allow a more freeform approach to a particular situation – and so it’s hard to know what to make of their latest game. I still recommend it – if you can get past the inconsistencies it’s quite a satisfying experience – however, you should be prepared for some interesting design decisions.

Dark Karma 3

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The problem with the internet – and the internet as a platform for voicing your opinions – is that it’s a breeding ground for karma. You see, the internet never forgets, and it’s so easy to make bold claims that later make you look very silly indeed. Sure, it would be easy enough for someone to cover up their claims – Disposable Media itself is a fairly modest entertainment website and we could probably get away with a few sneaky edits before anyone starts pointing fingers – but any decent content creator takes pride in what they produce, and we try not to go back on our opinions unless, I don’t know, there are big societal changes that influence what people deem to be acceptable. However, this is about something with much less gravitas. In late March of 2016 I wrote an article named “The Bloodborne difference”, explaining that calling Bloodborne a “Souls game” could end up doing more harm than good. My general point was that the design changes in Bloodborne could be enough to entice a Souls naysayer, because people have different reasons for disliking things. That said, I also pointed out that Bloodborne could influence the design of future games. To quote: “If the rumours about Dark Souls 3 taking on ideas from Bloodborne are true, the protests will have some truth to them – Bloodborne may well be a “Souls game” – because the definition will have changed.”

Dark Karma 3: the discovery

Dark Karma 3

The general premise of karma is that what goes around, comes around – be a lousy person and you’ll face the consequences sooner or later. And so the experience I’ve named “Dark Karma 3” begins with me spotting Dark Souls 3 in the January sale on the PlayStation Store, and snapping it up. I said that Bloodborne wasn’t a “Souls game” but when I began downloading Dark Karma 3 I knew that I may soon end up eating my words. To provide some background, I didn’t get on with Dark Souls 1 at all, I completed the base experience of Dark Souls 2, and I obtained all trophies for Bloodborne and its DLC. Because, y’know, it’s not a Souls game. So how does Dark Karma 3 fare? Without wanting to give too much of the game away, it seems to take cues from a lot of the things that had gone before. Ember feels like the equivalent of Humanity or Insight, but in my mind the state of being “embered” seemed a little less ambiguous and easier to grasp. The pacing seems a lot better than the other Souls games – there aren’t joyless marathons to run in order to get somewhere, and bonfires or shortcuts seem to come at just the right moment. The story isn’t too hard to grasp if you look at what’s on the surface, but there’s still a lot to dig into if you’re keen on learning more. The deliberate “clunky” movement of the earlier games seems to have been dialled back a little, but at the same time it doesn’t go as far as Bloodborne’s godlike dashes. Stat-juggling is still more in-depth than Bloodborne, but won’t cause too many headaches once you’ve figured out what kind of character you want. Above all else, it respects the core tenets of the previous Dark Souls game without mindlessly aping them. However, it is still a Souls game, and Bloodborne is still a Bloodborne game. Why?

Dark Karma 3: the catch

Dark Karma 3

Think about it this way – if you gave Bloodborne’s Hunter the same moveset as the Ashen One, it just wouldn’t feel right – it would be completely at odds with the rest of the game design. If you drop the Ashen One in amongst the Eldritch Abominations of Bloodborne, it would look silly. Dark Karma 3 has fun combat, but it’s sorely lacking the generous hitstun of Bloodborne’s enemies, and – forget about future character builds demanding hours of play – the Hunter has astonishingly good evasive options from minute one. The Ashen One has a clunky little roll that’s at the whim of equipped gear and overall weight, and there are many more enemies that simply soak up hits as they wind up attacks. Furthermore, no amount of two-handed styles or weapon skills will be as memorable as the designs of Bloodborne’s trick weapons (in my opinion, etc), and an Ashen One equipped with a few bows and a standard parry animation would seem out-of-place in Yarnham next to a Hunter with a variety of firearms to counter with. As mentioned before, the Hunter faces much less threat of invasion, and the Ashen One won’t ever see Amygdalas crawling up the walls of Lothric Castle. And again, Souls takes its cues from medieval fantasy, not cosmic horror. This might read like a “versus” discussion, but nothing could be further from the truth. As a casual onlooker, I celebrate the unique identities of everything from Tenchu, King’s Field, Dark Souls, Bloodborne and Sekiro, and I commend a studio that refuses to settle into complacency. However, if we want more people to enjoy these games, we have to collectively celebrate their individuality and champion the brave design decisions they make, otherwise we’re one step away from suggesting that a studio as bold as From Software only knows how to make one game.

Dark Karma 3

Find out more about Dark Souls 3 at Bandai Namco’s website here

Samurai, gods, big rosters – notes from my E3 2018

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Stepping out into the mid-June sunshine, away from the hype and noise that follows any series of E3 press conferences, I couldn’t deny that some of that hype may be rubbing off on me. Before we even get to my E3 2018, let’s remember that we’re already in the middle of what people are claiming to be a new golden era of gaming – one where modern classics are being released with uncommon frequency. Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Super Mario Odyssey, Nier: Automata, Persona 5, Cuphead, Sonic Mania, Celeste – the list just keeps going, and it looks like the list will grow even more if my E3 2018 was anything to go by. Rather than one platform holder emerging as a clear winner or loser (and let’s not pretend that there haven’t been clear winners and losers in the past), my E3 2018 had Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo revealing exciting and interesting new games.

Microsoft favourites from my E3 2018

my E3 2018

The biggest reveal of Microsoft’s show was undoubtedly Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. A new IP from revered developer From Software, it promises polished third-person action with a samurai flavour. The trailer was only about two or three minutes long but showed the mechanical arm first seen in the “Shadows Die Twice” trailer, and its owner – a character who can go toe-to-toe with swordsmen, use said arm in a grappling-hook fashion to ascend to higher positions or cross chasms, and supposedly rise to his feet after being “killed”, which seems appropriate given the subtitle. Elsewhere, it was revealed that the once PS4 and PC exclusive Nier Automata would receive an Xbox port with the release of Nier Automata: Become as Gods Edition (perhaps to make up for Scalebound’s demise), so hopefully more people can enjoy the weird and wonderful combination of slick Platinum gameplay and distinct Nier quirkiness. Also of note was the first true reveal of Cyberpunk 2077 and news that Devil May Cry would be getting a new numbered sequel, but the lack of substantial gameplay footage for either game suggests that these are very early announcements.

Sony familiarity in my E3 2018

my E3 2018

By comparison, many people criticised the lack of new reveals in Sony’s conference; there were many games we already knew about from previous shows (such as Spider-Man, The Last of Us Part 2 and Death Stranding), and with the remake of Final Fantasy VII still early in development, there was little hope of seeing anything new from that game. Despite this, we did get confirmation of an exciting new PSVR title with From Software’s Deracine, reaffirmation that Mizuguchi’s The Tetris Effect still looks superb, and more gorgeous footage of Sucker Punch‘s Ghost of Tsushima. (As an aside, it seems that samurai games were the general theme of this year’s E3, with Tsushima, Sekiro and a trailer of Nioh 2 all making appearances somewhere amongst the conferences.) Another notable surprise was Remedy’s Control, a game that seems to combine shifting geometry with conventional gunplay and creative mind control mechanics. It was a fun looking title, even if it did make me wish for a sequel to Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy…

Nintendo’s contribution to my E3 2018

my E3 2018

As is to be expected these days, Nintendo combined the bizarre with the exciting, from making me question the need for a Pokéball peripheral used in conjuction with Pokémon Go (which will transfer Pokémon data from the mobile game to a new console game) when you already have wireless communication technology in your primary gaming devices… to the surprise reveal of Daemon X Machina, an exciting action game from Marvelous Entertainment that boasts bright and colourful visuals and shows off the kind of gameplay that brings to mind games such as Omega Boost and Transformers Devastation. Elsewhere in the show, the unveiling of a new Mario Party was hardly a massive surprise – at the same time, the immediacy and social nature of the series is an obvious fit for the Switch hardware – and the new Super Smash Bros seemed hell-bent on including every character from previous games in its roster, to the delight of series fans. It was also revealed that these characters will all be tweaked slightly, hopefully resulting in a balanced game and some exciting re-learning of old favourites.

The highlight of my E3 2018

my E3 2018

All of the three main shows succeeded in giving fans something to look forward to, but the reveal that interested me the most was Babylon’s Fall. This was one of the new announcements from a very short Square Enix showcase scheduled separately from the three main conferences – a new IP being developed by Platinum Games, Babylon’s Fall only revealed a glimpse of CG at the end of its trailer, but was introduced with text-heavy stills that promised a tale of clashing ideologies, of gods striking down against mankind, and of huge armoured characters and electric (or perhaps arcane) powers. It was perhaps the only trailer I went through frame by frame as I tried to make sense of what I was seeing, and it’s definitely something I intend to keep an eye on between now and its 2019 release.

Obviously, I saw some criticism levelled at the three main conferences as people collected their own thoughts on discussion boards and in social media – people claimed that Sony’s show repeated the same announcements as last year and didn’t have enough new reveals, or that Nintendo’s show needed to give fans more details about known games in development (precious little was seen of Metroid Prime 4, Yoshi, or Starfox Grand Prix)… Microsoft’s show was perhaps the most refreshing, but I noticed people claiming that their conference pushed 4K and the Xbox One X a little too much for owners of older Xbox models. Despite all of this, I’m remaining optimistic about the future of all three platform holders – there’s something for everyone to look forward to in the near future, and the absence of any big new hardware reveals (certain optimistic individuals expected the unveiling of a PlayStation 5 before the show commenced) suggests that the current generation still has some life left in it for the time being. As ever, let us know if there were any reveals that stood out for you in the comments below.

The Bloodborne difference

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Whether it’s King’s Field, Shadow Tower, Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls, or Bloodborne, From Software know how to make hitting monsters with pointed sticks challenging but satisfying. However, I always felt that there was a kind of unfair generalisation going on amongst devoted From fans that didn’t really give each individual series enough credit. Me, I’ve played a fair amount of Dark Souls and multiple playthroughs of Bloodborne, so I might not be the best person to make comparisons. Even so, alterations in gameplay mechanics between the titles might seem insignificant to some and literally game-changing to others, and I think that’s something that doesn’t get enough recognition when From’s fan base is so protective over the developer’s games. Their most recent title Bloodborne is both a familiar retread of ideas and a radical departure from Souls sensibilities, and that departure – the Bloodborne difference, as it were – needs to be celebrated rather than ignored.

Pointy sticks

The Bloodborne Difference

The Bloodborne difference is lost amongst some. You hear them protest “But Bloodborne is clearly a Souls game”, and at first blush that’s an easy observation to make. You’re a man or a woman who dresses up in armour and carries a pointed stick in one hand and a defensive tool in the other. You fight witches, wolves, transformed humans and various beasts, and doing so rewards you with experience. When you die you have to go back to where you died and reclaim lost experience. Weapons can be slow and strong, or fast and weak. Combat involves observing enemy move sets and exploiting the moments when they are vulnerable. You can play co-op with others and share advice with cryptic messages left on the floor. Many areas have traps, shortcuts, secret areas and a boss at the end with a big health bar. You collect various armour and weapons along the way and need to keep various status ailments in check. You have a light attack, a heavy attack, a parry, a roll, and so on.

The Bloodborne difference in experience

The Bloodborne Difference

However, to simply stop there and call it Dark Souls 2.5 would be selling it short. It would undermine the efforts that have been made to create a brand new experience, it would be a generalisation that fails to recognise the Souls games’ own achievements, and it would harm the expectations of players who had different experiences of Souls. If someone didn’t like Dark Souls and you tell them that Bloodborne is basically another Souls game, you can guess what their reaction would be, but without knowing why they didn’t like Dark Souls you don’t know if you’re misleading them. Maybe they didn’t like the frequent invasions (limited to a few key locations in Bloodborne unless you’re playing co-operatively), maybe equip loads made inventory management a chore (here “equip load” only exists as a barely perceptible change in stamina regeneration based on armour), maybe the evasive manoeuvres in Souls were too clunky for some (hello sidesteps), maybe the initial parry timing is too ambiguous to even bother trying to figure out (a gun being fired is instantly clearer.) Maybe cosmic horror is just a more likeable backdrop compared to medieval fantasy, or maybe the streamlined stats of Bloodborne make it easier to decide where your levels will go.

The Bloodborne difference and its legacy

The Bloodborne Difference

I could go on. Each of these issues might seem incredibly picky, but for some people the Bloodborne difference – those big and small changes to gameplay, setting, story and tone – is a cumulative difference that allows them to enjoy Bloodborne after struggling with Souls. If the rumours about Dark Souls 3 taking on ideas from Bloodborne are true, the protests will have some truth to them – Bloodborne may well be a “Souls game” – because the definition will have changed. Until then, people shouldn’t shy away from commending the Bloodborne difference, and praising one game’s attempts to forge its own path instead of following in the shadow of Souls.

Bloodborne: The Old Hunters – first impressions

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Disclaimer: this article contains names of locations and enemies in the original Bloodborne and the Old Hunters content that could be considered spoilers; read at your own risk

When Bloodborne was released in March of this year, it quickly established itself as one of the PS4’s most essential titles. Even if you had no interest in the Souls series before, From Software’s nightmare world provided the same gripping combat and incredible atmosphere of those games, whilst also tweaking the more cumbersome and obtuse gameplay mechanics to make the overall experience much more immediate and enjoyable. Eight months later, The Old Hunters is upon us – a downloadable expansion to the game which offers new environments, characters, weapons, enemies, bosses and more. After downloading the expansion, a bit of online research reveals that if you’re at a point in the base game where Vicar Amelia has been defeated, you can go to the Amygdala in Cathedral Ward to trigger a cutscene that will take you to the DLC’s first new area, the Hunter’s Nightmare. It’s an area that, at first blush, seems to mimic the layout of the original Cathedral Ward. However, as you progress and try to find old landmarks you remembered, The Old Hunters soon forges its own identity.

Bloodborne

New discoveries

Human enemies can be firing minigun-like weapons or swinging giant chains, the gross Bloodsucking Beasts from Forsaken Castle Cainhurst are a greater presence here, giant foes carry enormous cannons unlike anything seen before, and plenty of other opportunities arise for the new content to defy your expectations. The Old Hunters is the kind of expansion that isn’t afraid to have a boss from the first game presented as a regular enemy lurking in the shadows of a cave you find yourself exploring in the expansion, and the fear of what might lurk around the corner is always offset by the giddying sense of excitement when you see something cool and new and unlike anything in the original game.

Bloodborne

Adapt or die

Everyone who is a fan of Bloodborne will have their own anecdotes to share from The Old Hunters, and I’ve already played through moments that are better than anything in the original game. One location, the Astral Clocktower, is home to a boss battle that is one of the best duels I’ve ever experienced in Bloodborne – a pure test of skill and reactions where you can’t hesitate for a moment; a battle that leaves you as breathless as you were after your first hunter duel in the original game. And if The Old Hunters isn’t wowing you with new battle sequences, it’s casually dropping you into environments that are as jawdropping as ever. At the same time, certain bosses or situations can still prove frustrating if you’re retrying them a lot (and going back around old areas to farm for more blood vials), but eventually you learn to adapt and make the most of the tools you have.

Bloodborne

Endgame

One thing that needs to be stressed about The Old Hunters is that the content isn’t for players who only have two or three hours on their save game. The DLC areas can be as hard as the endgame content of Bloodborne, and even though I had built up a new character in preparation for the DLC (getting as far as I could in the game without completing it and slipping on to New Game+) there are still plenty of formidable encounters and bad situations that quickly become worse, leading to panicked mistakes and quick deaths. Nevertheless, The Old Hunters is an essential download for anyone who fell in love with the original game and is looking for another challenge. It takes everything that makes Bloodborne great, moves it to a new location and hides plenty of surprises for players willing to set foot into the Hunter’s Nightmare.

Bloodborne: The Old Hunters is available now on the Playstation Store for £11.99. Find out more about Bloodborne at Playsation.com

Bloodborne ‘The Old Hunters’ Trailer

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From Software’s PS4 masterpiece Bloodborne will be receiving its first expansion later this year, it was revealed today. A trailer for the forthcoming DLC – named “The Old Hunters” – was revealed at Tokyo Game Show and promises new stages to explore, new equipment and weapons to discover and a host of new ways to die. Bloodborne was originally released in March and won praise from gamers and critics for its punishing but rewarding combat, beautifully-designed gameworld and unrivalled atmosphere.

Bloodborne: The Old Hunters is released on November 24th and will be available on PlayStation Network for £11.99. More information about Bloodborne is available at Playstation.com

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