Bloodborne review - App Review 4u

Dark Souls’ iconic bonfires are replaced by lamps, used for warping back to the Hunter’s Dream (be warned, this replenishes the world with enemies). Get online and you’ll see ghostly recordings of other players doing their thing in other worlds, only now they’re called spectres. Leaving messages on the floor for the community to read isn’t done with soapstone, but a notebook. The effect is reassurance rather than repetition. As with Assassin’s Creed, familiar mechanics are transposed wholesale on top of different settings and styles. The apparatus is universal, even if the universe changes.

And what a universe. The bleak, oppressive, but somehow innately beautiful world of Yarnham aligns so perfectly with the disturbing energy of Demon’s and Dark Souls that it feels like the series’ spiritual home. It’s both lulling dream and waking nightmare. Great black cathedrals rise to meet a low dead sun, damp cobblestone alleys reflect a forlorn moon, and thick mist envelopes innumerable crusted tombstones, tangled forests, and shrouded paths.

Still, I found myself stopping to drink in every view, and that isn’t an accident. From Software composes each scene to show what lies ahead and behind. Look down and you’ll see the bridge you battled on hours ago; look to the horizon and the giant crumbling windmill you’re trying to reach will loom like a beacon. It’s Bloodborne giving you pause to appreciate how far you’ve come. Nothing is empty set dressing. Contrasting where you stood at the start, a clean and cowering runt with hand-me-down weapons, to your later fearless, blood-caked hero who’s survived whip-cracking NPC invaders, conquered wolf-infested hamlets, and trounced a parade of harrowing bosses, gives a real sense of progress. You don’t really have a motive, besides a vague opening line about unravelling the mysteries of blood ministration, but that mystery provides ample impetus.

Opening a random door to link two previously disparate places is a mini victory, the map in your mind’s eye steadily forming. Yarnham is the evolution of the Resident Evil mansion. Of Metroid Prime’s Tallon IV. It’s narrative irrevocably intertwined with geography. Rare benevolent denizens impart the stories surrounding Yarnham’s great beast hunt (most occupy houses, their interactivity signposted by purple lamplight). One involves a shrivelled hag in a cathedral, who asks you to advertise the building as a place of healing. After revealing its location to a suspiciously blood-soaked NPC, though, the next time I visit the hag she’s disappeared, potentially costing me a quality item or telling line of dialogue. Actions have repercussions. The act of exploration almost crosses into archeology, players dusting away layers of dirt to find hidden details.

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Bloodborne review - App Review 4u