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The world and atmosphere are growing on me. This might not be the most technically proficient games ever, but much like Dark Souls it has amazing visual design.

I'm a little torn on this issue. It's not apparent to me why this game couldn't have had as much weapon and armor variety as Souls, but to be fair towards the game it's not technically in the same series. I like that it's different, because as much as I love Dark Souls I don't really want to keep getting more of the same. For that reason I don't want to criticise Bloodborne too much for the ways in which it's different. I want to judge it based on what it is, not what it isn't. I agree with Gridde though that the lack of a shield makes the process of learning a boss' moveset more painful.

You're not missing them. I'm loving the shortcuts too, but I haven't had that many great "aha" moments because I tend to find the shortcut backwards so to speak, so I'm already expecting it.

Max out, as in you had 99 in storage? I guess we have different ideas of "not trying too hard" heh. I think the most I've been at is 40, but I haven't made an effort to stock up either. The thing is though, that even if I haven't gotten frustrated by the mechanic yet the potential for it is apparent. I'd be surprised if there isn't a boss that I'll need 20 tries on in this game, pretty sure the other ones all had bosses like that, and the max vials you can have is enough for six attempts where you use all of them. It's just not that much. Personally I also enjoy doing the no levelling runs and that seems like a real pain in the butt, because those are basically just zerging yourself on bosses until you get through. The fact that you could easily reach a state where you had nothing to lose is something that I thought was great about the Souls games. Also, regarding vials (tiny spoiler) If you could reset the world without a load screen I probably wouldn't be complaining, because then I could just grind in Central Yarnham

There's been an inverse difficulty curve for me so far, beat my third boss (BSB) on the first try without so much as a close call. Bought the Axe because people were talking it up. The two handed moveset is super good, as is its damage, but I think I'll stick with the Kirkhammer just because it's way cooler.

No the items don't get replenished, but there's a stockpile so if you have excess healing potions the game tops you up automatically (which is a neat system). As for the boss rewards, vanilla Dark Souls had pitifully low rewards too. The Bell Gargoyles used to give you 1500(!), then there was a patch where they upped everything across the board (they give 10k now). That's why people used to talk about grinding for souls in the forest for hours, whereas now you basically get overlevelled just on the boss rewards.

Area past the second boss: The problem is if you're stuck on a boss and grind through them. For the Cleric Beast in particular, there are basically no enemies on the way to the boss so you'll be bleeding potions at a super high rate.

Semi related: I enjoyed that boss btw, even though I got hung up on the geometry a few times. Also, that hammer is fantastic. I've found that the damage it does depends a lot on the enemy. Conveniently the hammer tends to do much more damage to large foes, whereas the sword does more against smaller, quicker ones. I also "discovered" that you can double combo the weapon transformation. Try starting with the hammer mode, attacking, swapping and then swapping again. You get some cool unique attacks! PS. jumping attacks are great with strength weapons, because the jump happens instantaneously so they're easier to time.

I bought the Kirkhammer(?) and I'm liking that more. The sword part of it has the Uchigatana sound lifted from Dark Souls, not that I mind. Cleric Beast though, he beat my ass like I was a donkey and he was a drunken spaniard in particularly bad mood. Nah, but honestly I thought he was quite tough for being a first boss, took me a few tries and even when I did get him I had used up all my healing (classic Souls). His attacks aren't that damaging, but I thought his moveset was hard to read, he has really good range so doing the dodge backwards thing makes it hard to get in and out in time, but at the same time I struggled to dodge whenever I got too close. He had quite the health pool too, my Cane only did about 30 damage per strike and that was basically nothing compared to his health bar. To top it all off he kind of looks like Manus. I don't know how much your "origin" matters, I picked Waste of Skin, but since your equipment is the same regardless I don't think the difference it makes should be that great. I could see the first area turning a lot of people off, because the rate at which you can grind souls is honestly quite low for how much the things you need cost. Potions, molotovs (that mysteriously miss the boss 60% of the time) + levelling, it adds up. If it's like you guys said, that running out of potions is practically a non-issue later on, then I think that brings the design decision into question even more. What point does it serve other than to frustrate new players at just the worst time? edit: oh also, you don't even get messages or ghosts without PS+ I never summon or invade people, so I don't think I can justify buying that just to see some ghost run around, even though they're neat.

You can add -unlimitedsaves as a launch parameter if you want unlimited saves, use at your own risk! Anyway, hope you enjoy the marine campaign. I'm quite curious what someone would think of it today.

Some quick thoughts: I'm terrible with a gamepad The "parry" timing is weird, but I like how much damage it does when it lands Healing system: I thought it was perfect in Dark Souls, dunno why they changed it. Why can't I just rest at a "bonfire" like in last two games? That first boss has camera problems almost as bad as Centipede Demon. For real. Ran past the werewolves on the bridge because there are just so many guys between you and them. I figured the gate on the right hand side of the street would be a shortcut but I didn't find a way to open it. I picked the Cane and it's basically just a Longsword. A little disappointed with the moveset honestly, and the whip is very situational. The windup is too long for the range it has I think. I've read there's less weapon variety this time around, which is a shame if true. I don't want to go through the whole game with the Cane, I'm already a bit tired of it.

Bought a PS4 against my better judgement Played both Dark Souls games with kb/m D:

The first level in the Alien campaign is confusing as hell. Because of that, and the fact that there are a lot of automated turrets, I'm not sure which ones you're dying to, but you should be able to sneak up behind most of them and take them out with a charged tail strike. You also get most of your health back by biting someones head off. Even if you just kill them normally I think you can much up body parts on the ground. I would actually recommend starting with the Marine campaign though. It's the most conventional (although the run speed is insane). It is also my personal favourite in that game. I adore it and boot it up every once in a while. The marine campaign is still the best one of those in a game, because the aliens are super quick, deal a ton of damage and aren't scripted. It's a shooter where your weapons are insanely powerful and it still manages to be scary, which perfectly captures the 2nd movie.

I think he did already, but apparently it was too large or something so there are some parts you have to fill in yourself.

Woop woop, there's apparently a Bloodborne bundle here in Europe. I can probably hook a PS4 up to a 16:10 monitor, right?

Dammit, the reviews aren't helping!

The hype is starting to overcome me. I shouldn't buy a PS4 right now but I'm afraid I will anyway.

I've never gotten a license either, I live in a city where I can take the anywhere. I have practiced driving quite a bit with my parents, just never followed through with it. With the way gas prices are I feel like there's less reason to than ever. It's been on my mind lately though as I might have to get a real job and not having a license might be bad for those prospects.

No, no. It was a gift for someone who doesn't have a computer that can run it. Chances are she won't like it but I love Dark Souls enough to gift it to people anyway.

I'll probably buy one in the summer just to play Bloodborne (assuming the game is good), but I don't have much of an interest in anything else on there. I mean, 99% of it comes to PC, will be cheaper and I won't have to pay for online (which bugs me so much that I refuse to do it on principle). I actually bought a console game the other day, Dark Souls for PS3 as a gift and that cost six times as much as what it goes on sale for 4+ times a year on Steam. No thanks.

Some kickass electronica, got a bit of a Boards of Canada sound going on

My dad used to play nothing but Snood, and this old Mac game called Blobbo: Now he just plays Peggle.

That's awesome! I think Swedish public service radio is quite good overall and although it varies a lot of hosts tend to be clear spoken, at least P1 which is the more serious talk radio channel. One show I like is Språket which is actually about the Swedish language. Sometimes they focus on esoteric things, like a certain phrase in a certain dialect mostly spoken by the older generation, but they cover more broad topics too. They have a show about gaming too, I don't listen to it myself but you can give it a shot. PS. I enojy answering language related questions so if you have any don't hesitate to ask!

Last night I played some CS 1.6 for the first time in a few months. For some reason though, some of the text was showing up in Chinese. On servers that run amx there's a language option, but that wasn't it. After a lot of digging around I found a line in my config, 'setinfo "lang" "cn"' and sure enough, changing that fixed the problem. Now, the strange part is not only had I (obviously) not put that line there myself, but since CS servers can sometimes change local cvars I always keep my cfg as read only. Not only that, but I keep a backup of it, so I took a look at my backup from 2008 and what do you know, that same line was in there. I can only assume it's been there the whole time, but that doesn't explain why it had no effect until yesterday (I'd never seen Chinese text in-game before). Very strange.

Everyone should grab Binary Domain. It's a unique mix of amazing and terrible, where even the terrible parts make it better. Seriously, it's an exceptionally underrated game.