Bloodborne [PS4]

 I've got to learn to not buy into the hype around video games. I almost got sucked into buying The Order 1886, which admittedly I'm still interested in but I'll wait until I can get it for maybe $20. Instead I moved my preorder over to Bloodborne. 

Character creation, it serves as much purpose in this game as the
appendix does in the human body. Very little.

I have never played any of the Dark Souls games, so perhaps that is where I went wrong. I might have been ready for the never ending repetition of this game.

1.5 out of 5 stars

The cursed loading screen. It eats up about a minute of
your life every time you die. I can never get that back.

Now before you flame me and get all incensed, this score represents the fun I had with the game... which was not much at all. If you are an avid Dark Souls follower, you will probably get a kick out of this game. I did not. I can only review my personal experience. That being said, I actually expect some angry comments for once. Please be civil if you want them to show up.

What Bloodborne had going for it were several things; an exceptionally detailed world, beautifully rendered, and a combat system that resembled Resident Evil's style (3rd person over the shoulder). It was creepy, and that I liked... but that was it.

That's a familiar street. I think I walked down it several
dozen times, easily... if not more.

The game was the most repetitive game I've played in a long time. I mean absolutely repetitive. I walked the same streets and alleys of Yharnam, filled with the same exact hordes of disheveled hunters, every time I died. I saw the same bad guys, in the same spots on the same streets dozens of times. The only things that changed were quantities of items my inventory... the enemies respawn every time I die, but my bullets and Molotov's were gone. And of course I began at the very start of the level every single time.

Get familiar with this phrase. You will see it after a minute
of game play, and quite often after that.

I got better, but not due to skill.
I improved through rote memorization. Nothing changes from one death to the next. Not one single thing (other than my inventory being lighter). Get killed, restart, all enemies are the same - in the same place, acting the same. So memorize them. Of course if you fail to hit a button right you can still die, which means going it all over yet again... and of course once you get past the denizens this time, you have to watch for the new ones because the surprise guy will kill you, causing you to go all the way back to the beginning.

There are no save points, restart points, until you beat the first boss... that is jsut bad game design, or cruel. This game went beyond repetitive... for me it became a grueling task, bordering on self-inflicted torture. I stopped. There is a line between difficult and cruel. This game rapidly went from fun (the first hour), to tiring, to stressful, to cruel. If i want to hurt myself I can do it for a lot less than $60.

Games are meant to be fun, yes they can be challenging, even difficult.
They should not push the difficulty so far they become stressful and remove all the fun.
Bloodborne was not a fun game for me.   

It was not fun.
That has got to be one of the most damning lines I've ever written about a game.