The Near Perfect Hunt - Bloodborne

You wake up to some old creepy dude with cheap-ass linen eye patches calling you a "Paleblood," an "outsider" or some such nonsense. He rambles on about blood ministration, giving you Yharman blood, and a contract. A contract to what? Is it a Columbia House CD contract? YOU HAVE TO KNOW.

Before you can ask which is the free CD of the month, you've signed a contract giving away your four livers (and your soul of course), and there's a blood transfusion starting. You black out to the soothing sounds of TLC.

You wake up again. Or are you dreaming? Awake? Are you an extra in a Game of Thrones episode, and Ramsay Bolton is coming to cut off your penis? Again, before you can process anything A werewolf-like creature crawls out of a pool of blood and reaches for you like an addict reaching for its next fix. Before he gets to you, he's lit on fire. Yay! Then some little demon dudes start crawling on you, trying to make out with your skin. Gross! You pass out again.

You awaken again, in some sort of clinic. You wander around, searching for any explanation as to how you woke up in Tim Burton's guest house, but before you can ask anyone for directions, or what the Hell is going on, a werewolf kills you because you interrupted its blood cocktail hour.

Starbucks has really let itself go lately. 

And that's when the fucking weirdness begins. 

Bloodborne - a game created by From Software - is the result of an orgy between an action RPG, Nintendo-hard combat, Dracula's castle, and a story penned by HP Lovecraft (safe sex was practiced of course - body condoms for all!) You're a hunter in Yharnam, an ancient city that is known for having magical blood which heals any ailment. You have been tasked with killing beasts - humans who have become infected with the scourge - during the Night's Hunt. As you slay the scourged beasts and bosses, you start to piece together what happened to Yharnam.

From is famous for creating games that are ass-punchingly difficult with storylines that are minimal at first glance, and require the player to peel back the onion to see the whole picture. In this case, the story is mostly secondary, but it involves a shitload of depth. Every item you pick up has a story. Every location has a reason for existing. Meticulous story details are hidden in the world, and it's up to the player to find out what the fuck is going on.

Some people may be turned off by this type of simplistic storytelling, but I find it refreshing. So many video games throw the story at the player's face, like a child throwing cake on its first birthday. Diablo 3 - which I love for the gameplay - is guilty of this. Diablo - "I'm evil! HA HA HA!.. Well, you thwarted me this time, but you can't possibly win that either until... well, shit, can I just give you another evil laugh and call it a day? Cool. Thanks. See you in the next expansion!"

Compared to Dark Souls 3, I find Bloodborne's story to be more engaging. Dark Souls 3's story is essentially, "Hey, these lords need to be here to light the flame again! Go get them back or kill them, lol." There's little care for the areas you are traipsing through aside from a desire to get to the next area. This is not the case in Bloodborne. I wanted to know what happened to Yharnam. I wanted to know why there are multiple hunters in the game, most of them hostile toward you. I was excited to discover where the magical blood came from, and why it harmed the humans. The dude who thought humanity's transcendence required more eyes? Yeah, what was that about? The simple-on-the-surface storyline evolves as the player moves throughout the world.

Amway salespeople have really let themselves go. 

And what a world. Yharnam's gothic architecture sprawls out across the screen. Lanterns, yellow fog windows, broken and destroyed carriages, bonfires, everything is impressively planted to give an atmosphere of a city gone to shit. The game also does a fantastic job of having wide open areas paired with sewers and narrow hallways, providing a varying array of locations within Yharnam to engage in the hunt. After getting sick of the city, You also get to wander through multiple woodlands filled with horrible creatures, and even nightmare areas filled monsters with four ballsacks on their legs. I already wrote a blog about the game's atmosphere, so I won't cover that here (read that post here.)

Dat atmosphere doe.

The game's combat system provides players a wonderful way to kill said ballsack-laden creatures. You get a gun (yay!) that doesn't do a great deal of damage (boo!), but allows you to riposte enemies (huh?). When quatro ballsack boy is about to attack you, you shoot him, stun him, and pull off a visceral attack, which is bloody fun (literally). The game's offerings for weapons is fairly small, but the weapons all act in different ways. Each weapon also has a secondary function. That cane you're using to beat people off your lawn like an old person? It's also a whip! That gigantic hammer that you flail around like Thor? Also has a short sword function in it! Neat! You can also upgrade weapons with blood shards/stone thingies you find around the game. You can also load gems in them, so that's also pretty spiffy.

"WANT SOME ESSENTIAL OILS?" "Why no, no I do not."

Speaking of spiffy, the game's armor is generally cosmetic, but it is some impressive looking threads you get to wear. There's a reason they call the game Fashionborne. That's not to suggest the different stats aren't important. There's this fucking level with a hosebeast of a baddie who keeps shining a light down, from an awful tower, triggering your character's frenzy (we'll get to what frenzy is shortly). Sure, I looked like a Goodwill Hunter, but the gear had extra frenzy resist. Saved my ass. Interestingly enough, certain armor sets change the way some NPCs react to you, so go run around and chat up the local populace in various clothes, and see what happens!

What an awful prank, to superglue that broken
grammarphone to his head.

So what about game mechanics? You know, the RPG stuff? Well, you have health. You also have Insight, which initially doesn't make much sense, but it's what's used to go into some awesome dungeons and buy stuff. Slain enemies give you blood echoes, which you use to buy more stuff. When you die, you lose your blood echoes and you have to get back to where you died to get them back. You die on the way to get your blood echoes back? TOO BAD. FUCK YOU. Lost em all. There's lanterns spread throughout the game which act as checkpoints. You have the standard health potions. When certain enemies hit you, you can rally by attacking them back quickly, and get some of your health back. This doesn't work for all enemies, so don't count on it to save your ass every time.  There's a safe house of sorts called the Hunter's Dream, where there's a human-size doll (which the game suggests has been used like a sex doll - creepy). Most of the mechanics are pretty standard fare for an action RPG.

So, I like the combat, the story, the atmosphere, and the mechanics, but there are some nitpicks to be picked. The first is pretty egregious. Your health potions aren't infinite, and also don't recharge after death. So, let's say you ran into a nasty boss with sixteen penis noses, and penis nose dude kills you repeatedly. Well, you just went through your forty health potions, sucker! You can always buy more, but if you've lost your blood echoes, well, FUCK YOU AGAIN. You have to go to a lower level part of the game and farm for health potions.

The lanterns are also annoying, because they aren't connected to each other. You use a lantern in Central Yharnam, the only place you're going is to the Hunter's Dream. This creates some groin-grabbingly annoying delays when you're trying to hop around from one area to another.

I'm not one to finish games (I'd like to apologize to Skyrim, Oblivion, Fallout 3, Fallout 4, and many others for my failure), so it speaks volumes when I complete a game. And I immediately wanted to play through the game again to get the different endings, and play the expansion. The game's brutal difficulty makes the victories that much more rewarding, and the game rewards patient players with a fascinating storyline that feeds off the game's atmosphere and creatures. If you own a PS4, you have to try this game.

Or not. Do whatever the fuck you want to do.