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This review contains spoilers.
Bloodborne not only offers a brilliant Cosmic Horror story, but it is also a strong contender for the best game From Software has ever made. The worldbuilding is front and center, the story is not so vague and abstract as Souls-like games tend to be, and the combat is more engaging and rewarding than the first two Dark Souls.
The game’s opening is brief but very effective. We watch it unfold in the first person as our character, seemingly tied to a bed, watches helplessly as a strange old man talks about blood transfusions and gives a dark, sardonic laugh that should serve as a welcome card to any fan of the Souls series. Next, we watch a [...]
Don’t let the charming, cute look of Tunic fool you: this game is more akin to Dark Souls than to the remake of Link’s Awakening. Its welcoming aesthetic is a ruse, locking you into a harsh and cryptic world, where enemies are merciless and the way forward is often concealed. It’s a game about secrets hidden in plain sight, about discovering things that were always there in front of you all along – you just didn’t know how to spot them.
In Tunic you play as a nameless fox, who wears a green tunic and brandishes a sword and shield. The game wears its inspirations on its sleeve: its aesthetic and top-down perspective harkens back to Zelda while the way you save, heal and, most [...]
Dark Souls II: The Scholar of the First Sin is a poor follow-up to its classic, genre-defining predecessor. It not only shows a complete lack of understanding of what made the first Dark Souls amass such a cult following in the first place, following its marketing instead of its design, but it also fails at pushing the series to a new direction focused on difficulty.
The game’s opening cutscene – which shows a man forget about his family, alienating anyone who wants to play as a female character – talks about an accursed land where people branded with the mark of the undead go to try to prevent their ultimate fate: to lose their memories, feelings, and sense of self, becoming [...]
The difficulty of a videogame is measured by the level of skill required of the player: the higher it is, the harder the game is. It’s inside this discourse that Demon’s Souls is often wrongly defined, as a good part of its mechanics is not designed to test the player’s skill, but simply to force them to pay attention to what they’re doing and have a deep understanding of the level design and the game’s mechanics. Demon’s Souls excels not in creating a difficult experience, but in building an oppressive and somber atmosphere, immersing the player in a dark and dangerous world.
The story of Demon’s Souls takes place after King Allant XII of Boletaria [...]