What's that smell...

2015 had a lot of good things going for it. Persona 5 came out, as well as Splatoon. The 3Ds was still going strong and we were between recessions. 2015 also gave us Bloodborne. Bloodborne gave us the Borne half of SoulsBorne and a classic and otherworldy horror setting.

The Shape

The Victorian, dilapidated look was a real eye-catcher, even in the middle of the 2010s tendency towards monochrome video game aesthetics.. It made good use of Miyazaki's attitude towards the souls series, that general sense that all the best parts os the story have already come and gone when you weren't around to see it. The ornate clothes are tatters. The city is in shambles. Any intrigue and mystery has been discarded by the wayside, any effort towards concealment is no longer worth the bother and made all the more esoteric for the abandonment of it. Your armor is clothing. Your weapons are jagged and irregular. Darkness in all aspects brings all the goths to the withered castle yard. The Werewolves in particular bring me, specifically, to the FromSoft yard. Almost no one is intimidated by werewolves anymore. Wolves are all but extinct in many areas, so the fear of them has long since faded. With that fear faded the fear of werewolves. No one cares about a monster that no one is afraid of. Bloodborne may have had werewolves, but they're basic jobbers by the time you've hit the seond boss, they're not very intimidating. No one's putting the fear of werewolves back into the people of built up cities or the suburbs; it has long since been exchanged for a fear of serial killers, a different kind of monster in a man's skin. Still, the inclusion of werewolves at all had my attention. The fashion kept it in my line of sight and the music firmly cemented this game as part of favorites. From the creaky music box tune to the sweeping orchestral boss themes, the audio works hard to drag an action game as close to a horror setting as it can, only to jump straight back into action with the boss themes. Yo-yoing is very hard to do. This game doesn't do it perfectly but it puts in a respectable effort.

The Substance

It's Souls. Moving on....but actually, not. It's a faster, more reactive game than Darksouls. It's less punishing with the rally-recovery system.The recovery system is also a beautiful trap designed to lure you into overextending your reach and biting off more than you can chew. The speed means that there is time to react but not time to sit with regret as your strike finally executes only for you to whiff, leaving you recovering for a solid second and a half. In Bloodborne time the Souls movement speed is well within Fragile Old Man territory. It would be, anyway, if the Fragile Old Men in Bloodborne weren't equipped with explosives and often declined to move. Bloodborne's movement speed is basically Initial D in comparison. Additionally, magic is a supplement not a supplanter for your main weapons. This keeps it open as an option without being ignored due to investment in your main weapon. Not all magic works with all weapons, and sadly, you'll never never actually poison anymore of worth with a poisoned weapon but it's an option you have. The lore for the weapons is also pretty cool.

The Subpar

But not everything is roses in Yharnham, let's talk about the elephant in the room. BloodVials were a mistake. An exhaustible healing resource in a soulsborne is awful. You're forced out of the process of learning the movements of the enemies, usually bosses, that caused you to exhaust them in the first place. This could have been used to force you back into areas you've already conquered to see some of the changes that occur as the game progresses, but there are not enough interesting changes and they are not frequent enough to even be worth it. It's putting a bandaid on a gaping wound. Speaking of wounds, how about shoving cool bosses behind layers of repetitive, gray corridors? The Chalice Dungeons are neat to explore the first time, and some of the enemies are cool, but the fifteenth time you're scoring a dungeon for gems that add properties and minute bonuses to weapons it is significantly less cool. Unless you're into that. What no one is into is fighting the same boss again and again to get to a different boss you would much rather see. Queen Yharnham is a fun boss fight, but not enough to make up for fighting Amygdala in a defiled chalice. It took me well over 800 attempts to get past Amy, because I kept getting OHKd literally right out of the gate.
Fuck Defiled Amygdala. All my homies hate Defiled Chalice Dungeon Amygdala.

Community works

The lifeblood of a game like this is the community behind it. They decide what lives, what flops and how much cash the studios rake in. They also sometimes decide that if studios won't do something, they will do it themselves.

BloodBorne PSX

Bloodborne PSX is exactly what it sounds like, a version of Bloodborne made to mimic a hypothetical past where it was originally made as a a game for the Original Play Station. It includes loading screens, item inventories that rotate and other staples of the PS1/PSX era. BB:PSX was a labor of love that began in 2017, two years after the release of the game and ended with final version release on January 31st of 2022. It revamps and expands some areas and adds some new surprises for the unsuspecting BloodBorne veteran. To add to the authenticty of the game's style, it includes fun filters emulating staples of the era both beloved and loathed, such as the look of a CRT television, including the glare of the sun through a window hitting the curve of the glass, or the 60 frames per second mode for those who want what Sony and FromSoft refuse to give them.
BB:PSX is a fangame and as such is free to download and play here.

BloodBorneNightmare Kart

Scheduled to release ~~January 31st, 2024, BloodBorne Kart~~ May 31st, NightmareKart is a Legally Distinct meme made reality by the same person behind BB:PSX. 12 racers, 16 maps, a full single-player campaign mode, multiplayer with possibly more to come makes the idea of a playable shitpost/meme look very, VERY appealing. It takes inspiration from MarioKat 64, but also Smash Brothers and Halo. I look forward to seeing how it plays and maybe joining in with an online game.
The initial release date of January 31st was waylaid by Kotaku reporting on it and Sony dropping the legal hammer on the project two seconds before the start button was hit. Everyone disliked that. Now with some time to file the numbers off, we can look forward to our Not BloodBorne Kart styled racing game. Since it's no longer bound by the eldritch Copy-Rite, this one can be found on Steam, unlike BB:PSX. Check a look over here.

Night of the Hunt

Night of the Hunt is a series of BloodBorne fan albums. Night of the Hunt is the first album, followed by Night of the Hunt:Rite of Blood. Sound of Blood centers around Mensis and the Choir. The final album, Blood Moon focuses on Cainhurst and the Vilebloods. There are also the BloodBorne Remix album and Borne In Blood albums. Borne In Blood is free. Get it here.

Yarntown

Yarntown is a Zeldalike made for Windows, Mac and Linux. It never got the acclaim that BB:PSX did, but it's apparent that a good deal of work was put into it. It can be downloaded for free here. Fear the Old Blood and beware some Audio mixing! Wood is extremely loud apparently.