We meet again, I’m dead meat again
Usually seeing a demo you played just a month ago means there isn’t too much more to wring out. This is not the case with Bloodborne.
The Tokyo Game Show demo bested me. That same demo was playable today at Paris Games Week. Its stations were behind me when I was playing The Order for the first time. The two rectangle setups shared a side. The Order‘s demo area was strewn about with rope, like cartoonish, espiga colored rope. Fake ammunition belts and singular rounds were glued to the table and up against some walls were crates with weapon replicas.
The Bloodborne area was threaded with leaves and one large angel statue with bleeding eyes. These are opposite games, positioned opposite each other. After playing The Order, I turned about, more excited to try and get through a Bloodborne level I had already played.
Tokyo is weird. Paris is weird, too. There are trampolines and a skate park indoors in this gaming expo hall, and also a place where you throw bread into holes. But Tokyo’s weirdness manifests itself as a packed TGS wherein you get to play 10, 15 minutes of a game before handing off the controller.
This is why I didn’t beat the Bloodborne demo at TGS, I maintained.
I went with the agile, dual bladed loadout and retraced my steps, sweeping wide around abandoned carriages with straw-haired, cleaver-wielding assholes lying in wait behind. I wasn’t as rusty, this time, and I was hurrying up the ladder to a terrifying scream. I was killing without coming close to being hit. Down the cobblestone steps, around the corner, bam. Three enemies clumped up. With an agile character, I dash stepped around blows, rather than rolling. Still, with three free swingers, I took my licks. I lived, though.
Down to the mechanical contraption that kept the gate shut. I pulled the lever. The gate opens, now, and it stuttered a little bit, sweeping away a previously cast aside deadman whose corpse messied its arc. That’s it, though? I peeked down an alleyway and a lumbering, round, round round dark-caped mass stood hunched, not facing me.
Let the good times roll. Alas, they did not. I did. I rolled the heck out of dodge. The big galoot took 60% of my health away in a swing while my stabs and slices barely seemed to be chipping the paint off his health bar’s walls. So I ran, happy he did not follow, back up a gentle incline, past the three I had previously dealt with, health restored with the coolest potion animation.
I am not sure how many enemies I came upon huddled around a giant pyre in the street. It was like the Village scene in Resident Evil 4 and I without a gun, no chance of being saved by the bell. I fight sneaky so I thought sneaky. Let me draw them out, down to where the big, round monster waits. Maybe he’ll kill them. Why not try? Well, because in backing away I backed myself up against a carriage, could not roll away, and the blows of many a disfigured and horrific slicing and stabbing implements came down upon me like my own personal rain.
I tried again with the more standard blade and blunderbuss outfit, but a wild button press, in a similar situation unequipped me and had me punching at blades. Maybe I’ll try the giant fucking hammer tomorrow.
