Review: Bloodborne

Now that I’ve had enough time to actually finish playing through Bloodborne and its DLC, The Old Hunters, it’s high time that I offered up my thoughts regarding the game. But first, some history.

It’s quite possible I would have never played Bloodborne had I not discovered Dark Souls 2 while watching a particular streamer on Twitch (who is quite possibly the series’ biggest fan) a few years ago. You see, I never owned a PlayStation 3, so I never really knew about Demon Souls and Dark Souls up to that point. After watching him play the game for an extended period of time, I decided to buy the PC version. I was hooked, playing through the game multiple times myself. I went back and tried to play the PC port of Dark Souls (Prepare to Die Edition), but was unable to finish because a particular part of the game suffered from such low frame rates for me. Fast Forward to Bloodborne!

Where is it now? DayZ Edition

I first heard about DayZ over three years ago when it was still just a mod of ARMA 2 from Bohemia Interactive. Created by Dean Hall who, after the popularity of the mod skyrocketed causing an increase in sells of ARMA 2, joined Bohemia Interactive as the project lead of a standalone version of the mod. Supposedly, work on the mod version has been continued by the community, though I’m not sure how much the two versions differ at this point.

I’ll be perfectly honest with you. I know very little about DayZ at this point. I have not been following the development of the standalone version. I was interested in the game back when I first heard about it, but didn’t want to buy ARMA 2 just to play a mod, so I waited for the standalone to become available. After seeing the price of $30 (it’s now at $35) slapped on it, I was immediately turned off on the idea. There just wasn’t enough to the game to justify the price in my eyes, especially after having just been burned on other certain alpha releases like Cube World.

Where is it now? Cobalt Edition

Cobalt from Oxeye Game Studio (www.playcobalt.com) is another perfect example of a game that has had a really long and drawn out development. So long, in fact, that I had completely forgotten about the game until looking back over my old blog posts. I first heard about Cobalt back in August 2011 when a publishing deal was struck with Mojang (yes, the same Mojang formally owned by Notch, but now owned by Microsoft). The game looked like it would be quite fun, so I decided to throw some money at it once the alpha went public in December of that year.

I don’t recall playing it that long at the time, as there wasn’t much to do. If memory serves me correctly, that was local multiplayer deathmatch and a survival horde mode. I mainly purchased the game because of the promise of a campaign/story mode. I believe I last played the game in May 2012, on alpha version 105, where I tried out the map editor that had been added in a previous version. I hadn’t really been following development closely, and I last thought about Cobalt in October 2012, where I saw it was on alpha v115, after which it faded into time and space.

Where is it now? Starbound Edition

Starbound from Chucklefish (www.playstarbound.com) was another sandbox game that I was greatly looking forward to a few years ago. I first learned of it because of Terraria, another sandbox title from Re-Logic and a game into which I had poured hundreds of hours. Tiyuri (Finn Brice) was the main sprite artist working on Terraria until around the beginning of January 2012, after which he started up Chucklefish and work on Starbound began.

My love for Terraria at the time, along with my general love of science fiction, had me salivating over anything related to Starbound, though it would be well over another year before I could play the alpha, which became available in December 2013. I promptly threw money at the screen, downloaded it, and got a few friends to get it as well to play together. I left a server running on my local machine so they could play while I wasn’t around, which contributed to my inflated playtime on Steam.

Where is it now? Cube World Edition

I figured as a way to break back into this whole blogging thing would be to look back on some of the games that I mentioned in the past, one of which is Cube World. Now if you are familiar with Cube World at all, then I’m sure you know about its, let’s call it, “situation.”

Last time I mentioned the game, it was before its alpha had become publicly available, which occurred in July 2013. Needless to say, I was super stoked about the game and eager to throw my money at the screen, which I promptly did as soon as I could do so. I had a blast for a short while: the game ran smooth, felt good to play, and the world generation was nothing short of amazing. There wasn’t really much to do yet other than explore, craft, and kill enemies, but what it had was great.

Unfortunately, this public release of the alpha was also where the trouble for Cube World began. Wolfram von Funck (AKA. Wollay) was never known for keeping people in the loop on the development of the game, with sparse updates even up to this point, and coupled with the fact that it was also more of a hobbyist endeavor and his perfectionist tendencies, things quickly went from bad to worse. After the public release, Cube World received a grand total of one patch on July 23 that fixed a few bugs, and then there was none.

Cube World Landscape Screenshots

Wollay just released a new batch of screenshots showing off some of the improvements he’s done to the landscape generator and the rendering engine over the past few days. I must say, the game looks absolutely amazing (not to say that it didn’t already). The terrain generated is so much more interesting than the terrain has ever been in Minecraft and the use of bright colors makes the world way more vibrant. You can also see the world map in a few of the pictures. Check them out below!

The Live Stream and the Oils of Oasis Tekkit Server

So far, there’s only been two games that I’ve streamed a regular basis, and that’s Minecraft and League of Legends. I’m not certain how many people are interested in watching some random guy’s stream (at least for any lengthy period of time) but at least as far as streaming Minecraft goes, it has resulted in a few people joining the server I play on to give us a try. So I suppose in a sense, it is working as a form of advertising for the Oils of Oasis Tekkit Server.

I plan to broaden the range of games I play on the live stream soon, rather than just playing the same games all the time. I would also like to include console gameplay eventually, but I still need to buy an external video capture device like the Roxio Game Capture HD Pro, so that’s still a long way off… maybe I can get one after the end of the year.

If you haven’t seen my live stream yet, you can find it here or use the link at the top of the page.

Starbound Building Demo

Every time I see a new update posted on www.playstarbound.com, I think I cry a little inside. Why, you ask? Simple: I can not yet play the game and that makes me sad. I’m just itching to throw money at this game, because as much as I loved Terraria, Starbound is looking to be WAY better, even at this point in development. Check out the post below, and more specifically, check out the building demo video. DO EET! DO EET NAOUGH!

So we’ve been a little quiet lately because we’ve been working away on the game like mad. It’s coming along really nicely, we’re working on a whole bunch of stuff like quests, unique npc behaviours and generated towns.

The building mechanics are becoming close to complete, so we thought we’d show off some of the basic systems (there will be lots of tools to find!).

Each player is equipped with a gun that can levitate, place and remove blocks and items. It’s capable of placing single blocks or blocks in groups of 4. So you can very quickly fill the space you need to fill whilst having the option to tweak smaller details. Every object that looks as if you can stand on it or place another object on top of it functions as you’d expect. Removing blocks with the block tool is quite slow (it’s not intended to replace mining tools), but it has the benefit of long range.

Any block can be placed in the foreground or the background, left click places/removes blocks from the foreground whilst right click places/removes blocks from the background. Allowing you to quickly alternate between the two.

We’ve tried to create a very visual means of building so the experience plays out beautifully in multiplayer, where you can see exactly what your friends are doing and build in a cooperative way.

There’s also some very basic usage of the wiring system in the video, watch out for that. Needless to say the wiring system is capable of much, much more.

Also, here’s a new community wallpaper by Skech for the month of October:

Cube World City Screenshots

Wollay recently made another post on his blog showing off various building architecture that you can encounter during your adventures. I just keep getting more and more excited about this game! Check out the full post below:

Just a short status update about the new name: I already have a new favorite but I’d like to wait a little, maybe there’s a better one.

Currently I’m working on the following things:

The Cube World is divided into different lands (of course randomly generated ones). Each land has a level and all creatures living in that land have the same level. The land level increases with distance from the starting position.

Each land has a capital city and is inhabited by NPCs. They have quests, sell items or just talk about random stuff. 🙂 Each city has a center place where all shops and other useful buildings are located.

In contrast to before, buildings are now randomly generated: they now have varying rooms, sizes, walls, roofs etc. Furthermore, I’m working on multiple themes. Here are the ones that I have finished so far:

European style framework houses:

Medieval stone houses:

North American style wood houses:

Log houses:

Next I want to add themes for deserts and jungles.

Cobalt v115 Alpha

Cobalt is a game I was really hyped for when I first heard about it and I was quick to support it by preordering it as soon as they let us, but after playing it for a relatively short while, I put it aside to do other things. Since it is still in early development, there just wasn’t enough to do in the game at the time to keep me entertained.

Another patch was pushed out by them today (v115) that mostly fixed bugs and also added a new map from a competition they held. I should probably re-download the game and see what all they have added since the last time I played it (which I think was v104 or v105). Anyways, here’s the patch notes:

Change Log

Alterations:

• Added dm_oasisTemple by _SIM_
• Added item spawning speed modification based on number of players. The settings can be configured in the game mode menu of the map.

Bug-Fixes:

• Fixed not being able to use scroll-wheel in tiles browser.
• Fixed not being able to press file after right clicking in editor.
• Fixed size of search field in tiles browser
• Fixed buying upgrades in shops not working correctly
• Fixed switching from punch making the next item be angled incorrectly.
• Fixed upgrades not showing cost after first level.
• Fixed arms and similar not placing themselves correctly when flipping for one frame.
• Fixed changing colors on tiles crashing
• Fixed labSign tile
• Fixed editor not defaulting to collision layer
• Fixed editor camera default position
• Fixed eyes and mouth profile colors not showing up
• Fixed entering hack screen crash