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Bloodborne Reviews Thread

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I'm surprised it got the scores it got considering the frame pacing and loading issues. A great game it may be but these are some of my pet peeves when it comes to console gaming. I hate it when my enjoyment is hampered by technical issues. I wish more reviews are more punishing when it comes to this particular standard.

Maybe a game doesn't need to perform incredibly to be incredible.
 
I'm surprised it got the scores it got considering the frame pacing and loading issues. A great game it may be but these are some of my pet peeves when it comes to console gaming. I hate it when my enjoyment is hampered by technical issues. I wish more reviews are more punishing when it comes to this particular standard.
In my time playing Bloodborne those issues, while present, fail to hamper my enjoyment of the game. Even if they never get fixed the gameplay and world are still pretty damn amazing. The current performance is nowhere near game breaking but I do understand wanting consistent 30fps and short load times.
 
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I'm surprised it got the scores it got considering the frame pacing and loading issues. A great game it may be but these are some of my pet peeves when it comes to console gaming. I hate it when my enjoyment is hampered by technical issues. I wish more reviews are more punishing when it comes to this particular standard.
I'm not surprised as I play this game more and more I care less about performance and loads because I'm too in love with what is currently one of the best games I've played. I imagine a few reviewers agree.
 

It's honestly incredible the reception this game is getting - I've never seen anything like it. Everyone seems to love it. GT did that musical video to celebrate its release.

Maybe it'll influence third party game design moving forward, like Skyrim seemed to do a lot last gen.
 
Can't believe there are so many positive reviews. Can this be this generations first true killer AAA title? Congratulations FromSoftware and Sony.
Also, what in the effing fuck is going on in this thread. I just went through the last 6 pages and I count atleast a dozen bans. Holy hell
 
I'm surprised it got the scores it got considering the frame pacing and loading issues. A great game it may be but these are some of my pet peeves when it comes to console gaming. I hate it when my enjoyment is hampered by technical issues. I wish more reviews are more punishing when it comes to this particular standard.

Well, most of the reviewers do mention in their cons section horrible loading times, so maybe if it wasn't for this the game would've scored even higher. I have to say that I don't really care that much about the long loading times. I am so tense and focused when I'm playing that a 35 seconds break every 5 to 10 min is fine. Not saying it couldn't get better though.
 
Does any of the reviews answer the question if it is a good idea to buy Bloodborne when I wasn't impressed by Demon's Souls or Dark Souls?

I'd like to read something in that direction :)
 
Decided to read that Stevivor - 7.5 review.

While I do respect his opinion, half way through the review it read like the review killed him one too many times, and he broke the keyboard. His annoyance with the game really came through well.

But that video of him killing the giant axe guy... Man that was wrong.
 
It's honestly incredible the reception this game is getting - I've never seen anything like it. Everyone seems to love it. GT did that musical video to celebrate its release.

Maybe it'll influence third party game design moving forward, like Skyrim seemed to do a lot last gen.

Not everyone. I've seen a couple of threads on GAF where some users just didn't like the game after playing for a couple of hours. Those threads got locked.
 
Does any of the reviews answer the question if it is a good idea to buy Bloodborne when I wasn't impressed by Demon's Souls or Dark Souls?

I'd like to read something in that direction :)

If you weren't impressed by those games I doubt it will change with Bloodborne.
 
Regarding the load times, I feel like most times after a death I need the 30-35 seconds to assess what I did wrong, and think about what I want to do differently. That way when my character respawns and is ready to go, I can just take off without thinking first. One of the positives I guess, but it would definitely hamper farming, and attempting bosses over and over.
 
Does any of the reviews answer the question if it is a good idea to buy Bloodborne when I wasn't impressed by Demon's Souls or Dark Souls?

I'd like to read something in that direction :)

The game should really be called Blood Souls. It's subtly different from the actual Souls games in a few key ways, but shares so much in common with them. Structure, level design, combat, online, difficulty, dread... all things straight from the Souls playbook. I can't see how someone would suddenly enjoy Bloodborne if they'd played and disliked previous Souls entries.
 
I'm surprised it got the scores it got considering the frame pacing and loading issues. A great game it may be but these are some of my pet peeves when it comes to console gaming. I hate it when my enjoyment is hampered by technical issues. I wish more reviews are more punishing when it comes to this particular standard.

Its easy to get caught up in stuff like that on GAF, but do you think the average Xbone or PS4 owner can tell you what framerate they prefer, or what resolution things are running in?

Those who can't get over performance issues, or even those who can't stand the kind of performance most people are fine with (locked 30fps etc) are not being unreasonable, they just have really high standards with regards to performance, but they are in the minority of all gamers overall

Even Unity, which was buggy and ran at an awful frame rate, for a lot of people they found it fine, I have a friend who played it on PS4 at launch and I mentioned the performance issues and he just shrugged and said it looked amazing

Bloodborne doesn't perform perfectly, but compared to Driveclub, MCC or Unity at launch its rock solid

"At launch" is another key thing to remember with reviews. Game reviewers are aware games get patched, they could moan about performance issues for 400 of a 700 word review, and then that review is completely invalidated when the 2nd patch comes out

That review in most cases won't be changed, which then becomes misleading to anyone who might be looking into the game 6 months or more later, I mean, we seen loads of "Is X fixed now?" threads on GAF as it is

Finally, if you send review copies out and someone always spends half the review talking about performance issues they are working on fixing with patches, and that therefore is damaging the hallowed meta score, then maybe they will find themselves not getting review copies in the future
 
I don't care about framerate, in general... 60fps vs 30fps... cinematic vs whatever... but I can definitely tell you that the framerate, whatever it is, in this game is slightly jarring. I don't need it to be 60fps... I just need it to be locked down to whatever number they've chosen to go with. I can definitely tell that it is choppy, and I think any gamer, GAFer or not, can tell that as well. They just might not be able to describe it in the technical terms.

That being said, that's really my only complaint so far with this game.
 
If you weren't impressed by those games I doubt it will change with Bloodborne.

The game should really be called Blood Souls. It's subtly different from the actual Souls games in a few key ways, but shares so much in common with them. Structure, level design, combat, online, difficulty, dread... all things straight from the Souls playbook. I can't see how someone would suddenly enjoy Bloodborne if they'd played and disliked previous Souls entries.

Thanks!
Well what kept me from playing the other two more than an hour was the way you are thrown in without any explanation on how the game actually works. I was pretty overwhelmed.

I'd still like to try and find out the magic about these games, though.
 
Regarding the load times, I feel like most times after a death I need the 30-35 seconds to assess what I did wrong, and think about what I want to do differently. That way when my character respawns and is ready to go, I can just take off without thinking first. One of the positives I guess, but it would definitely hamper farming, and attempting bosses over and over.
I have to agree with this 100%, it's obviously not intentionally long but it gives you time to calm down and plan out the next run. my heart is usually beating hard if I just got killed by a boss ... Especially if it's a close fight
 
Not everyone. I've seen a couple of threads on GAF where some users just didn't like the game after playing for a couple of hours. Those threads got locked.

That has nothing to do with their opinion, it has to do with the fact that most of the discussion is supposed to take place in the OT. Everyone who has an opinion can't make their own thread.
 
That has nothing to do with their opinion, it has to do with the fact that most of the discussion is supposed to take place in the OT. Everyone who has an opinion can't make their own thread.

Exactly, one of the reasons people like GAF is that the main page isn't sprayed with 15 of the same topics. Organized and neat.
 
Its easy to get caught up in stuff like that on GAF, but do you think the average Xbone or PS4 owner can tell you what framerate they prefer, or what resolution things are running in?

Those who can't get over performance issues, or even those who can't stand the kind of performance most people are fine with (locked 30fps etc) are not being unreasonable, they just have really high standards with regards to performance, but they are in the minority of all gamers overall

Even Unity, which was buggy and ran at an awful frame rate, for a lot of people they found it fine, I have a friend who played it on PS4 at launch and I mentioned the performance issues and he just shrugged and said it looked amazing

Bloodborne doesn't perform perfectly, but compared to Driveclub, MCC or Unity at launch its rock solid

"At launch" is another key thing to remember with reviews. Game reviewers are aware games get patched, they could moan about performance issues for 400 of a 700 word review, and then that review is completely invalidated when the 2nd patch comes out

That review in most cases won't be changed, which then becomes misleading to anyone who might be looking into the game 6 months or more later, I mean, we seen loads of "Is X fixed now?" threads on GAF as it is

Finally, if you send review copies out and someone always spends half the review talking about performance issues they are working on fixing with patches, and that therefore is damaging the hallowed meta score, then maybe they will find themselves not getting review copies in the future

Heh, this is what Dean Rymer threatened on twitter- not sure how well received it was. Threatened to pull ads and review copies from certain websites that he thought were unfair to The Order.

Edit sorry for double post, tried to delete but looks like you cant.
 
I don't care about framerate, in general... 60fps vs 30fps... cinematic vs whatever... but I can definitely tell you that the framerate, whatever it is, in this game is slightly jarring. I don't need it to be 60fps... I just need it to be locked down to whatever number they've chosen to go with. I can definitely tell that it is choppy, and I think any gamer, GAFer or not, can tell that as well. They just might not be able to describe it in the technical terms.

That being said, that's really my only complaint so far with this game.

I am as big of a Souls fan as you can find and I agree, the fps does dip below 30 at times, especially with co-op. However, I think it's because of my sub-par internet speeds.

I'm sure Digital Foundry will do a performance review and somehow conclude that it runs better on Xbox One
 
Thanks!
Well what kept me from playing the other two more than an hour was the way you are thrown in without any explanation on how the game actually works. I was pretty overwhelmed.

I'd still like to try and find out the magic about these games, though.
If you were deterred in DS youll have the same issue in BB. Maybe even moreso as the first part of the game is kinda brutal IMO.
 
Does any of the reviews answer the question if it is a good idea to buy Bloodborne when I wasn't impressed by Demon's Souls or Dark Souls?

I'd like to read something in that direction :)

If you played Demon's Souls and Dark Souls and said: "you know, this game is great, it could just be a little faster", then yeah, I would buy it.

If not, then probably not a good idea to buy it and just wait to borrow it from someone, rent it or shareplay it or something.

Edit: just saw your second post, if it's the ambiguity, I wouldn't do it. You will get very little direction in this game, and I find it easier to get confused in this game then the previous Souls game. If you can deal with it, then feel free and try, but I would recommend trying to borrow it from someone first.
 
Heh, this is what Dean Rymer threatened on twitter- not sure how well received it was. Threatened to pull ads and review copies from certain websites that he thought were unfair to The Order.

Well the Order ran well didn't it? That is a dick move, for sure, but if you're a publisher and you get a lot of negative day 1 reviews focusing on performance issues that will be getting patched then you might not want to send those who do that review copies any more

Reviewers don't tend to focus on performance that much because they know some of the problems they find will get patched, so they'd rather focus on the game

It's not an ideal situation, but if we made performance a key factor in day 1 reviews, almost every new game will be overshadowed by what needs to be patched

Plus, a lot of gamers, probably the majority, don't care about performance, 25fps, 30fps, 60fps, stuttering, screen tearing, whatever, they don't care or know what a lot of that stuff is

If someone who just plays CoD or FIFA/Madden checks out a review of one of those games and the first few paragraphs are all on performance, they probably won't read much past the first paragraph
 
I think the only way someone who didn't like Dark Souls would like this is if they were put off by the slow pace and they wanted faster more aggressive combat.
 
I'm surprised it got the scores it got considering the frame pacing and loading issues. A great game it may be but these are some of my pet peeves when it comes to console gaming. I hate it when my enjoyment is hampered by technical issues. I wish more reviews are more punishing when it comes to this particular standard.

I agree. This game is fantastic, and the performance issues aren't game-breaking at all -- nothing like Blighttown -- but how is it that this can't even maintain a steady 30 fps? If this had been a late-gen PS3 title I'd be more willing to overlook the framerate drops, the frame pacing issues, the loading times, etc., but it's a little disappointing to see these creep into a current-gen game, especially considering that it's not going for super-high-end graphics or anything.

Again, I'm absolutely loving Bloodborne, but I couldn't argue with a reviewer who decided to knock a point or two off for it being rough around the edges.
 
I agree. This game is fantastic, and the performance issues aren't game-breaking at all -- nothing like Blighttown -- but how is it that this can't even maintain a steady 30 fps? If this had been a late-gen PS3 title I'd be more willing to overlook the framerate drops, the frame pacing issues, the loading times, etc., but it's a little disappointing to see these creep into a current-gen game, especially considering that it's not going for super-high-end graphics or anything.

Again, I'm absolutely loving Bloodborne, but I couldn't argue with a reviewer who decided to knock a point or two off for it being rough around the edges.

In modern AAA gaming, poor performance is the price you pay for being an early adopter (well, that and paying full price)

Anyone who grabs this in 6 months to a years time, will get it a lot cheaper, and all patched up, sadly that is the industry we have in 2015
 
If you played Demon's Souls and Dark Souls and said: "you know, this game is great, it could just be a little faster", then yeah, I would buy it.

If not, then probably not a good idea to buy it and just wait to borrow it from someone, rent it or shareplay it or something.

Edit: just saw your second post, if it's the ambiguity, I wouldn't do it. You will get very little direction in this game, and I find it easier to get confused in this game then the previous Souls game. If you can deal with it, then feel free and try, but I would recommend trying to borrow it from someone first.

That was helpful, thanks!
Borrowing the game is probably the best solution for me, though I fear it won't be the same without the initial hype. I dunno :(
 
I'm surprised it got the scores it got considering the frame pacing and loading issues. A great game it may be but these are some of my pet peeves when it comes to console gaming. I hate it when my enjoyment is hampered by technical issues. I wish more reviews are more punishing when it comes to this particular standard.

It probably didn't hamper their enjoyment. As one who has a couple of 970GTX in my 3930k machine, it certainly not bothering me. First play, than you can tell if it really botheres you, or it was just fear.
 
In modern AAA gaming, poor performance is the price you pay for being an early adopter (well, that and paying full price)

Anyone who grabs this in 6 months to a years time, will get it a lot cheaper, and all patched up, sadly that is the industry we have in 2015

That's not an excuse, the reviews should mention that. They are very selective in these kind of criticism. The loading problem highly affects the game because you die a lot, so you have to see that fucking screen all the time.

It's funny how some developers can't optimize loading.
I was playing Injustice's "challenge mode" and the worst part is the time that takes to reload. It's not too much time, but c'mon, what they need to load again? The same stage, music, characters... there is NOTHING different each time you try!

It's frustrating.
 
That's not an excuse, the reviews should mention that. They are very selective in these kind of criticism. The loading problem highly affects the game because you die a lot, so you have to see that fucking screen all the time.

It's funny how some developers can't optimize loading.
I was playing Injustice's "challenge mode" and the worst part is the time that takes to reload. It's not too much time, but c'mon, what they need to load again? The same stage, music, characters... there is litterly NOTHING different each time you try!

It's frustrating.

True, but game reviews as a format have not moved with the times, a game review is structurally the same as a book or film review, it is a "review" of a product, as it is

Games however, change as time goes on. Someone playing a game day 1 may well end up with a vastly different experience to someone playing 6 months later

That said, there is no market for a
remastered
definitive review of a game once it is all patched up and all the DLC is out, so they try and write the reviews in a way that won't date them, which often means skipping over performance issues unless the game is utterly broken at launch, making the review impossible
 
Its easy to get caught up in stuff like that on GAF, but do you think the average Xbone or PS4 owner can tell you what framerate they prefer, or what resolution things are running in?

Those who can't get over performance issues, or even those who can't stand the kind of performance most people are fine with (locked 30fps etc) are not being unreasonable, they just have really high standards with regards to performance, but they are in the minority of all gamers overall

Even Unity, which was buggy and ran at an awful frame rate, for a lot of people they found it fine, I have a friend who played it on PS4 at launch and I mentioned the performance issues and he just shrugged and said it looked amazing

Bloodborne doesn't perform perfectly, but compared to Driveclub, MCC or Unity at launch its rock solid

"At launch" is another key thing to remember with reviews. Game reviewers are aware games get patched, they could moan about performance issues for 400 of a 700 word review, and then that review is completely invalidated when the 2nd patch comes out

That review in most cases won't be changed, which then becomes misleading to anyone who might be looking into the game 6 months or more later, I mean, we seen loads of "Is X fixed now?" threads on GAF as it is

Finally, if you send review copies out and someone always spends half the review talking about performance issues they are working on fixing with patches, and that therefore is damaging the hallowed meta score, then maybe they will find themselves not getting review copies in the future

Great post. I can't speak for everyone but most of my friends don't care about technical issues like framerate hiccups. The loading screens are pretty bad, so I tend to text from my phone lol. That's something that HAS to be fixed because you die so much. it can remove you from the emersion.
 
Well the Order ran well didn't it? That is a dick move, for sure, but if you're a publisher and you get a lot of negative day 1 reviews focusing on performance issues that will be getting patched then you might not want to send those who do that review copies any more

Reviewers don't tend to focus on performance that much because they know some of the problems they find will get patched, so they'd rather focus on the game

It's not an ideal situation, but if we made performance a key factor in day 1 reviews, almost every new game will be overshadowed by what needs to be patched

Plus, a lot of gamers, probably the majority, don't care about performance, 25fps, 30fps, 60fps, stuttering, screen tearing, whatever, they don't care or know what a lot of that stuff is

If someone who just plays CoD or FIFA/Madden checks out a review of one of those games and the first few paragraphs are all on performance, they probably won't read much past the first paragraph
The Order reviews in question were more about being critical of the poor design decisions, unskippable cuts cents, bad story, and buggy AI rather than anything to do with performance. Basically if the review didn't give the game a good score the guy wanted to pull review copies for that reviewer.
 
The Order reviews in question were more about being critical of the poor design decisions, unskippable cuts cents, bad story, and buggy AI rather than anything to do with performance. Basically if the review didn't give the game a good score the guy wanted to pull review copies for that reviewer.

To be clear, he has absolutely no authority to have review copies pulled. He was just being a big grump about reviews when he probably should have kept his mouth shut.
 
Ok, so I had Demon's Souls (even imported from the US as it took a while to come out here in the UK) and only played for like half an hour, gave up. Had no interest in Dark Souls or DS2 but the reception to this is very hard to ignore. Might have to give it a go...
 
The Order reviews in question were more about being critical of the poor design decisions, unskippable cuts cents, bad story, and buggy AI rather than anything to do with performance. Basically if the review didn't give the game a good score the guy wanted to pull review copies for that reviewer.

Yeah, that is why I didn't think it was applicable to the point I was making when the Order was brought up, as I was talking solely about performance as an issue in reviews
 
Ok, so I had Demon's Souls (even imported from the US as it took a while to come out here in the UK) and only played for like half an hour, gave up. Had no interest in Dark Souls or DS2 but the reception to this is very hard to ignore. Might have to give it a go...

What are the reasons you quit playing? I'm finding bloodborne a bit harder than those games, just a heads up.
 
Ok, so I had Demon's Souls (even imported from the US as it took a while to come out here in the UK) and only played for like half an hour, gave up. Had no interest in Dark Souls or DS2 but the reception to this is very hard to ignore. Might have to give it a go...
At its heart its still a Souls game. So it depends on if you are actually interested in trying it out again.
 
That's not an excuse, the reviews should mention that. They are very selective in these kind of criticism. The loading problem highly affects the game because you die a lot, so you have to see that fucking screen all the time.

It's funny how some developers can't optimize loading.
I was playing Injustice's "challenge mode" and the worst part is the time that takes to reload. It's not too much time, but c'mon, what they need to load again? The same stage, music, characters... there is NOTHING different each time you try!

It's frustrating.

The game is far from performing poorly (tech wise). Far far far and away from it. Loading is not that long, because you always think about what just happened and how to retry. Imho.
 
I think I prefer Sony to keep it modest and realistic with the marketing and overall budget. As long as the Souls keep making a healthy and profitable 1-3 million sales, we soulsheads should be pretty safe. Dip below 1m and the series could disappear, make completely ridiculous numbers and the temptation to dumb it down to Oblivion will be a thing. Which would also kill the series, in a different way.

Did not think about it in this way, heh. Yeah, better to lose the Souls series altogether than turn into into another Skyrim/ Dragon Age series.
 
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