Humanity

@nasher27: I prefer a 10 point scale but admittedly all scores are pointless anyway. Reviews in fact are pointless. What if you're a huge Yoshi Island fan, but before buying that game you had read Jeffs thoughts on it (which are wildly negative) you respect the guy but I mean what use would that be to you? This is why reviews that deal with scores for sound, video, design might seem antiquated but in a way they do make sense.

@hassun: Bloodborne is this great maze of a city that later branches out to strange new lands. It dos have distinct zones though. If you get a chance in th future I'd highly recommend you give it a shot, it has some wonderful level design and is a lot more interesting than most architecture you find in the 'Dark' series.

@zaldar: You should send that post back in time to College-Dan

@hassun: I think "for the most part" is a more apt description than extremely well. I mean you went into a cave and then ran around levels that were underground or you walked from one castle to another. It was fine, but I don't know what people found so revolutionary and organic about it. The connection to Darkroot Basin seemed really ill placed. Undead Burg either goes into sewers-then-caves that begin the rapid decline in level quality the closer you get to Bed of Chaos, or it terminates at Sens Fortress where you get "cinematically" teleported to a whole new area. Anor Londo goes up into mountains, through the archives, into underground caves. So on so forth. I honestly never understood the "organic" level layout argument.

Bloodborne did this a lot better and was very clever in how the different paths looped back on each other but no one ever mentions it.

Not sure if you know, but at one point Dan thought these games all seemed very childish. He didn't think mature adults such as himself were meant to play these games as they were favorites of his younger sisters. As serious publications kept giving them high scores Dan, the mature adult that he was, decided to broaden his horizons and give these childish looking games a shot. Lo' and behold they turned out to be really good and ultimately Dan learned that you shouldn't judge a book by it's cover, beginning a brand new age of open minded and tolerant Dan Ryckert.

This was a good read. I'm not sure if it's a great review, but it was definitely an interesting editorial from the perspective of someone who has been playing these games for a while and enjoyed them up until now.

I would honestly call the PC release of this game a "hot mess" which is conflated even further by the fact that every Souls release on PC up until now has been troublesome in one way or another - although none have managed to reach these levels of hot dumpster fire that Dark Souls 3 did. The fact that there are hundreds of people unable to proceed past the character creator or the first area because of constant hard crashes shouldn't be waved off as easily as occasional hitching or lengthy load times.

Similarly while I can appreciate that these games are fun to play, is Dark Souls 3 doing anything particularly new apart from re-designing the mana bar? Bloodborne already felt very similar despite applying new systems to the mix. While I appreciate this is the conclusion to a trilogy, when do you draw the line where "more of the same" is no longer as satiating? Personal preference I suppose.

@zockroach: Jason is like that cool uncle that doesn't give a fuck and tells it how it is at every christmas gathering.

@hassun: DS1 intertwined only in the beginning areas. The latter portions of that game are very much linear paths leading up to bosses. Bed of Chaos, Nito, Four Kings, The Wolf (forgot name), the dragon, Priscilla - all areas that basically terminate at the boss and force you to warp back. That game doesn't loop around nearly as much as people say it does.

@dougfunk15: because different strokes for different folks. Jeffs drive to work sounds kind of nightmarish to me but to him it's a worthy trade for not having to live in the "city" enduring all the annoyances that brings with it not to mention that he lives in a house instead of some tiny, super expensive apartment.

@zachlentsch: I dunno, I never said they should make this game different, I just said I don't particularly care for this style of game. The last thing I'd be advocating is that games I don't enjoy but others do undergo radical change just to appease the individual at the cost of everyone else.