Wednesday, April 26, 2017

It's all From Software's fault...

Not dead, but I have been seeing this screen a lot:


(Not my actual screenshot.  I yoinked it off an image search.  But given how many times I ate an axe or a shotgun blast to the face from Papa G, it seems appropriate.  Bloodborne players will know my pain...)

Yup.  I've been spending some time here:



and here:



I'm very late to the party with both, but after picking up a PS4 I knew I had to catch up on both given that both Dark Souls I and II are two of my favourite games.  Both Dark Souls III and Bloodborne are incredible.  I was uncertain on Bloodborne at the start given that playing Dark Souls without a shield is suicide for someone of my poor reflexes and the starting area is remorselessly brutal. (According to the PS trophy stats only 60% of players got past Father Gascoigne.  He's the second boss.)  Now I think Bloodborne might be the best of all the "Souls" games.  It might even be the best horror game ever made (although Silent Hill 2 provides some stiff competition - why the hell they adapted the weaker story lines of 1 and 3 for the Silent Hill movies and not 2 is one of life's eternal mysteries).  The horror aesthetic and atmosphere of Bloodborne is incredible.  Sure, it's a pastiche of Gothic Horror that eventually twists into Lovecraftian Cosmic Horror, and in that respect brings nothing new, but the execution is just so damn good.  I'm not sure what From Software has next in the pipeline, but I'd love to see them bring the same aesthetic to a sci-fi game.

Obviously this has cratered my writing productivity somewhat, but to be honest I was getting a bit burnt out anyway and throwing myself into vidyagames for a while is my usual way of recharging and getting the flame going again (obvious Souls pun is obvious Souls pun).

We'll see how it goes.  Currently I'm working on a full novel/novella, trying to resurrect the Sandwiched by Stomachs story, and a couple of H-space stories that might end up being full short stories in their own right (which I'll post both here and on Literotica if they reach fruition).

Mojo is still unfortunately absent, but I haven't given up on recapturing it just yet... ;)