Patch Notes: Bloodborne

This year's greatest achievement in groundbreaking RPG design and creative, absorbing storytelling is here! Unfortunately, the embargo on Pillars of Eternity coverage won't be lifted until Thursday. My writeup will have to wait until the next installment of VGA.

In the meantime, Bloodborne came out. It's pretty good too. With the day one patch, From Software hopes to make the game even better. Here are the documented changes:

Gameplay

• Increased load times by 350%.
• Removed the five minute time limit from every area. To compensate, there is now a thirty second time limit on boss fights.
• There is now only one button dedicated to making the player character shriek "BLOODBORNE!" in a heavy metal falsetto. This function was previously mapped to every single button on the controller, but at the last moment we decided that it should be possible to move, attack, use items, and access the menu.
• Pressing forward now moves your character forward, rather than filling an inscrutable Forward meter.
• Halved the amount of missiles available in the space station escort mission.

Graphics

• Brightened up the color palette with the addition of a new lighter shade of black.
• To emphasize the horror aspect of Bloodborne's world, we redesigned several familiar enemies. They are vastly scarier. For instance, now every skeleton's mouth features a pair of plastic vampire fangs.
• Fixed a bug that was hiding all the weapon and environment variety. Haha, woops!

Sound

• New theme added to the title screen. Please enjoy Bruce Springsteen belting out "baby we were born to blood".
• The sound of a garbage bag full of blood falling over is now only played when a garbage bag full of blood falls over, or when you open a trick chest that turns out to be a disguised garbage bag full of blood.
• Isolated the audio track of someone sneering "I don't see why people keep talking about the Souls games." Tried to delete or mute it, but it never seems to go away.
• Removed the fully voiced explanations of the game's most obscure mechanics. Replaced them with distant laughter.

UI

• Removed almost every icon that blatantly violated NBA team logo copyrights.
• The health bar is now a traditional solid color rather than a series of roaming lens flares.
• In the settings menu, the "Yes" button that appears below the pop-up asking "Is this a button?" can now be pressed.

Cities: Skylines
EA told us that a modern city building simulator was only possible with cloud computing and brain dead AI that didn't actually simulate anything, so I can only assume this game is the result of a pact with Satan or a rogue Sim City advisor. 8/10

Battlefield: Hardline
This Battlefield modding team has committed a felony by attempting to benefit from police militarization+brutality while meekly sidestepping any real exploration of those concepts, and now a law enforcement drone tank is on its way to blast them all to hell. 4/10

Bloodborne
I thought I'd have a tough time going back to 30fps after Dark Souls 2, but it turns out the framerate is somewhat alleviated by the fact that this is the best game on modern consoles. 9/10

Final Fantasy Type-0
5/10

Mario Party 10
If at first you don't succeed, try nine more times and on the tenth attempt throw in an Amiibo. 6/10

– Dennis "Corin Tucker's Stalker" Farrell (@DennisFarrell)