It's a fairly obvious assumption. Just look at all the Microsoft adds compared to Sony. Remember the new IGN feater A brought to you by Xbox One, and the new feature B brought to you by Microsoft. These campaigns aren't done for free.

Sony still advertises, and if they lose the Sony audience they lose out on hits (another for of advertising dollars) and Microsoft's advertising dollars. You need both audiences to be the dominant news source. Microsoft sees value in converting.

Have to admit that article scared me away from the game.

The annoying part about this is that this guy is legitimately inept. It's not that he's bad at games; he's bad at functioning. This is the golden line.

"Now, part of my anger at this design choice has to do with the fact that I have an abnormally poor sense of direction, in reality as well as in games."

It took him 15 minutes to get to the first boss after dying. There's no reason it should take more than 60 seconds, because there are SHORTCUTS.

There's no reason it should take anyone with a functioning brain 12 hours to beat the first boss. The game is not "12 hours on the first boss" hard. I would stop too, if it took me 12 hours to beat any one boss.

Understandable, if the game is too difficult, you won't enjoy it. Why not just change the difficulty? Therefore, there is less repitition from trying to restart...

But uncontrollable repitition can make a game long and boring so that is why I get where he is trying to get at.

The purpose is to be able to use your health as a commodity. It's like, the very name of the game.

You can trade your health for 5 temporary bullets. Blood Vials being more numerous allows for you to continue this exchange process.

The idea is that your health is used as a form of currency. You can spend your blood echoes on purchasing bullets and saving your health vials, or you can trade your health for bullets and use up your blood vials. This makes it possible to create more varied builds as one that masters in endurance can afford to trade off their health supply for offense when needed. Conversely, offensive builds can rely more on their weaponry.

I have to agree that this mechanic seems to be inferior to the Estus Flasks. I don't get this design choice at all.

OT: It's not surprising to see such a low quality opinion from a casual gamer. He should rename his name from Dan Stapleton to Dan Simpleton.

He's not forced to repeat a lot, though. He's literally always taking the long way. He's complaining about continuously being burned by a fire, even though he's the one literally putting his hand in the fire. And then he's saying "Now I admit, do I have a poor sense of 'fire fear.' In fact, when ever I see a fire, I have a clinical condition where I just need to put my hand in it; over and over again if desire requires it. That still doesn't make it okay that the fire is always skin-meltingly hot. There should be more temperature variety. Getting burned be the same exact temperature every single time isn't fun - it's repetitive. That's bad fire design."

I watched several twitch streams of the game...this guy just sucks.

Okay, that makes sense as a philosophy, but I don't think it works as well practically as the Estus Flask system...it seems to create a system based around grinding moreso than any kind of strategic play.

The only thing there that concerns me is load times, and heard they are patching that issue. One thing to die a lot, another to sit there every time for a minute.

It does bring to mind games are different medium at which a reviewer can be "bad" at experiencing. I think Bloodborne has its reputation so don't blame people for renting it first to see if they can handle what it offers.