I honestly don't think they're as difficult as people often make them out to be. You just gotta be persistent with them. The games do have cheap deaths, despite what many of the fans say. It's never a good time when I come around a corner only for a giant boulder that I had no clue would be there plows over me and sends my lifeless corpse hurtling into the abyss.

The sense of progression in the games that comes from the victories and successes is excellent though.

The Last of Us Part 2 ****ing rules. Even aside from the great story the gameplay is super satisfying and feels very visceral and intense. I just took a sniper shot at some dude I could barely see and missed so he called out "She's by the truck!" Since I was in fact by the truck I placed a trip mine and skedaddled. About fifteen seconds later I hear the BOOM (explosions and gunshots sound so ****ing good) followed by one of his compatriots crying out "BRIAN!!!" Mind you these are unnamed peons, but I still get to feel like I gave someone lifelong trauma. 5 stars.

Does anybody else's butthole involuntarily clench when they take a flying leap in a game?

Re: Elden Ring

So I've had this in my library for weeks already but barely touched it. I was playing Bloodborne (which had been sitting on my shelf for a while) in anticipation for ER arriving in the mail, and to warm up for it so I wouldn't be getting completely stomped by the game upon picking it up.
But in the meantime I got more than mildly addicted to Bloodborne, so when Elden Ring arrived i just kept playing BB lol. Although I'm probably less than halfway through the game it has quickly reached the status of one of my all-time favourite games, it's just that ****ing good. Then I got busy with Uni assignments and didn't really have time for either of them for the past few weeks.
I also couldn't resist watching YT let's plays of it when ER came out (bc of all the hype around it), so the early portions of the game are already fairly familiar to me at this point. Figure I'll wait a while longer to start really getting into it, so the game feels more "fresh" to me when I do start exploring it for real.

TL;DR: Bloodborne is a very good game

Elden Ring was the moment Souls really hit the mainstream. It's a pretty great game, but I do have small gripes with it.

My favorite Souls game is still DS2.

Bloodbourne wasn't mainstream? That game was huge.

been playing a tonne of Ghost of Tsushima lately.

:) one of my all-time favourite Playstation exclusives and my personal number 1 game of 2020.

Not like Elden Ring - it wasn't helped by the fact that it was a Playstation exclusive. It sold somewhere between 3-4 million copies total. Elden Ring has sold 12 million copies, and it's only been a couple months since it launched. The open world aspect is drawing in a lot more casual gamers i think.

Recently beat The Last of Us Part 2 and ****ing loved it so I'm playing some more Naughty Dog games by finally playing the Uncharted series from the beginning.

Uncharted 1 so far is fine enough but pretty dated. Everything it does has been done far better in other games by now and the mechanics are kind of clunky. It's pretty charming anyway though and it's a short game so I'm ready to start 2 and see what all the hype is about.

Uncharted games are a lot of fun. They're like playing through an interactive action movie. Uncharted 2 is my favorite, but 4 is really really close in terms of quality.