A couple weeks ago, I published some basic tips for playing Bloodborne. That post focuses mostly on the major mechanical differences between Dark Souls and Bloodborne, and how your strategies and tactics should be adjusted to compensate.

In this post, I'm going to go a little bit more in-depth into some of the game's features in order to provide some more advanced strategies and tips that will become useful for players as they progress deeper into the game. As before, these will be general tips. I will not focus on tactics for defeating specific enemies, bosses, or levels. I invite you to view any number of walkthroughs, strategy guides, and let's plays scattered around the internet if you're interested in how to beat a certain part of the game.

But if you know any general tips that I missed, feel free to post a comment!

Trying to find your blood echoes after dying can be annoying in Bloodborne. This is because it isn't in a predictable location every time. Sometimes it will be held by a specific enemy that you have to kill in order to retrieve the blood echoes. Other times it will just be dropped on the ground near where you died. This does make the game a bit more challenging, since you usually have to defeat an enemy in order to regain you echoes, rather than just sprinting through the level to pick them up like you could in Dark Souls.

Look for the enemy with the glowy, purple eyes. It won't necessarily be the same enemy that killed you.

If the blood echoes are held by an enemy, that enemy's eyes will glow with a bright purple-ish energy. But the enemy that holds the blood echoes is not necessarily the same enemy that killed you. The echoes could be given to the closest enemy. When attempting to retrieve your echoes, try to do some recon of an area to find out which enemy has your blood echoes. If you're lucky, it may be an enemy that is easier to get to ...

Bloodborne is finally out, and so it was finally time to bite the bullet and buy a PS4. This is the first - and so far only - game that makes me want a PS4. Sure, there are other games that I want to play (Shadow of Mordor, Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes, to name a few), but they are all also on PC and Steam, and probably look and run better on the PC. So I had very little incentive to purchase a PS4 up till now, and only needed to temporarily borrow a friend's in order to see if the new Madden was worth anything and to play the exciting P.T. demo that may not be so exciting anymore. Shucks...

Anyway, I've been playing Bloodborne, and it's been quite an adjustment from Dark Souls (much more than the adjustment from Demon's Souls to Dark Souls). As such, I've compiled a short list of tips to help new players and experienced Dark Souls veterans to keep alive in Bloodborne:

I apologize in advance for the poor quality of some of the screenshots that I am including. I had some local network issues during my first playthrough and had to broadcast to Twitch using reduced quality...

Continuing my series of strategy posts about Brave New World's modified civilizations, I'm going to take a look at strategies for George Washington's America. Since Brave New World's Fall patch (2013) America's ability was buffed and its unique unit now allows it to generate more late-game golden ages.

The lands of North America have been occupied by various native tribes for thousands of years, but these tribes lived in relative isolation from the rest of the world, except (possibly) for a brief period of interaction with the Danish Vikings. After Christopher Columbus landed in Haiti in the late 15th century, a flurry of explorers and colonists primarily from Britain, France, Spain, and the Netherlands began arriving in North America, rapidly exploring and settling the continent. These colonists gradually displaced the native inhabitants, including the Iroquois and the Shoshone. But conflict between the colonies and their European masters (primarily Britain) eventually culminated in a revolutionary war in which the colonists retreated to the countryside, and used guerrilla tactics to defeat the British and establish the United States of America.

Despite being founded on the principles of "equality" and "inalienable rights", the early history of the United States is dominated by tension between its slave-holding and free populations. These tensions eventually culminated in the outbreak of the American Civil War, which resulted in more American casualties than the Revolutionary War, both World Wars, and the Vietnam War. Combined. Union victory established America as a modern industrial nation with a singular identity, and Americans stopped referring to the country as "These United States", and began calling it "The United States". This war is also significant in world history because it is the first major war in which industrial technologies such as the machine gun, telegraph, railroad, steam-powered ironclad ships, and (probably most significantly) photography were used to large effect, which changed the way that future wars would be fought and the way that they would be perceived by the public. And it was one of the first major wars to employ new urban fighting tactics that would become the basis of combat for the wars of the 20th century. America would play a pivotal role in those 20th century wars as well, and would emerge from them as a dominant global super power.

George Washington was a colonial general who lead the British colonies in America in wars against the French and various Native American tribes. When the colonies declared independence, Washington became one of the premiere generals for the new colonial militia. Knowing that they could not defeat the British in conflict in the cities or open field, Washington and the other colonial leaders gave the cities to the British and retreated to the hills and forests of the countryside. Here, they successfully employed large-scale guerrilla tactics that weakened the British supply lines and culminated in American victory. Washington would then become the country's first President and set several precedents, such as the idea that the President would be a civilian position (as he refused to wear his military uniform while in office), and that the President should step down after two terms.

Although not a terrific game, the indie survival adventure game Miasmata (developed by Bob and Joe Johnson of IonFX) is an interesting title that does deserve to be played by its target audience. It's not a particularly challenging game, but players can back themselves up into seemingly insurmountable holes. Knowing the game's mechanics and rules - and knowing them early - is important to ensuring that you aren't forced to restart from the beginning or give up entirely.

Like with my previous strategy post for Alien Isolation, I am not going to provide specific walkthroughs for the game or any of its specific set piece challenges. In fact, doing so would be even harder than in Alien because Miasmata is a completely open-ended sandbox game. Instead, I will be offering some general-purpose tips that should be relevant for the entire game. This will include some techniques for working around the game's bugs and odd design flaws.

Owl statues point towards a cache of medicinal plants, but they do not count as landmarks or show up on the map.

This should be a pretty obvious tip. If you find the plants that are used for the 3 parts of the cure, or the three emphasis drugs, you should immediately pick them and ...

Continuing my series of strategy posts about Brave New World's modified civilizations, I'm going to take a look at strategies for Oda Nobunaga's Japan. Since Brave New World's Fall patch Japan was given additional buffs towards culture and coastal starts.

Japan is a series of four large island and numerous smaller islands that were formed by volcanoes. It has been inhabited since the upper paleolithic era (about 30 thousand years ago), and its people have lived in relative isolation for much of its history. It has gone through periods of war with its closest neighbors across the sea: China and Korea, and has had significant cultural influences from both, such native Shinto's two competing religions: Buddhism and Confucianism. Throughout most of Japanese history, the country has been in a feudal state, with regional populations being loyal to a warlord who is granted land and titles from the emperor (or "Shogun"). In-fighting between warlords was common, and power often ebbed and flowed between different clans and families.

Samurai Daimyo Oda Nobunaga helped Ashikaga Yoshiaki to reclaim the title of Shogun for his clan in 1568, and Nobunaga used the leader as a puppet to enable his own conquests. He was a brutal warrior who once set fire to an enemy complex, killing tens of thousands of civilian non-combatants (including women and children) in order to put down a rebellion of farmers and monks. He eventually attained military control of more than half of the territories of Japan on behalf of the Shogun. His successor, Hashiba Hideyoshi, would complete the unification of Japan 11 years after political and personal tensions lead to Nobunaga's assassination by a vassal clan.

In the 19th century, Japan's isolation finally ended and it began the process of rapidly modernizing. By the 1930's, Japan had developed into a modern military-industrial machine that was almost the technological equivalent of the United States and European powers. It became the dominant power in the Pacific prior to being defeated by the United States in the second half of World War II.