It's rare that a stretch of a game manages to nail that feeling of being an arduous slog, but one you want to see through to the end. Difficulty and challenge these days are often put to the wayside in favour of ensuring every consumer can see the entirety of their product, and it's directly in the face of such a notion that Bloodborne's entire opening segment is so brutally unforgiving. You'll have to go through more enemies in one place than in any other section of the game, explore and discover which routes take you to the next checkpoint - and then tackle a whopping great screen-filling boss before you can bank any experience you've built up. Even Dark Souls fans struggled with this one, and it appeared as though creator Hidetaka Miyazaki was making one hell of a bold statement, like asking the first steps of an assault course be a straight vertical wall. "Figure it out and get through, or die", said Bloodborne, and we did.