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Bloodborne's streets of sludge are grim enough without the added strain of a cardio routine, but Twitch streamer Gloomshadows decided to push her pulse to the limit anyway with what seems to be the world's first, no leveling dance pad run of FromSoftware's 10-year-old nightmare.
The ultimately successful, ridiculously impressive run took Gloomshadows just under 40 hours to complete – not including the 10 hours of off-stream practice she devoted to defeating Bloodborne's cheetah-fast father figure Gehrman. Like sprinting in a dream, Gloomshadows' run sometimes felt too real, bleeding into Gloomshadows' real-life.
"I had previously completed two other no leveling runs [in Dark Souls 3 and Elden Ring] on dance pad," Gloomshadows tells GamesRadar+ in an email, "so I knew this would be a grueling experience, but I didn't realize just how hard it would be."
"Bloodborne's bosses are quick and aggressive, so I was constantly moving and dodging in real life, leaving me out of breath," she continues. "I felt like I'd actually gone through the fights by the time each [a boss] was defeated in-game."
She shows off the run's highlights in a new YouTube video, but I was particularly amused by her lethargic encounter with the One Reborn, a writhing glob of skeletons and crude oil, which some players (myself included) consider to be one of Bloodborne's cheesiest fights. As long as you take the time to defeat the hollow-eyed Chime Maidens blasting fireballs from the rafters around the One Reborn's boss arena, it's a straightforward fight: hit, and don't get hit.
With Gloomshadows' dance pad – which is connected to her PC and Titan universal controller device in order to link to her PlayStation – the One Reborn looks like an even bigger, gooey baby. It slobbers out corrosive phlegm while Gloomshadows stands mostly still, waiting for it to be over.
The challenge of playing with a dance pad like this as opposed to a handheld controller, Gloomshadows tells us, "comes from the limitation of only being able to press a button or two at a time, having to balance your whole body while moving and having virtually no camera outside of lock-on."
But she hasn't had enough of it. Gloomshadows is currently working on an Elden Ring "double play," where she interacts with two save files – one with a dance pad, one with a standard controller – at the same time. When it's over, she'll immediately launch into performing the same feat with Dark Souls 3.
"This is a run I've [...] spent 1,000 dance pad hours getting ready for," she tells us.
