I want to make this clear right away: you currently cannot play Bloodborne on your computer without plot setup that hurts in the ass. Even if you put in the hours to get the game working like I did, it becomes very clear very quickly that PS4 emulation still has a long way to go, as evidenced by habitual crashes, lighting glitches, slowdowns, and a largely lack of sound effects. But it’s absolutely crazy that it works at all, since it’s only been two months since the creators of the open-source PS4 emulator ShadPS4 began to publicly boast about his progress.
If you’re judging by the titles of YouTube videos and the clips you see on social media, you might get the impression that Bloodborne has been emulated so effectively in the past few weeks that you can have fun playing it on PC. There are plenty of videos that aren’t intentionally misleading, but there are also ones with descriptions like this:
“It’s not about the algorithm at all: We now run Bloodborne in 60fps PC PC Bloodborne Shadps4 Emulator PS4 Emulator Bloodborne in 60fps High fps No Hangs Fixing Hangs Shadps4 ROM Hack”
Something tells me that this description is very exact. Is for the algorithm. Anyway, my point is that unless you enjoy tinkering with games more than you enjoy playing them, you shouldn’t try emulating Bloodborne just yet, because the process currently involves more hoops than a hula convention:
- Jailbreaking PS4
- Grabbing a copy of Bloodborne
- Dumping PS4 Firmware Files
- Bloodborne Update to Version 1.09
- Patching the updated Bloodborne executable with Lance McDonald 60fps patch
- (I’m probably installing Microsoft Visual Studio to have the C++ development files necessary to install the above patch)
- Downloading cheats and patches via an emulator and configuring them to deal with the currently broken and weird elements of the emulated Bloodborne
- Watching it crash all the time and wondering if you need another computer, another hobby, or another piece of equipment
YouTuber Modded Warfare has a nice, easy-to-follow walkthrough of the process, but you’ll probably still need to do a bit of Googling and troubleshooting to even try to get Bloodborne working. I managed to do that after a good two hours of tinkering — but the game keeps crashing. That’s about as much Bloodborne as I’ve played so far:
Aaaaand the crash. I’ll need more time to figure out what secret ritual people on YouTube have done to get around these crashes. And the broken lighting.
It’s absolutely crazy that this is even possible. I spoke with the lead developer of ShadPS4 in July, when Bloodborne was set to launch but hadn’t even made it past character creation. “We really didn’t want people to have high expectations for it because it’s still very much a WIP,” creator George Moralis said at the time. Unfortunately, with each recent YouTube video, those expectations have become increasingly arduous to manage because the progress has been extraordinary.
Well, look at this:
In the meantime, here’s a video from Moralis himself showing off the progress of the latest version of ShadPS4:
I think we’re probably still months away from this kind of experience being even remotely effortless. For now, that’s only possible with a lot of patience and the right cocktail of fixes and tweaks. But I can’t lend a hand but be excited about the progress, which is far more impressive than I expected since July. Given its current trajectory, at least a somewhat playable Bloodborne emulation is shaping up to be one hell of a holiday gift.
