Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice

This game allowed me to experience something I never would have been able to otherwise. I have great sympathy for those who have mental illness but never actually had a taste of what it was like before playing this. There is no leveling up, no skill tree, no fast travel, no HUD, no bullettime button mashing, just a beautiful game that tells a great linear story. it is slowly paced at times, intense, interesting, and original. The game made me scared, hopeful, desperate, and see through the eyes of Senua. it is worth your time to play this game.

After reading the glowing reviews, I was sold on Hellblade being an excellent game with superb writing, atmosphere and fight mechanics. I was sold on the developer's ability. The product I received is not superb. It stutters in cramped quarters on Medium quality (i5 4 GHz/GTX 960/16 GB/SSD), the fight mechanics are simple QTEs with autolock setting your feet in place (and your camera nauseatingly close), the voice acting is generic, and the pacing is awful for the first hour. Even the controls are not freely bindable and you cannot invert both axes. I felt cheated. The visuals were on point, and I was into the psychological terror aspect for a good while, but constant horror and poor performance wore me out. There were no highs, only a constant tone with low points in buggy puzzles (patterns on screen did not match rune, compared to video reviews) and excessive wresting of control from the player. I felt like I was being force-fed a QTE cutscene, not like I was playing a compelling game. My recommendation is to demo the game first and then decide if it was worth the hype.

The world is beautifully and atmospherically rendered. The writing is engaging, even when there is constant dialog via inner thoughts and narrations. And the cut scenes are some of the best cinematics I've seen. The gameplay is not as good. Puzzles don't have much variety. Combat always takes place in circular arenas, and most enemies have only 2-3 moves. Let's hope the upcoming sequel (due holidays 2020) will improve these aspects. I rate this 3 out of 5 stars. A marginal thumbs up from me.

If you ever wanted a proof that games are not just fun, but also art and important to the society, here is one. Hellblade is not only a masterpiece of a game, it goes far beyond that. Developers put a lot of honest effort (consulting scientists and people with psychosis) to let you experience the honest representation of a mental illness. Most of movies and games misrepresents mental illnesses in a way that causes pain to those affected by this stigma. This game is trying to change that. Play it. Support it. You wont regret it and you will never forget this game. Needless to say that the graphics, sound, music, story, acting, puzzles, combat and everything else is also amazing. The combat is great, just not that complex.

Full text: https://paste.ee/p/lDaIE The big question for me is, for which audience this game was made. The game consists of: * Walking in a linear, static environment * "Collectables" (Dialogue with another character, Stories based on european legends) * Puzzles (Matching forms, using things in a specific order) * Cutscenes * Combat Roughly half of the game consists of walking through a dead and static world. No moveable objects, nothing reacts to your presence. You go the path, that the developer had in mind for you. The productionquality is high and probably the reason, why it got so well received. Graphics, voiceacting, faceanimation, sounds, music. Not much to criticise. The elephant in the room is the lack of interactivity in this game, but in the same time not consequently going down the artistic walkingsimulator-path. Imagine Dear Esther with occasional fighting. I personally expect a game to be a game. Give me enough interactivity or I will be bored. And I was bored for longer periods. Hellblade is for me in total a mixed bag of boring and entertaining parts. A friend of mine likes easy and slow games. Your typical casualgamer. While she hasn't played the game, I imagine the long fights with many enemies and bosses to be frustrating. For her it will be likely a mixed bag of relaxed enjoyment and frustration. Both types of gamers would ask themselves, why the game can't be more focused on the enjoyable parts and get rid of the annoying ones. And the question stands, for whom is this game? It doesn't want to be consequently a proper game nor a pure artpiece. It is schizophrenic. Risking to leave everyone unsatisfied at the end. My personal recommendation: Start watching an uncommented playthrough of it. If you develop the urge to do, what you see, on your own, go for it. Final thought: My guess is, that they tried to press something into the shape of a game, that would have ended better in form of another medium. Maybe a film?