Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice

This is probably the only game ever I have ever bought in the day of premiere, and it happend only because of the PS4 trailer which drop jaw to the ground. Then I have played this game, it was few years ago and I still remember it so well. This is an astonishing experience of dark bur epic, very lonely journey as a celtic girl Senua, trying to save the soul of her beloved friend murdered in viking invasion on their village. At least that is what she believes in. At the same time this is a grim, fullfilling story of suffering, psychic trauma and mental illness. You will find here everything - a slow great story, puzzles, action, a truly effective horror and some beautiful cutscenes with outstanding acting. You will care deeply for the Senua because you will hear and see exactly what horror she is experiencing. Hell, sometimes you will even feel that she is looking at you with her eyes and this is very unique experience. I have never experienced so intensive atmosphere in any other story telling game, graphics are here grim and beautiful at the same time. The sound design here is probably the best game production ever happened. Please use headphones to be sure that you will experience this too. Jaw dropping. I could write a peans about this game all the time and yes, I understand that not everyone will like it, because there are some fighting sections which are little too monotonous, and I think the game could be a little harder. But for me this is how games should be used as a medium, and Senua is hands down my favorite game character. It is baffling how amazing actor Melinda Juergens is in this role. I can't wait for the sequel, I hope it will be as thought provoking and deep as this masterpiece.

I really wish there were more games like this one out there. I understand that gamers get their fun of various things. To me, games are, where most of the creative folks went to earn a living. It is very refreshing not to be bothered with character/weapons customization and instead beeing hit by flawless gameplay, fantastic graphics and audio and simply superb direction and storytelling. Much was said about red dead redemption - but senua´s sacrifice does all that (and because of not getting into millions of hats and suits seems to do a better job in all the other departments). Let´s hope for a shift in production towards 20-30 hours gameplay without the the crap for the self-exploiting social media beeings, with interesting cultural content. The problem is the price...because they have to compete against the big brothers, they cannot release it for 20/30 $. Anyway, it is now on sale here, I grapped it (I am very pleased with this purchase - long-term) and so should you - even if you don´t play it, seriously - these developers should get your money!!!

This game came as a surprise. It's a story oriented one with good music, some puzzles and a bit of fighting mixed in a good proportion. The overall world is dark, gloomy just the way I like it. Highly recommended.

Beautiful cinematic game with interesting visuals, a very unique audio and storytelling, I saw all of that in the trailers plus very dynamic fights so I was immediately invested. Unfortuately, I agree with the main criticisms most people have: The fights look very pretty and dynamic, but when playing you'll notice that they're repetitive because the combat system is too simplistic, just dodge and stun-lock your enemies, rinse and repeat, no challenge whatsoever, no way to improve, no different enemies or attack patterns, even the bosses are boring. This was a huge dissappointment as this was the aspect I was looking forward to the most. The game is also horribly optimized, I have a very modern and powerful setup but I still had to run the game on high instead of very high, and then I noticed some hickups so I lowered it to medium, then to low... And they still happened so I lowered everything to the minimum only to discover that in certain parts of the game there will always be lag, with a game so visually intense having things blur or freeze every once in a while is dizzing, these issues happen less with the lowest graphics so I went with those which is a shame because I wasn't able to enjoy the strongest part of the game: The visuals/sfx. Related to optimization I have to speak about the general lack of polish, for example near many walls or obstables you can move the camera in such a way that you see through the wall and can see what's below or ahead, things like that really break the immersion which is the second best thing this game has going for it. Finally, my personal opinion. The game is constantly changing, you're supposed to be always lost, this led to half of my playthough being me looking around, stressed because I didn't look at a torch in a certain direction so a path would open or similar things, I know this is part of the puzzle and narrative aspects but I don't think it translates well into gameplay. The game is also too short for the price.

Nija theory made again. a very re-playable game. excellnet visuals and sound fx. owesome motion capture and an epic story.