Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice

I just finished my second playthrough of this title and had nearly as engaging of an experience as the first with only a few hours separating the experiences. I found at least one hidden part to the game that I missed on the first play, and it added a small but significant piece to the story. There is a collectable system in the game that helps break up the tension and focus on the overarching goal. Unlike some collectable systems, this one tells a story and gives you a norse mythology lesson, which helps you understand how and why certain events and challenges are transpiring. Especially at the end where you have an almost sixth sense style retrospecitive look at the hours spent before, and with putting the story pieces together, you realize what has been happening. The game does not put these pieces together for you, it is very much left to the player to determine their own opinion on how real the events of the game were. If you complete the collectable portion of the game before the end encounter, you will be rewarded with an additional cuscene which will set the stage a little for a sequel and give you an idea of Senua's situation and how the most traumatic events in her life came to be. I suggest everyone purchase this game and send a clear message that this level of professionalism and care with this art form at a reasonable price will be rewarded. I can't wait for a sequel.

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is an indie game. It looks like a AAA blockbuster, and I think that has thrown a few folks. Like most indie games, Hellblade does one thing extremely well, and everything else serves to support that one thing. For some indie titles that means you get great combat but no story, or great puzzles but no combat. For Hellblade, the story is everything, and it is excellent. The combat and puzzle mechanics function simply as service to that story. Keep that in mind going in. For myself, I thought the puzzles were entertaining enough, and the puzzle solving mechanics were unique. I enjoyed them. I also didn't have major problems with the combat, but there's no doubt it got pretty repetitive through the middle section of the game. Later on, as the combat becomes more intricately tied in with the story, it became more entertaining. But in the end the focus was on the main character Senua and her story, and that aspect of the game is nearly flawless. The visuals of the game are stunning, among the best I've seen in any game of any price. The audio design is also staggering, again far better than the audio design in many far more expensive games. Everything from the visuals and audio to the puzzle mechanics and character performances works together to try and get you into the head of Senua, and it works amazingly well. Forget your VR and massive open-world games, this is immersion. It's the best immersion I've ever seen in a game, and to anyone who loves a good story with great characters that make you really think, this is absolutely the game for you.

From a production value point of view, this game is as close to an AAA game to be better than many of them, but that's not its strong point. I'm not much in walking simulators or heavily scripted games, but damn if this game is a complete exception! If you are looking for an action game, look elsewhere, same if you are looking for an RPG or an adventure game with proper puzzles. If you are looking for something unique, developed by a small studio, a game with mental illness at the core... welcome to the world of Senua.

So I just completed the game, took me 8 hours to complete, and about 10 deaths. I got to say, "WOW" and in a good way. Fantastic journey, very immersive and atmospheric game with challenging battles and fun puzzles. This game is now in my top list of best games ever, Freespace 1 and 2 share the top spot, with Hellblade being second spot. Hopefully we see more of this kind of game from Ninja Theory.

Senuas Sacrifice is perhaps the best, but certainly the most courageos game of 2017. It does hardly follow any game conventions and cannot be ascibed to a genre. Calling it a Roleplaygame is probably the closest you can get, although it comes without any of the features you would expect from such a game: no character customasation, no inventory, no leveling, no interface, no perks or stats,.. What it has is a role for you to play and its not an easy one. It is a carfully crafted, sometimes beatyful but mostly terrifying journey into the mind of a pictish woman suffering from psychosis. The game explores this theme with its sounddesign, mechanics, graphics and narrative. Everything in this game supports the portrait of Senua and the developers have come up with some truely inovative ways to use the medium of games not only to present Senuas story to the player but to make the player experiance what Senua is going through. Because it does this very well it might be too desturbing for some people. Gameplaywise the main features are environmental puzzles and action based fights but they are really not at the heart of the game. I can wholeheartedly advice everyone who is interested in this game to by it. But dont by it for its gameplay features, by it for the experiance it offers.