Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is master class in "interactive storytelling." It really makes you feel like you're there, experiencing her story, her way of thinking, and it's stressful as all hell. What a wild ride. The combat is meaningful and not tacked on and the puzzles are unique and engaging. There's some real creativity here. On a side note.. as an interactive story it really commits some bad game design no-nos. Ledges waist high that sometimes you can climb but most you can't, not being clear in any meaningful way which way you should go sometimes which leads to backtracking accidentally, which leads to the painfully slow movement at times, "lore books" in which the audio cuts out if you go too far from it, jarring cuts between gameplay and cutscenes, achievements are incredibly distracting (why not just give them at the end?), painful camera with edges while in combat, bad death sequences (audio, visual, jarring cuts), performance issues that cause the game to stutter a lot. These things are minor on an individual level and incredibly picky of me to point out, however they really stand out and pull you out of the immersion of the game. I'm not one that usually gets immersed in games, but man this game is incredibly good at it, and then incredibly good at taking you out of it with these game design flaws/mistakes. Regardless - highly recommend it!!

A beautiful game to look at with a great story behind. All the mythology that drives the game fits perfectly with the underlying theme of the game. The pieces fit together in showing what mental illnesses can be to a person. One of those games you see while playing it how the team was invested in portraying the theme to the best of their abilities and how they truly cared on giving us a great story to become immersed.

The talk about Senua Sacrifica in the media is often mixed, and I entered the game blindly without any assumptions. Just for clarification- the permdeath idea that has been spreading is absolutely false and is only talked about in the game to keep you on edge. With that said, I was cautious about having a female protagonist being the center of the game with the current social, especially in Western countries to focus on everything female is good, and everything else is bad - However, this game isn't that and isn't about that in any shape or form. It focuses and symbolizes much deeper issues that everyone, I think knows themselves personally, or at least knows a friend or family member that has suffered from a form of mental illness, and with the main theme is, of course, how Senua handles her psychosis. They're other themes with religion, relationships and family, but it all ties into mental illness and how issues with family, relationship or religious conflict feeds into mental illness or in this game, Senua's psychosis. This game was extremely ambishious to begin with and I applude Ninja Theory to develop this game with the ideas it had without it making more generic to capture a greater audience. The writing is sharp, and plot was very well layed out with the games trying to actively show you what it is all about instead of telling you. The story is played with Norse Mythology and the history of the Pics in England during a very bloody, very nasty time period to be living in. The gameplay is fun to play without making it to boring, or monotonous with the actual swings, or actions actually feel a sense of heaviness to them. Senua's movement is similarly very well captured and is one of the few female characters that actually moves/acts to a warrior you'll expect on the battlefield during this time period. Highly Recommend this game. It is worth the price.

Great Story, really gripping and dark, perfectly accentuated by the outstanding sound design, just incredible what this small dev studio achieved here! You'll need 3D headphone though to actually experience this the way it's meant to. The effects, the fire, the weather, the lighting...all the visuals make the game one of the most immersive titles I have every played, such a beauty! My only criticism of the game is that the puzzles are a little annoying and frustrating at times, not because they are exceptionally difficult, but it can be hard to see what they are wanting you to do to solve them. All in all, well worth it even at full price. Excellent job, Ninja Theroy! Tip: The dev diarys on youtube are really interesting and insightful, binged them all after my playthrough!

Simply stunning. The combat gameplay itself may be subpar, some puzzles may be too repetitive toward the end, but this not simply a game, this is a piece of art. And what a performance by Melina Juergens who is playing the main character. Senua's journey will leave its mark on me.