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While gathering some inspiration for my top 20 games list i decided to give you guys a review of a new game i know many have been wondering about, my next post will be the last part of the 20 best games list.

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Anxiety and depression

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Lightness or darkness. Reality or dream. Is there even any meaning in what i am doing? These are questions that Senua will ask to herself during her hellish trip towards Helheim. The goal is getting peace of mind, but the path is filled with more and more questions marks, more than Senua or me could ever imagine. The darkness lays over the gaming world, the mood gets heavy and the grip of reality is heard to maintain. Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice offers a theme that isn't really common in games, at least not when presented the way they are in Hellblade.

Ninja Theory has talked a lot about Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice being a blockbuster game but wrapped in a somewhat more modest package, with a smaller price tag as an result. Many have worried over the project ending in a game with more surface than substance and the truth is that that is about exactly what i feel as the ending credits roll over the screen. It feels like an indie-title with top-notch graphics. The repetitiveness will become a bit dull though.

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If you do not have a fancy yacht when you travel to Helheim, you can build a kayak from what you find in nature, in this case - a wooden log.

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Out protagonist, Senua, has lost everything and finds herself on a dark and hopeless journey. She knows this, deep inside, but she still keeps on moving forward. When i get to know her in the opening scene, where she sits on a large wooden log acting as a kayak. As she paddles her way forward quietly and carefully at the same time as a voice is talking directly to me, the player. I don't really get any presentation of the games premise or story but quickly I realize that Senua has been trough some hard times, or rather she's in those hard times right know. Basically she's a tormented soul with some real serious mental issues.

Senua's mind is filled with different wills and opinions and more often than not they are quite destructive. I get reminded that i should turn back, that i won't be able to manage the task in front of me and that everything is hopeless. But Senua keeps on struggling and gets of her sporadically built wooden kayak on the edge of an beach. The controls over Senua is there after turned over to me, but the voices in my head still keeps babbling. I feel unfocused and stressed, and with an atmosphere that helps to set the mood, bringing it all together creates one intense experience - a experience that's both well put together and tastefully designed. It's melancholy right from the start, Ninja Theory wants me to feel weak and that's something they pull of. I almost feel as tormented as Senua herself.

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If you want to learn more about the games world and mythology, you can activate special stones that tell you stories about the sinister world.

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The Mechanics of An Mentally Unstable Norse

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Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is an action-adventure game where you follow Senua as a floating camera, a third-person perspective with other words. The game mechanics don't really offer any innovations, which is completely fine. One could split up the game in roughly two different segments; environment-based puzzles and punching enemies in the face - rinse and repeat. But stuffed between these two segments we get moments of blurry fragments that tells us the story, all adding their own small world-building details to the experience. The emotional parts to why Senua is on the journey she is, is told to us progressively with small parts getting revealed as we move along, it helps to feel involved in the games story and also creates a sort of excitement as it's sometimes hard letting the controller go before you get to know what's behind that next corner.

The puzzle-segments more often than not require me to walk towards a door that's locked, on the door there is three runes glowing in a ominous red. My quest is to journey out into the gaming world, or rather the gaming zone behind the door. Once trough the door i need to find things in nature or man-build constructions that represents the rune's appearance. Much is about perspective, by finding a tree that looks a bit suspicious, and then if i circle that three with Senua I am eventually able to visually create the rune i am looking for and therefore unlock the door. It's fun in the beginning even though it's not that hard because the game always kind-of shows where to look. It's really just interesting the first few times you do it but unfortunately the same type of puzzle is used all throughout the game. And that's about 100 times, so it gets repetitive. Sure the puzzle gets some variations as the game progress, but it's foundation remains intact and you will sometimes feel like your doing the same thing over and over and over again.

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The Tempo of Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is relatively slow, but that does not mean that there are no explosive parts

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The battles are also suffering from the lack of variation. Mechanically it reminds me more of Bloodborne than God of War for example. There is one quick attack and one heavy attack, a button to dodge and the ability to kick enemies to lower their shield. It's pretty easy to just button-mash your way trough most of the battles, even though there are combinations to learn. The difference between the games first battles and it's lasts basically just is that the last has more enemies trying to get a spot on my TV-screen. Sure new enemy-types are introduced as we move along but the principal remains intact for all of them. The simplicity is constant, and not in a good way, but rather in the way of offering the same challenges again and again.

The camera is placed way to close to Senua and even though the little friendly voices in my head warns me if i have something behind me and the fact that i can lock-on onto any enemy i want to fight - the fights still feel more like hard-to-control clashes than interesting and nerve-tickling battles.

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"Give me the sword, stupid blue wall"

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What's lacking for me, besides of variation, is depth. Depth in the fights, the characters and the world itself. Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is super linear, almost the opposite of other games being released today. Something that i actually appreciate. Unfortunately it feels just to square and framed and it's impossible to even walk the wrong way. There is nothing to explore except the path forward that you always have to traverse on. All the time. There is no mystical lore in the game that at least would let me believe that the gaming world holds other paths, other possibilities or more to explore. Instead this feels like a polygon world that's just built to move trough and finish, not explore.

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Concluding

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I lack the feeling of progression and accomplishment in the game. Senua barely learns anything new during her adventure. It's all about the same battles, same combinations and the same puzzles. My opinion is somewhat split in this regard, in a game where the focus should be on the story telling this is something i would normally appreciate but in Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice it more than often feels more turned off than alive, which makes it hard for me to get truly sucked in to the experience.

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The mood and atmosphere is dark... very dark.

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Weak battles and a repetitive layout are the curses of this game, but Ninja Theory still is able to convince with an incredibly moody atmosphere. The whole game is riddled with dark anxiety and hopelessness that you can almost cut with a knife, and Senua's picture of reality and her struggle to do what she thinks is right at the same time while fighting against guilt from her past - it's nicely put together and it succeeds to keep me locked to the screen for the seven hours it took to reach the end. It's many uncomfortable subjects that are explored in this journey and I can not really think of any other game that tries to do what Hellblade does. The game is in my opinion worth a playtrough just for the atmosphere and story, but you would probably go insane of the repetitiveness if you attempted a second playtrough.

It's also a very visually pleasing game (even though the game is drenched in different graphic filters), Senua herself is very detailed with facial expressions that really convinces us. There is not doubt that this is an ambitious project filled with high production value, but at the same time it's a game that keeps itself back with it's repetitive mechanics and lack of character progression. If you like the genre, theme and don't really care about repetitiveness it is certainly worth a playtrough but i did expect a lot more of the team behind titles like Enslaved and DMC.

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To play a character with a serious mental illness certainly is an interesting theme for a game.

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And if you like my content i would appreciate if you would give me a vote in this poll, it's a steemit competition and it would be more than awesome if you guys would vote for me. But i love you guys even if you don't :D Peace fellow gaming dudes & chicks!

Sources

1. www.hellblade.com/