Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice

⭐ 7.5/10

(Originally written by Joseph)

Boy I have some serious mixed feelings about this one. So this is an incredibly dark, bleak game where you play a Senua who is a young woman from the middle ages with schizophrenia. Of course mental health research is a bit lacking, so she and everyone else thinks she's cursed and demonic. But there is one guy who accepts her and treats her like a human, but then he and everyone else starts dying from plague and invaders, and of course everyone, including herself, blames her demons. The game has you playing through Helhiem to try and save that guy from the underworld.

I mean, what a fantastic, unique story right? And the presentation of the story is even cooler. These are the bold artistic choices I love from video games. It's completely linear, has zero UI, and zero button prompts. You have to figure everything out on your own. This game looks incredible, sounds incredible, and has some terrific voice acting.

But my goodness was this game torture to play. That's entirely the point, but it didn't make it any easier. You hear voices throughout the whole game like Senua does, and they are very unnerving. They insult you, laugh at you, tell you to do things, scream, panic, etc. The studio worked with both people with schizophrenia and mental health doctors to get this right, and it is truly disturbing. Further... I mean you play through hell. There are bodies everywhere burning, the constant sound of pain and crying, sounds of ritual chanting. To find your way around, lots of times you need to listen to where you can hear people being burned alive and such. I mean, the dread is so real in this game, I questioned whether I could ever be happy after playing. It is so unrelentingly dark and grim.

As for gameplay, it revolves essentially around puzzles, combat, and cut scenes. I didn't find the puzzles particularly smart or engaging, and they were pretty repetitive. Also, trying to settle in and think about it while all you hear are voices, screaming and burning is not easy. I guess that's the point. The combat is also pretty basic. It was difficult to start, but you get the hang of it and it feels pretty good. The lack of button prompts is kinda a weakness here as lots of moves are pretty hidden. The boss fights however are really creative and cool, but mostly from a cinematic standpoint. I really appreciate how they make you use all your senses, like listening to where a hidden enemy approaches, or feeling for a controller vibration to know where a big boss will charge from.

Then it comes back to story/ cutscenes. While the story is great, it's also pretty convoluted. I had to wiki the story after to fully understand it as the writing is pretty poetic and the narrative is not straightforward. It's also again pretty difficult to put the pieces together with so much happening around you.

So yeah, I would say this is a top notch artistic achievement that I hated playing. It's only 7 hours long or so, so I know this is a lot of writing for a short game, but it really is thought provoking, both as a video game and as art. The game has a sequel coming and based on the trailer, they have not chilled out on the aesthetic. I'm glad this game was made, but I'm not sure I can handle another.