"It is the will of the gods."
"Fuck the gods!"

Replaying this one was an odd experience. I first played this nearly 6 years ago, gave it much high praise, then slowly moved on to forget what exactly I loved about it. All I remember was that it was a great standalone story, until the unexpected announcement of a sequel had me itching to return.

To put it brief, Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice holds up, for what it tries to do. I had played this before 2018's God of War and vividly remember enjoying this interpretation of Norse mythology even more... but it's a different interpretation. Hellblade simply nails its narrative; a brief hero's journey and love story, centered around a young warrior who suffers with severe psychosis. The 3D audio is, of course, incredible at immersing the player into Senua's mind while adding a bit more flair to the game's combat and puzzles. It's also often horrific, and with its hyper-realistic art direction and surreal designs (including actual live-action shots), the story ends up becoming fucking awesome and heartpounding. Some of the boss designs genuinely made me uncomfortable, which is a merit to the world crafted here. By the time the player rolls credits, this becomes one of those experiences where they will browse the internet for some video essays analyzing what just occurred. It's not a power fantasy, but a simple story about overcoming your flaws and dealing with loss.
And, most of all, the actor performances, both in voice and motion capture, are some of the best I've seen in the medium. Melina Juergens is absolutely insane, among the rest of the cast.

Where I think Hellblade falls a bit flat though is in its gameplay. As stated, the 3D audio cues of Senua's voices add a neat addition to combat and puzzles, often aiding the player with cryptic hints or warnings. However, the game focuses just a bit too much more on puzzles than combat, and the puzzles that are there mostly consist of the same loop of lining up in-world objects to create runes or pathways. Even the combat, while decent to control, lacks the depth you typically find in action games of this nature, focusing purely on parrying, evading, and attacking. Sequences later on also swarm you with enemies, which can encumber your strategies in combat. As the narrative builds, these moments of gameplay ultimately slow down the process.

Do I recommend Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice to anyone? With its short length and good accessibility, absolutely. Just be aware that this experience shines more in its cinematic narrative and immersion than its gameplay. Maybe drop the difficulty down, if you don't wish to be challenged by its shortcomings.

ما وراء تضحية سينوا | Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice

لم يتبقى الكثير على الجزء الثاني من هيل بليد، لهذا أقدم هذا الفيديو عن الأستديو الصانع للعبة هيل بليد، وسبب تميّزها وقوّتها.. استمتعوا

https://youtu.be/66TvGl513PI

As a story about mental health I don't know that it quite ends up working.

As a game, it's beautiful. Gorgeous. The length is just right for the story.

As a game it's also... kinda simple. The combat isn't super engaging. The puzzles are boring, but also often very finnicky.

Curious how the sequel turns out as this is a strong base to start, but yeah... perfectly fine game.

Es casi irónico que uno de los juegos más lúcidos de su generación sea uno que habla de la psicosis.
Lúcido es la palabra que utilizo por que pocas veces en un juego todo está al servicio de transmitir una sola idea, o experiencia, y todo rema hacia el mismo sitio de manera consciente, coherente y brillante como en este primer Senua.
El sonido, claro, es el gran protagonista (imprescindibles buenos auriculares), pero literalmente todo está al servicio de explicar al jugador, sin palabras, lo que es la psicosis: desde el escenario, uno de fantasía, para que no sepas bien lo que esta en la cabeza de la protagonista y lo que existe en ese mundo (seria mas facil de separar en una ambientación de corte realista), hasta los puzzles, centrados en encontrar patrones en el entorno, una obsesión recurrente de los que padecen la condición, el combate, simple pero visceral, y la decision del juego de avisarte nada más comenzar de que la muerte permanente existe, sin decirte cuántas te puedes permitir, viviendo con la tensión de no saber si Senua se levantará la proxima o si perderás todo el progreso. Si eso es cierto o no es irrelevante, por qué la semilla en ti cabeza ya está plantada, y ese era el objetivo.

Simplemente brillante. Un equipo con una idea clara de lo que quiere y la disciplina para no salirse del camino.

Muchos más Ninja Theorys, por favor.

While I'm not in love with this game, it damn well does what it does well.
The unique take on representing mental health in this game is very good, and I like a lot about what it does. I replayed it for the new game that released the day I write this review (the sequel) and while it's still very lackluster in the gameplay department and some of the puzzles are hit-or-miss, it really makes you feel valiant going through the title and finishing the game, was very impressed on released and while I've grown less partial to it over the years, still a very good game for those willing to take it on.

Weird genre mashup, this game. Like a story heavy walking simulator mixed with a hack and slash game. I had it described to me as "indie God of War" and got a chuckle out of that. It's not far off honestly.

So Hellblade has you play as a deeply troubled girl named Senua. We're talking heavy psychosis and hearing voices while dealing with immense trauma. The devs of the game even consulted psych experts to try and convey the mental trauma in an impactful way. The most effective of which comes in the form of the voices Senua, and by extension you, hear as you go through the journey. The game encourages you to play with headphones and I think this is the primary reason why. With headphones, you can hear the voices she hears but also distinct directions they come from making for a more scattered feel. It's chaotic and immersive.

Senua is on a quest to save her beloved's soul from Hel. She journeys the lands with his head in tow hoping to find someway to get Hela to bring him back to her. You quickly find the gate to Hel but you first have to unlock it by facing two different trials. It's also at this time you're informed that if you die too many times you'll just lose all your progress in the game. I dunno if this is true or not and never heard it actually happen to anyone but it's a ballsy thing to present people with and an effective way to instill anxiety. Bit detrimental as a player adjusts to a learning curve but whatever.

So most of the game consists of two types of gameplay loops. First is solving puzzles involving runes. Senua will come up to literal road blocks in the form of big closed doors with runes on them. She focuses on them and then as she finds the same shapes in like debris or parts of the world, the symbols of the rune on the door glows white and as she finds them all she can go through the door. It's this that I find to be the most well thought out and engaging gameplay mechanic as it ties into her psychosis and finding meaning in things despite what they aren't. It all plays very well with the theme of the game. You also get some puzzle solving with perspective puzzles bringing things into view and working with illusions at one point but the real meat of it is these rune puzzles.

On the other hand, you have the combat. This for me is the weakest part of the game. It honestly feels like they tacked on the combat last minute to make it feel like more of a traditional game and I think it really suffers for it. The combat here is box standard light attack, heavy attack, parry, dodge combat salsa. You fight against viking looking spectres that just come out of nowhere to impede progress and every one of them is just so spongey that you can just swim in the tedium. Mash heavy attack button, parry parry-able moves, dodge otherwise, repeat.

It sucks and it just takes me out of the game so hard for what is otherwise an immersive story experience. You could argue the combat in this game is because they point out her being a warrior and being strong but honestly I think it plays against what they're going for when you just mash the same attack and makes her look like more of a savage than any sort of skilled warrior. I legit think they could have just done without having the warrior aspect at all and still portrayed her as strong enough to face her inner demons. Oh well.

Ultimately you're able to experience Senua's troubles and backstory through this journey. The voices nipping at her the whole time along with some flashback sequences do a good job conveying how tortured she is. There are also lorestones where Senua recalls stories told to her by a man in her life that seems to take on a sort of mentor role and they characterize him well. His stories I think also give players insight into how Senuas perceptions of the world and herself are shaped. I think the lover she's out to save comes off a bit flat but it serves as a good enough motivator to go on and her struggles handling that make for a decent core to move things along.

Hellblade is a solid story heavy walking sim marred by tedious boring combat. It all looks very pretty in its foul way and does a good job sucking you in. Even the combat doesn't come off as too detrimental as the whole game isn't too long and you aren't in it for too long. Overall I recommend the game for people who like interactive storytelling even though it's a bit on the nose. Solid ending too. So much so that I can't imagine what the sequel could be about? but yeah good experience mostly. Just wish it was a little tighter.

Uma experiência única!
Acho que essa frase é a que mais resume hellblade, a forma como a história é contada é incrível. Como a protagonista sofre de problemas mentais, muitas coisas são contadas de maneiras surrealistas e diferentes, é até difícil de explicar.

A história em si não é inovadora, mas a narrativa é tão bem desenvolvida que te prende do inicio ao fim, pois só aos poucos que é contado o que aconteceu.

O sistema de puzzle também não é algo único, mas ele foi muito bem adaptado pra atmosfera do jogo, é muito bem utilizado também, o que faz os puzzles do jogo serem muito bons e divertidos.

O combate do jogo é muito bem feito, o que torna ele extremamente gostoso e divertido de se jogar, só fica ruim quando aparece muitos inimigos de uma vez, porque parece que o sistema não se adapta isso é acaba ficando mais difícil.

Em geral, hellblade é um jogo muito bem feito e construido, não tem uma história fácil de se entender, mas nada impossível. Se você gosta de mitologia, ou um jogo com uma baita história e narrativa, esse jogo é perfeito para você

I adore the audio design of this game. There are plenty of things to complain about here but there's so much more to love. Combat is simple but feels good when in a flow. Very easy and natual one play platinum. I can't recommend playing this if you don't have headphones. It was designed with headphones in mind (binaural audio) so you're really missing out on anything else. 2.0 and 2.1 systems are not a substitute and I will not back down on this for one main reason: It's a game where the main character has psychosis. The voices are convincingly in your head with headphones.

It's a fun experience with a dark story but isn't for everyone.

I don't fault anyone for coming into Hellblade saying that they found the gameplay lacking. Coming off of Hollow Knight, I was quite bored with the parry-spam inducing combat. However, Hellblade exceeds in other areas so hard that I found it to be a worthwhile experience.

Lets expand on the combat first. It is very one-note for the lack of a better word. Enemy variety is not great and you're mostly mixing in some different attacks for specific enemies and generally not very difficult (I think I died twice the whole game with combat difficulty set to Hard). However, I do find the bosses to be much better! Using a different set of movesets and designed with strong folk horror twinge, I really loved fighting these larger encounters.

The design and atmosphere goes well into the narrative and art/environment design as well. I really appreciated Hellblade as a very personal story about Senua coming to grips with her trauma during the course of this journey. Yes, the non-combat gameplay is largely dependent on puzzles involving finding runes in the environment but I thought it made sense thematically on Senua as a character. On top of the gritty and frankly horrifying environments is a thick coating of psychological horror that really plays into Senua's mental state.

Ultimately, I think the way that Hellblade talks through its narrative about mental health and stigma around it is the strongest part of it. Most of this is really expanded upon using the binaural audio that they captured to simulate auditory hallucination to be almost overwhelming at times (But thats the point right?). Watching the docs on how the game was made really gave me an additional appreciation of the care that Ninja Theory took to tackle this specific subject matter.

As I played through this game, I came to really appreciated folks like Ninja Theory and Remedy that takes video games as a medium to new interesting directions. While some of the gameplay (both combat and non-combat) can be found lacking, I found the story this game told to be worth the time I spent going on this journey. I hope they knock it out of the park again with the sequel.