This review will contain minor spoilers involving a gameplay mechanic

I think if I was to describe this game in one word it would be "Uncomfortable".

I saw the press the second game was getting and since its free on game pass I was gonna just jump straight into that but I realised the first game was free as well so I thought I might as well play through it first.

The story of this game is what everyone is going to be there for. You play as Senua who has travelled to Helheim to retrieve the soul of her partner Dillion. I had no idea this game was set within Norse mythology so that was a big win for me out the gate as I love that stuff. Senua is plagued by constant voices in her head second guessing absolutely everything she does, constantly beating her down with whatever she is trying to do, so much so it can be hard to listen to at times. The main point of the game is Senua trying to overcome her grief which is shown in a lot of ways. I wont get to much into spoilers but I think the story is fantastic and kept me interested throughout the lacklustre gameplay sections

I absolutely love the character designs in this game. The Northmen all look disgusting, like hybrids of humans and animals. There are 5 enemy variants being the one with a sword, one with a hammer, one with a hammer and a shield, one massive guy with an executioner axe and one fast jumping guy with two small axe's. For the limited combat sections this game has there is enough variety to keep it interesting. I love the designs for the bosses in this game, each one towers over Senua. Valravn, Surtr Garm and Hela all look terrifying and look nothing like any designs I have seen for them previously. The game really excels off of the performances from the actors. Melina Juergens gives a fantastic performance as Senua, which I was surprised to see is her only credited acting role.

Now unfortunately the gameplay is where I would imagine the game looses a lot of people. The gameplay is very repetitive mostly revolving around perspective puzzles and small combat sections. They are cool to start with but when each area contains the exact same puzzle format it gets old fast. The game is only around 6 hours in length but took me several days to get through just to avoid burnout. The combat system is fun and I enjoyed all the segments with it but I wasn't really a fan of the "Permadeath" feature the game has. Each time Senua dies a bit more of her is covered by this black rash looking thing called "Rot" the game tells you that if you fail too many time then your quest will be over, insinuating that you have to start again. This actually isnt true as it was just a fluke which I guess was put in to further hammer in that nothing the voices tell you can be trusted. I'm not a huge fan of permadeath stuff so I was a little turned away by this but the combat is easy enough to master that it proved not a problem.

Visually this game is stunning, for being 7 years old it holds up extremely well with beautiful landscapes and extremely well designed characters as previously mentioned. Soundtrack is a banger as well. I think the place that this game excels the most is its sound design, playing this game with good headphones is a must as you can hear the voices moving around your head, it really adds to the atmosphere.

I was taken by surprise that this game is kind of a horror game at times. The whole game has a creepy atmosphere with weird voices talking to you all the time but certain segments, particularly the Garm one were genuinely scary. Add the weird 4th wall breaks when Senua just straight up talks to the unseen voices while looking straight at you and you have yourself one genuinely creepy game.

Overall I think this is a great game but is unfortunately let down by its repetitive gameplay mechanics. I would however not recommend this if you suffer from any kind of mental disorder like schizophrenia as I feel like it could be quite triggering. Good to see the developers acknowledge that with plentiful trigger warnings each time the game is loaded up. Great creepy and stressful story with amazing visuals.

uma das experiências mais diferenciadas que tive com vídeo games nos últimos tempos.
é simplesmente incrível como as vozes que a Senua escuta conseguem transferir todo o sentimento de medo, angústia (...) que ela está passando naquele momento diretamente pro jogador.

a única coisa que quebra a imersão além de bugs pontuais é a forma que os puzzles são abordados, muito fácil passar 20+ min presa em algo muito tosco pela forma que eles foram feitos.

talvez eu realmente seja burra igual as vozes não paravam de me dizer :/ .... fiquei com apego emocional a elas (que dublagem foda, te amo melina juegens)

Ok, isso foi diferenciado.

Uma experiência completamente fora do comum, onde não só te faz acompanhar os transtornos de uma personagem, mas também te coloca pra experienciar o mesmo que ela de uma forma tão precisa que até assusta. Preenchendo seu conteúdo com uma aura pesadíssima, abordando temas delicados que são a base central para toda a história.

Sua atmosfera é super carregada, lhe deixando aflito o tempo inteiro, até nos momentos mais tranquilos, graças a sua direção de arte impecável, que possui um ambiente pesado e uma riqueza de detalhes que prendem sua atenção facilmente, alimentando uma carga dramática e poderosa que te faz sentir a presença daquele ambiente. Com atuações poderosíssimas, que complementam ainda mais para essa aura pesada que o jogo quer passar, e que o faz com êxito.

Um ótimo storytelling, que se desenrola de forma meio confusa à primeira vista, mas que aos poucos vai lhe dando peça por peça até que você tenha informação o suficiente para conseguir associar tudo e entender o que está acontecendo. Fazendo ótimo uso de metáforas e fortes simbolismos para moldar a narrativa e a finalizar de forma magistral.

O que você presencia aqui é sensacional.

Sua mecânica de puzzles casa perfeitamente com a temática do jogo e seu contexto, e seu combate é fluído e satisfatório, com animações bem trabalhadas e um parry maravilhoso que só faz dar mais gosto ainda de lutar.

A progressão é muito bem montada; seu ritmo vai aumentando gradativamente e de forma natural, sem se perder no caminho, sem deixar ficar enjoativo. Seu ato final é simplesmente o melhor momento do jogo, lhe deixando num hype absurdo até seu desfecho. É quase recompensador.

Uma obra prima, simplesmente, com uma beleza absurda em suas nuances.

Você é incrível, Hellblade. Obrigado por existir.

Ich weiß nicht

Hellblade, das Spiel, das dir ein Dauerabo fürs Wandern in der Unterwelt schenkt – viel Laufen mit bisschen Kampf. Ich war anfangs richtig gehyped, bereit, mich in eine verrückte Reise zu stürzen. Aber hey, alles auf Englisch? Mein Interesse hat schnell nachgelassen.

Die Atmosphäre? Aufgebaut durch Dialoge, die zwar atmosphärisch sind, aber ohne deutsche Audio musste ich die meisten Sachen lesen und konnte mich nicht gut hineinversetzen. Und ja, man muss das Spiel mit Kopfhörern spielen, um in den „vollen Genuss“ der flüsternden Stimmen zu kommen, die dich entweder in den Wahnsinn oder in die Erleuchtung treiben.

Leider hat mich Hellblade nicht wirklich gecatcht. Ich war bereit für eine epische Reise, aber am Ende war es eher ein einsamer Spaziergang mit zu vielen Gedanken und zu wenig Action. Hatte mehr erwartet als nur ein psychologisches Walking-Simulator-Feeling.

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I Don't Know

Hellblade, the game that gives you a lifetime subscription to wandering in the underworld—lots of walking with a bit of fighting. I was initially super hyped, ready to dive into a crazy journey. But hey, everything in English? My interest quickly waned.

The atmosphere? Built through dialogues that are indeed atmospheric, but without German audio, I had to read most of the stuff and couldn't immerse myself well. And yes, you have to play the game with headphones to get the "full enjoyment" of the whispering voices that either drive you to madness or enlightenment.

Unfortunately, Hellblade didn't really catch me. I was ready for an epic journey, but in the end, it felt more like a lonely walk with too many thoughts and not enough action. I expected more than just a psychological walking simulator vibe.

Replayed this before Senua's Saga, and it's still a great and unique experience. The way the story is told in certainly the focus here and personally I think the audio design is amazing. The puzzles and the combat are not something special, but I still like how you have to position yourself in the right place if you want to avoid death. The parry and using Senua's mirror feels good. And the overall message of the game about mental illness is fantastic. It's a short game so I definetely recommend this one.

Que combate incrível, meus amigos. Me apaixonei pelos movimentos da personagem, tanto no caminhar, quanto nos golpes. Gostei muito dos inimigos e dos boss. Tudo muito bem feito.
Sobre a história, ela é muito bonita. Mas fui obrigado a ver um vídeo no YouTube para conseguir entender do jeito que eu gostaria. A história fala sobre vários aspectos profundos de luto e superação, mas ela é tão enigmática que dá um pouco de preguiça de tentar resolver.
Amei os mecanismos das vozes na cabeça dela para dar mais uma contextualizada em vários momentos da história. Ótima forma de avisar quando há inimigos atrás da personagem também!
Por fim, um jogo diferente de tudo que eu já joguei. JOGUE DE FONE!

This is one I bounced off a couple of years ago.

At the time I wasn't really into "movie games" or the like. I hit the first puzzle and called it quits because I thought it would be a waste of my time.

Flash forward to today, where I am older and wiser (and bored) I decide to give it another go.

And overall? I have to say I came out pleasantly surprised.

It's not a perfect game, but it is incredibly svelte and focused.

You can tell that there was a limited budget based off Senua being the only human character model and a lot of the characters from her past being represented with live action actors.
But in a way these limitations helped the experience for me because it caused me to entirely focus on Senua and her story.

And it's a pretty decent one at that. One that tackles complicated topics like grief, mental illness, isolation and abuse.

The way it tells its story is rather inspired as well. Details are drip fed bit by bit with a lot of space in between so you can ruminate on what you know so far.

The voices in Senua's head provide a great source of information and, more obviously, entertainment. Wearing a good pair of headphones and turning off subtitles really makes you feel like another voice in the chorus that is her head. There is an impressive amount of dialogue to pay attention to that is frequently overlapping which adds this layer of disorientation to the proceedings.

This game straddles three distinct genres: action, puzzles and horror.

First and foremost, the action.

Combat feels a lot more complete than I thought it would for the type of game this is. Realistically all it needed to do was be baseline adequate to help facilitate the story, but I think they made a valuable effort to make a pretty above average system for this experience.
It fits the game like a glove. Fighting an enemy is a 1 on 1 affair but a lot of the time there's multiple foes coming from every direction. It adds this sense of impossibility and working against the odds which mirror's Senua's quest rather well.
Enemies aren't tough to take down so the main challenge comes from positioning yourself in a way that you can react to their moves. The voices also help you out here, if an enemy is attacking from off screen you'll hear a call out from one of them.

A lot of the time games do this it can feel like a substitute for actually having a zoomed out camera, but I found it to be well suited here. After all, Senua is meant to be a person who can see the world in unique ways, and injecting that into the combat was a very smart move.

Speaking of Senua's ability to "See the world in unique ways."
Let's move onto the puzzles.

True to Senua's nature, the player can use her abilities to see patterns in the world around you. The most common usage of this is finding shapes in the environment in order to unlock doors. Other versions of this like viewing a fractured staircase from the right angle to rebuild it and archway door's which add/ remove objects in the environment.
I'm assuming this is where the game garnered the most criticism, and honestly I can see it.
Finding the right shape in the world can be repetitive. But they do admittedly use the gameplay to show instead of tell.
Instead of senua turning and monologing to the player "I can see things differently oh I'm so special" you experience it yourself. As the game goes on, it manages to vary up the format of "find shape" in some rather creative ways.

Namely, the third and final genre, horror.

This is one aspect I was really happy to see they utilized well.
As the game goes on and becomes more dower and grim, you progressively have to make your way through these dark and dreary nightmare scenarios. Such as senua's actual nightmares about her past, or even monsters you can't see but definitely hear.

There was one sequence where the visuals went incredibly blurry and dark where there were creatures all around senua and you can't make out exactly what they are. It was an incredibly effective little moment, namely because it happened entirely in gameplay. They never went back and showed you what those beings looked like also. It's true to the Lovecraftian mantra of the scariest concept being the unknown.

I'll use that to pivot to a complaint I had. While the game did an excellent job of maintaining horror by keeping the monsters out of sight, they do tend to show too much in other some cases.

There's a section where you're trapped in the dark with a torch, if you let the torch go out then this unknown monstrosity can see you and starts stalking you. I thought this was an extremely unnerving moment but unfortunately they show the beast soon after and it doesn't really match up to what your imagination can envision, because how could it?

That wasn't the only time I thought they could have held back on showing things. Senua's beloved "Dillion" is shown in live action and not only did that take away some of the poetry of her possibly not remembering what he looks like, but he also looked far too normal for the world he was supposed to inhabit.

Beard was well kept, clothes looked ironed and skin was too perfect for the Viking era this game is set in.

The other live action segments were usually better than that but they could have kept these characters off screen and purely focused on Senua's face while they were talking and I think it would have worked out better.

Where the visuals succeeded is definitely in terms of the art direction. There are some very gorgeous looking areas, some I would call "Wallpaper bait" in the best way possible.

The game wasn't afraid to look unappealing and sickly at times also. I realise the frequent use of filters may have been a bit overkill for people, but I thought they worked well in tandem with the voices to make an overall sense of ennui.

One final thing I'll praise is I ADORED how the game never tutorialized you on what the buttons did. It just let you figure it out on your own. No "Snake, press the action button to-" here which was appreciated, especially coming off 70 hours of a game rife with tutorials.

This was honestly exactly what I needed. A tight experience where every aspect worked together to tell a story.

I usually let games sit longer before I properly rate them so for now I'll just say that it was a worthwhile experience. Very good stuff.

Nice and desperate game.

This game gives me a sensation that any horror game can't cause in me, the fear of going on without knowing if something is going to happen.

Also this game has a problem with the frequency of combat. The combat is okay, not great, but there are many more fights than necessary. It would be better if there were more sequences of Senua dealing with the environment instead of repetitive fights.

I'm not going to come on here guns blazing defending this game. I don't know the intentions of the artists involved. Its existence may be much more cynical than I believe. It's a walking simulator. Any game that sidelines traditional 'gameplay' as much as this will ruffle feathers. But I find something beautiful in the genre. Games take so much from cinema, especially nowadays, but games like Hellblade or even Hoky Shlok, like Until Dawn (which, blazing hot take, may be the best in the style ever) feel like a genuine communion between the two mediums. But I understand. I get why you'd poke fun at a piece of art whose marketing (and opening credits) seem to foreground how 'Important' its 'Message' is. I do it all the time. It's just not what I found when actually playing it. Hellblade is a formal and narrative delight, and despite some grievances with pacing and combat, I left my time with it deeply moved.

The primary problem with Hellblade is that it is much more successful as cinema than as a video game. The combat is weighty and satisfying, but aside from the three real bosses, every encounter is virtually identical. With how frequently the game slams the breaks to drop you off into yet another one, it can feel ruinous to the game flow. In this 7-8 hour experience, the swinging and rolling have basically lost their lustre by the second hour. The puzzles are barely worth mentioning at all. The rune door pattern puzzles (though thematically satisfying) are easily the game's weakest elements and unwisely frontloaded. Eventually, someone somewhere figured out they weren't working and malformed them into encounter-oriented collectable challenges instead of actual puzzle-solving; these are better but never more than OK. There are a couple of more exciting one-off puzzle scenarios, but on the whole, the parts where you're 'playing' in the most literal sense aren't when this game is most gripping.

What I love is everything else. It is quite a visually daring piece. I lambast photorealism in video games every chance I get, but that's because it's so often in lieu of a style. When I make fun of Marvel's Spider-Man it's not because the photorealism looks bad. It's because it's pointless! You aren't using the immense pixel count to show me something novel, so why not stylise and show me something I haven't seen before? There are nondescript grey buildings outside my window right now! Hellblade's use of photorealism is so striking not because of its high-fidelity rocks and trees but because of its contrast with the stylised visual language. The general mode of play must be a relaxed over-the-shoulder shot of realistic terrain because it makes the cutscenes and hellscapes so much more off-putting. The Sea of Corpses genuinely upset me. As for if there are too many cutscenes, I view it as only right that the game is so frequently out of your control.

Now, let's be very clear. The camera work here is not what I find stunning, which is usually what we gab about with an actual film. I think the shaky cam is tastefully delivered, and they make ample use of 360 pans, but in neither instance is what the camera is doing the most exciting part. When we talk about animated movies, or at least when I do, I get very excited about the boundless camera. But here, it feels as though a locked-down camera is being used to shoot a boundless frame. The amount of visual mileage this team gets out of layers, filters, lighting, and blocking is astonishing. Part of the credit goes to Melina Juergens and her singular face (even just eye!) acting throughout the game. Senua is a fully embodied mo-cap role, which, as of 2017, could be said about, at most, a handful of performances in any medium. Still, she's greatly empowered by enveloping arching shadows, film grain and flicker, and strange reflections of live-action ghosts against which she's convincingly acting. It's dazzling!

I'll point to what the internet calls the 'Blindness Shard Trial' as the apex of this game's visual splendour. To tiptoe around spoilers, I'll tell you that during it, in essence, Senua is trapped in a memory of being trapped in her head. It's one of the many ways the game tries to literalise her dissociation visually. Here, the actual frame is swamped in constant darkness, with a black-and-white VCR buzz that makes it feel as though everything was filmed found-footage style through a security camera. Then, Senua's character model is positioned on top of the frame (still in black and white) with its normal crystal-clear resolution. It is as though she has been green-screened into her own memory, which you are now experiencing through the lens of a horror game. The disconnect here is so powerful.

But this is where we have to ask. Is this game's portrayal of psychosis a good one? That's not my call to make. I'm lucky enough not to have to live with psychosis or hallucinations of any form. So, I'm not going to speculate on whether this is exploitative. What I can say is that it is powerful. It's a shame the marketing took the tone and framed the game the way it did because this isn't trying to be a realistic, sensitive portrait of mental illness. It's not trying to capture a truth but a feeling. Once again, I don't have psychosis, all I can discuss is through the lens of my own experiences. I find how this game tackles the idea of constant war with yourself, feeling as though your internal and external are different beings, to be resonant and very affecting. Even if it takes the modes of exploitation cinema to get there, I think the actual conclusions it comes to are (if a little obvious) sweet. Perhaps it's silly that the closing to this blood-soaked psychedelic epic was that 'you're not broken because you're different' and 'we need to be able to let go of the ones we lose to mourn them properly', but it'd sufficiently won me over with its spin-cycle torture-chamber that I was legitimately happy to see the main character find any sense of closure.

Some final notes. The person who put the illusion section that early in the game should be shot. It is murderously slow for an already slow burn. I'd imagine thousands of people randomly picked that of the two opening areas to start and unceremoniously dropped the game, assuming it was all like that. I somehow haven't mentioned it yet, but the binaural audio is pretty interesting. I'm a sensitive little baby and couldn't have realistically handled it for the entire runtime, but I had it on for an hour or so, and I found it very disorienting in a good way. The permadeath fakeout is genius. The credits song is completely bogus. Likewise, the Lorestones are completely bogus. You get the sense they're included only to have some 'gamey' element for the players, but that's gas. It's the one way the game shows a smidge of embarrassment for how 'not a video game' it is, and I have no interest in that. The rest of its construction embraces its existence as an intermediary piece of art, and that's exactly what makes it special.

Why does this have a sequel? How, even?

8 horas de jogo bem aproveitadas eu diria, além disso, o jogo tem uma mecânica de luta muito boa, algo que envolve as habilidades e reações do player e deixa a gameplay mais divertida e atrativa;

Em contrapartida a história é um pouco maçante e difícil de compreende-la 100% e alguns puzzles faz você perder muito tempo de gameplay, outro ponto negativo também, e que poderia ter sido melhor aproveitado a trilha sonora baseada em mitologia nórdica no jogo;

Mas é um jogo bom e recomendo.

La verdad muchisimo mejor de lo que esperaba. A nivel jugable no es locura, claramente no es el enfoque principal, pero cumple. Me gusto mucho el combate y las animaciones del mismo. Las peleas se sentian epicas. El boss del perro bestia esa Fenrir debe ser de las cosas mas facheras que vi en el ultimo tiempo, peleas con estilo visual y creatividad marcada suma. Me gustan mucho las peliculas entonces siempre voy a mirar con buen ojo a un pelijuego. Lo disfrute bastante, la verdad la historia me entro por un oido y me salio por el otro, pero a nivel tecnico y jugable me parecio copado. Todo lo de la psicosis me parecio interesante y bien implementado, genera nerviosismo y rompe los huevos para bien.
Basicamente, nivel tecnico increible con jugabilidad normal, donde el combate me gusto mucho y los puzzles no tanto, pero zafan.

Only video games could offer a quality experience like this.

What’s real and what’s the manifestation of Senua’s psychosis.. unraveling the mystery… it’s good stuff.

Having lived with someone experiencing psychosis for years, I think Ninja Theory depicted Senua’s mental illness with care.

The gameplay was as expected (the puzzle solving and combat was satisfying enough), but it’s the storytelling and narrative paired with the presentation that really captivates.

Visually and aurally, it’s a gorgeous. The soundtrack is great, sound design is amazing, and lighting is on point. Her hellish “reality” is well reflected through each bleak and varied environment.

I had a feeling of unease throughout the entirety of the game—extremely anxious, and it’s to Ninja Theory’s credit. I’m in no rush to play the sequel, but this was one hell of an experience.