Hellblade was a game I knew very little about outside of the general premise, setting and under the (incorrect) assumption it was a hack n slash game. It was not really what I expected. What I got was a gorgeous sometimes awe inspiring even interactive movie. The developers were definitely self fellating themselves when they made this. The game is extremely over written and pretentious to the point of exhaustion. The “gameplay” is divided into holding forward, walking around and looking at runes to solve “puzzles” and some combat. The combat is decent enough. It looks incredibly cinematic with no HUD but it’s not very deep and takes up only about 25% of the game. The rest of the time is cutscenes and light puzzle solving that all follow the same General formula and get stale very quickly. The setting is awesome and visually it may be the best looking ps4 game I’ve played. A stand out sequence being the sea of corpses and a battle with Fenrir the wolf in darkness. I’ll give credit where credit is due as the voices of Senua’s psychosis are a nice twist as they taunt you but can also guide you thru your quest and playing with headphones is ideal. Ultimately it’s more of an interactive overly serious and melodramatic movie than a video game. I can appreciate its artistic merits but it just wasn’t for me. I hope someone else can make a game because the Norse mythological setting is awesome and hasn’t been tapped into enough. Maybe the sequel can give more player control and be more engaging but I won’t hold my breath.