I applaud this game for delivering such a great narrative in an interesting and immersive manner, and for really striving to make the whole thing tie together cleanly with no fat. I think we'd be lucky to have an industry full of people striving to make this sort of game in larger studios. You see it with indie games, but if the landscape had more like this, we'd be better for it.
Everything that happens serves a larger metaphor about abuse and trauma and mental illness that comes together in a satisfying way. obviously this is no secret when you boot the game and it mentions that it was made with the help of advisers for psychosis.
I'm a little tired of norse style aesthetics in games as there have been an onslaught in recent years, but this one deserves to be at the top of the podium.
spoiler below
I understood the metaphorical reason for the ending, acceptance of her mental illness and no longer fearing or fighting against it, as with her traumas. I'm not sure if the game is supposed to be taken literally at all, and if not, it did perfectly. If so, it's a bit weird to have Hela kill senua, then show Hela dead on the ground. I think the metaphor is the stronger ending, so i choose to take that as its only outcome
The combat feels great too. I'm not sure if the auto setting in the VR version is made a little easy or something to compensate from the weirdness that VR can bring(like the camera whipping around in a peculiar way when switching targets) but I felt like it was satisfying if a bit simple. The low UI and intuitiveness of it rewards you well for learning it.
I also played in VR as I said and I'm not sure if some of the presentational weirdness arises in the main version. It wasn't perfectly optimized, so ignoring that as it was mostly fine, the FMV characters and some of the graphical glitches were a little hard to ignore in the VR aspect. It pulled back the lens to a narrow screen for cutscenes in which the VR camera wasn't sympatico. I do hope NT, with their weird interest in VR does have some VR stuff for senua 2 when that comes around.
Everything that happens serves a larger metaphor about abuse and trauma and mental illness that comes together in a satisfying way. obviously this is no secret when you boot the game and it mentions that it was made with the help of advisers for psychosis.
I'm a little tired of norse style aesthetics in games as there have been an onslaught in recent years, but this one deserves to be at the top of the podium.
spoiler below
I understood the metaphorical reason for the ending, acceptance of her mental illness and no longer fearing or fighting against it, as with her traumas. I'm not sure if the game is supposed to be taken literally at all, and if not, it did perfectly. If so, it's a bit weird to have Hela kill senua, then show Hela dead on the ground. I think the metaphor is the stronger ending, so i choose to take that as its only outcome
The combat feels great too. I'm not sure if the auto setting in the VR version is made a little easy or something to compensate from the weirdness that VR can bring(like the camera whipping around in a peculiar way when switching targets) but I felt like it was satisfying if a bit simple. The low UI and intuitiveness of it rewards you well for learning it.
I also played in VR as I said and I'm not sure if some of the presentational weirdness arises in the main version. It wasn't perfectly optimized, so ignoring that as it was mostly fine, the FMV characters and some of the graphical glitches were a little hard to ignore in the VR aspect. It pulled back the lens to a narrow screen for cutscenes in which the VR camera wasn't sympatico. I do hope NT, with their weird interest in VR does have some VR stuff for senua 2 when that comes around.