I'll begin by saying the less you know the better. Go into it blind, don't even read this review just go play it!

The first hour of this game feels similar to those grim, pre-2000s children's films you watch and get mildly scarred for life by. They all have that one scene that evokes a 'wtf were they they thinking' response: Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory's boat scene; that poor horse in The Never Ending Story; yeah basically the entirety of Return to Oz like wtf.
Bramble starts you off making friends with giants and frog kings and gets you playing hide and seek with cute little gnomes but then you'll be hit with an abrupt plunge into a world of rotting corpses and maggots. On my first boss (some horrific butcher monster thing) I almost had heart palpitations when my cutesie fairytale Hansel-looking kid protagonist got sliced into photorealistic chunks of gore!

What's kind of brilliant is how the stylistic clash of fantasy caricatures and a realistic world design - especially the forest - captures the earthiness of folk horror, the mythical monstrosities lying beneath the beautiful and the mundane. I can't stress enough the power of that magnificently jarring 180° tonal shift.

And the rest of the game is great too, even if it becomes episodic in structure, as you encounter different monsters in newer, less inviting places. It has that clunkiness of a book full of short Nordic myths, tied together by narration that doesn’t always work - the voice acting is stronger elsewhere, notably a segment involving witchcraft. A significant peak later in the game involves a Silent-Hill-2-esque boat ride and a sinister figure in the form of the mythical plague maiden Pesta. This nightmarish boss fight, and other moments in the game, can be frustratingly trial-and-error in places but the generous checkpoints keep the pace afresh.

Elsewhere, the gameplay consists of light platforming, undemanding puzzles, one or two chase sequences and some use of a magic light wielded by our hero. It’s certainly nothing groundbreaking - even the story and tone borrow from Limbo - but it’s done well. The simple gameplay gives attention to the game’s other strengths: consistently evocative sound design, inspired use of dynamic lighting and overall impeccable game direction. I pretty much wept at the moment, just after escaping the clutches of a fiendish troll, when you ride a little hedgehog across a pond to the soundtrack’s gorgeous folk song ‘Blomstertid’ - Death Stranding levels of sublime!

Overall, a pleasant surprise! I have confidence that the devs at Dimfrost are capable of greatness in their next outings. Until then, please don’t overlook this absolute gem.

I would like to score this game higher, but I can't think of a lot of other games that have outstayed their welcome this much. Humanity is a brilliant study of the evolution of humankind from a thought to a society, and it is very impressive in how it ropes together the themes of what makes us human with the designs of the puzzles.

Unfortunately, and I'm not exaggerating, this 15-hour game is 10 hours too long. I get it. You don't have to hammer in the same point 13 times before letting us move on to the next stage of humanity; Just two or three would have sufficed. I am exhausted and tired and wish to never look at this game again. At the same time it was extremely thought-provoking, and the readiness of the hint system is a must for people like me who are very stupid. I would also like to clarify there is no way I would have made it more than 2 or 3 hours into this game without the hints . It feels absolutely impossible at times.

I actually think if this was about a third of the length it is it might be on par with Portal - however I don't know that I fully recommend this game. It is truly genius in its design and the ending had me almost tearing up as humans were finally created, but also more than half the puzzles in this game could have easily been scrapped without changing a single thing about the quality or narrative. So a reluctant hurrah for this one, and let's move on.

It's those incredible rare and almost non existent experiences that make me love this medium so much... The beauty, love and craftsmanship of how everything comes together in this work of art can't be put into words.

Feeling completely empty now and won't be able to play anything else for a while.

Compared to the first Hellblade it's a small step backwards, mainly because the combat system got reduced (but looks even better of course) but overall it's still one of the few all time greats.

...Well this is awkward. This was such a shoo-in for GOTY for me. It had all the right pieces laid out and a whole bunch of incredible aspects that it seemed like it had in the bag. But.. there is something kind of missing with this game and I think I've finally nailed down what it is.

Obviously, though, let's start with the good. This may appear shorter considering it's an 8/10, but that's because the good things this game has are self-explanatory, even if you haven't played the first. Why yes, this is one of the best-looking games of all time. Why yes, it does have industry-leading sound design and performance capture. Why yes, the story is super intense and emotional and Senua remains one of the best lead characters in video game history. Of course, the soundtrack is really good. A good majority of this game is obviously excellent.

There are even some less obvious things that I honestly like more compared to the average person. For one, I kinda like the fact that it's only around 5-6 hours? For $50? Sure I can understand not thinking it's super worth it. But I honestly like shorter more concise games that don't have that much fluff in it (we'll get to that later). Additionally, the biggest criticism I've seen for the game is its combat. And while I do have some small disappointments for it later, I overall really like it. I like the weightier, more cinematic combat. It makes every sword swing feel deep and heavy in a super satisfying way. I also love the decision to make it only one-on-one fights now as it avoids a problem with the original where sometimes the camera lock-on would be finicky and you'd get stabbed by a random ass guy from offscreen while you're fighting someone else. Here, it's one-on-one with interactions between other enemies being kept to mid-combat events that add a sense of tension to it. These fights are also pretty challenging, especially near the end. There are also a handful of "boss battles", I guess, and these are super cinematic and memorably intense as well.

Overall, this seems like a slam dunk for me. It's the original Hellblade, but bigger, more tense, and with all of the original's strengths turned up to 11. But.. there are 3 things that sort of even it out to where I think I like this game about as much as the original.

First of all, while the combat is excellent, the exploration and puzzles I didn't find all that engaging. I'm not asking for stuff on the level of Viewfinder or Animal Well, but something at least on the level of Inside or Journey, where they're simple but still engaging. This game's puzzles are mostly similar to the ones from the first game which I was getting rather tired of by the time the end of that game rolled around, so I wasn't thrilled that they're back here. They do have torch-lighting puzzles and one particular moment stood out as being kind of interesting, but overall, the adventuring side of the gameplay isn't super strong IMO. Weirdly enough, this is a problem I had with the first hellblade too, I just wish it had been addressed a bit more.

Secondly, while the narrative, overall, remains very strong, I didn't really connect super strongly to most of the new characters introduced for this game. They mostly served as a way to show Senua's growth by having her interact with someone outside of the psychosis voices in her head. And while they do it well, they don't have enough screen time to be all that memorable, and I already forgot the names of some of these characters hours after finishing the game.

And lastly, and this is not something to knock against the game but it's just a personal disappointment, I felt like the game played it a bit.. safe compared to the first game. I was super interested to see what bold new themes it could tackle or how its already-known new themes would translate into gameplay sequences and mechanics similar to the first, but there isn't really much here. It feels like just Senua's Sacrifice but bigger and more, rather than something that could stand alongside its original on its own gameplay-wise. Again, this isn't inherently a bad thing, but considering we were waiting 7 years for this game I do wonder how it will be reflected on. I really hope that Ninja Theory's next game (which apparently was greenlit already) is NOT a new Hellblade game. It's super obviously clear that Ninja Theory is an intensely passionate studio with a whole lot of talent behind it, but I think that we've seen and heard about all we needed to from this story.

Am I glad that we got Hellblade 2? Absolutely. This series is better with this game than without it.

But, if I knew what this game was, would I have asked for a Hellblade 2? I'm not sure.

I was 22 when I had my first psychotic episode. I had dropped everything and moved to Austin with a girlfriend who was not a good fit for me, pursuing my dream of (somehow) becoming a professional actor. None of this was going well; the relationship and the jobs I was working were all dead ends that I wasn't really acknowledging or dealing with.

Eventually all the stress and self-deceit came to a head in a giant fight, and I started thinking things that were decidedly false. I came to believe that I was the center of a conspiracy of surveillance, Truman Show style, that was being run by my friends. Every detail that I noticed confirmed this: I saw a car make a weird U-turn which to me was proof positive that it was following me. A dump truck passed the window with a flashing yellow light; this was clearly someone trying to signal to me that they were in on the conspiracy. A cat sitting on the hood of a car must have been some kind of sophisticated spy camera.

I never experienced hallucinations, I was never violent and I didn't cackle maniacally like every single clueless, no-effort depiction of mental illness in Hollywood and elsewhere. The only thing that was missing was my capacity to critically examine my own ideas.

You know how when you're thinking super hard about something for a long time, and you finally figure it out, and you get that big rush of endorphins like "ahhhhh I finally got it." It's a great feeling, but you have to work to get there right? You have to come up with and reject a lot of ideas before you find the one that fits. Well, I was having that "ahhhh" feeling with every fleeting notion. You don't realize how many thoughts you reject as nonsense until you lose the ability to do so.

You might see a squirrel run toward you and think "Wouldn't it be cool if that was some kind of little robot?" then immediately reject that idea without a second thought. That rejection is what was broken in me; even the most momentary flight of fancy became the unassailable truth. I saw the squirrel and it was self-evident that it was being remotely-controlled as a way to keep tabs on me. Not a single thought in my mind that any of this stuff was wrong.

Public mental health facilities in Texas at the turn of millennium were about as you'd expect. I was there involuntarily and kept trying to escape, so I spent a lot of the first few days restrained (more than 20 years later I still get a panicky feeling in my chest when I think about being strapped to that bed). I was shot up with Haldol that left me a drooling, twitching mess. At no point did I receive anything resembling therapy. After a few weeks the doctor assigned to my case finally came back from vacation and I seemed fine so they basically shrugged and let me go.

"Depression with psychotic features" they called it that first time. Eventually, after experiencing more episodes and being institutionalized and re-diagnosed a few more times, they settled on the diagnosis of Bipolar I disorder and I've been stable on lithium for over a decade now. I was lucky and got basically the happiest possible outcome. I don't think that's the case for most people dealing with mental health issues, especially psychosis.

Mental health is like sexuality, in that we as a society are obsessed with it but only seem to engage with it in the most unhealthy ways. In our entertainment media, references to insanity are constant. Calling someone's sanity into question is an easy and common insult. After every mass shooting, the airwaves are crammed with politicians scapegoating the mentally ill. We're finally to the point where (in some circles) it's considered unacceptable to use "gay" or "retarded" as insults, but nobody bats an eye if you call someone "crazy" or "psycho".

But for all of that, it's basically unheard of for someone in power to say anything meaningful about mental health. When Hollywood approaches the topic, the results are universally rancid. Games tend to fall into two camps: crazy-person-as-horror-villain studio hack jobs, or autobiographical indies that actually bring some experience to the picture.

And that's why Hellblade stands out so much to me. It's not an indie; it has the full weight of a storied and talented (albeit small) studio behind it. But they've done the work to actually try to depict psychosis in a realistic way, that brings the player into the experience as an exercise in empathy, not just a cheap aesthetic choice.

It was a marvel to me how the puzzles in the game are built around seeing patterns that aren't really there, exactly like I did during my psychotic episodes. The scene where all the trees have eyes, but they're really just tricks of the light, was so incredibly true to my experience. I never saw things that weren't there; I saw things that were there but misinterpreted them in critical ways, just like Senua.

And Senua? Possibly my favorite protagonist of any game. Melina Jeurgens gives it so much of herself, and her character design is such a breath of fresh air in an industry full of gross fan service. She looks like a real person! She's still pretty, but doesn't look like a RealDoll that someone dressed up in cosplay gear.

I could only play this game in short sessions because it's so damn intense. The story hits hard, and Senua's agonizing deaths were challenging. Mechanically, the game is really quite light. Only a couple gameplay verbs are made available as the story progresses very linearly. Hellblade aims to challenge the player on a sensory, emotional and intellectual level more than a gameplay one. For me, it was deeply effective and affecting.

With the sequel on the horizon it's exciting to imagine what Ninja Theory has in store for us next. It really feels like the conversation around mental health is starting to turn; the crazies are finally out telling their stories, taboos and misinformation be damned. I love how indie developers have stepped up and started raising the level of discourse around mental health and I really hope that more and bigger studios follow suit. Fear of retaliation or judgment can make mental illness a really isolating experience. It really does feel good to feel seen, and playing a game like Hellblade is really great reminder that I'm not alone.

There lives an inherent, inescapable, existential nightmare inside an endless-runner, a disarming feeling, only heightened when it additionally masks itself as a rhythm-game. Violent hits of industrial noise bang on my ear drums in unpredictable time signatures, till I am overwhelmed by a metallic taste in my mouth, then they tag-team up with skyscraping, iridescent exoskeletons to lift the ground from below and crush me with it.

When I was still letting top-shelf Zaza disrupt my circadian rhythm to an ungodly amount, a friend of mine would always want to play Thumper whenever he came over and toked Viennese Woppy Goldberg Furrbuger Deluxe Skunk Baba Kush with me. Back then, I caught myself having to find an excuse to play another game instead of outright telling him that I silently hid my panic attacks the last few times we smoked and played this.
Thumper can be a hell lot of fun. Weed can also be a hell lot of fun, your head just needs to be in the right place and Thumper always seemed to push my head, who wasn't in the right place to begin with, through the gates and away from "fun" part of that saying.
This thing achieved its mission to be the the first ever Rhythm-Violence-Game. It made me feel like I was dying when I stared down its barrel and saw a cloud of smoke in front of it.

I am teaching that friend the guitar and had to explain his ass, I don't know how many times, that there are four beats in a mesure (in most of western hemisphere music at least). It is really hard for him to follow the pattern my bass and a drum sample split time into. (His atmospheric playing is dope tho)
Despite, maybe even because all of that he rips my ass at this game, as the rhythm's primary conduct appears visually. He is just better at that and more comfortable with getting lost in the underworld orchestrating it.
I just couldn't. I couldn't let myself surrender to the flow of play with this Video Game. I was kind of afraid of it for some reason. Afraid of letting myself go. Afraid to offer myself into grip of its claws.

Even after stopping with the Scooby-doo dick, Thumper is still hitting some parts of abstract primal fear inside of my brain. Just like Yume Nikki it reminds me of Nightmares I had as a kid and it might sound kinda fucked up, but now I can actually appreciate it for this.

One thing responsible for the auditory dissonance in Thumpers harmonies is the simple fact that the levels came before the instrumentation. The game is a seven+ year collaborative effort from a small indie team, a "Drool" dripping from the corner of Brian Gibson's and Marc Flury's mouths. Gibson also pours one half of it's sweat and blood into a tsunami of noise struck by a "Lightning Bolt". My love for this two-piece band and his unconventional Bass playing in it were the main reason Thumper peaked my interest. The dude plays with a fucking cello tuning, two low bass strings and guitar or banjo strings for the highs, to really stab through the wall of sound, drummed up by the powerhouse Brian Chippendale. Before that he worked for Guitar Hero's and Rockband's "Harmonix" as the lead artist for over a decade. That man is probably in the Top 3 of the coolest MFer's in the entire industry. Although I can't think of anyone sharing that podium tbh, but I wanna leave space due to my Ignorance.

I don't know if my needlessly word playing style of writing way too long sentences, frontacted by trauma dumps pretenting to actually be about Video Games appeals to anyone other than my need to call my therapist again. I kinda like to vent in flowery ways to random gamers I will never actually know, while maybe trying to reach a single person who might relate to any of it or some shit.

Don't smoke as an ecape from your problems, especially not the ones inside. And fucking share with someone when you experience panic attacks, or just when you feel like fucking shit. Even more so when there is a friend right in front of you.(by now I tell that friend all that shit and listen to his)
Hit me up if you ever feel like you need one.
And if you are a stoner who thought about quitting, this Mark Fisher K-Punk Blog Post helped me to genuinely want to change myself.

Anyhow, here is a certified hood-classic Lightning Bolt live performance that encapsulates my panic attacks and eventuall panic-attack-surfing while playing this game.
When I first played Thumper my brain was the security guards, now it's Chippendale.
And neither would have been possible without Gibson.
I hate that I love you so much, it is bad for me.

Thumper is a decent nightmare to haunt your dreams with. If you are up for that or just a kinda half-baked, audio-visually abstract 'rhythm-game' give it a go. But don't touch it if you are already on a tipping point while also dangerously high.

about ten years ago I was goin thru a crosswalk when a car sped from behind, narrowly missed me, and drove full speed into the side of a house. I didn't see shit cos my back was turned, but the sound it made was otherworldly — impossible to describe

thumper trades in that kind of inexplicable catastrophic energy: a series of collisions in staccato; moments of grisly impact sped up, slowed down, and looped on repeat like endlessly rewound homemade horror tapes

monolithic droning violence that goes on & on til it takes the form of a numbing agent, delivered thru increasingly off kilter time signatures, railway tracks that churn and coil in on themselves, and a haunted windows media player visualizer aesthetic

its stubborn insistence on stretching a single tonal idea into a homogeneous sprawl won't be for everyone, but I can't imagine it any other way

something like this should feel like it lasts forever

I really, really wanted to enjoy Harold Halibut more than I did. Harold, our protagonist, is a fish out of water: an autistic-coded janitor slash jack-of-all-trades, whose daily grind involves doing various tasks for the mostly warm but slightly stuck up crew of scientists and venture capitalists aboard the marooned spaceship, The Fedora. The game is underwater, so there's the expected Bioshock-esque critique of capitalism run riot, presented with a more dry, wry sense of humor. The game makes a strong first impression, with several mysteries piling up alongside the slow reveal of this artful, beautiful world. I particularly loved how you get around on The Fedora via a salmon cannon that shoots the people from hub to hub (for a nominal fee).

And, c'mon, the art! I know it's not the most technical game running under the hood, but this game is a sight to behold. Each interior is handcrafted and rich with detail, but then digitalized and animated so that the puppetry has no strings. Even though the gameplay is light, I found myself mashing the trigger on the controller to zoom into each interior and soak in as much of the ambiance as I could. The soundtrack, too, is subtle but evocative, fading in and out when the player enters certain locations. Tremendous stuff.

During its introductory moments, I thought this game might be another Night in the Woods-esque narrative game, one that took a story and set it across many days so that you could build relationships and be rewarded for meandering from the main task routes at every turn. And, for a while, it was. I would get invited to dinner by the former pilot, or pore over love letters from decades past with the postman. And each character, lovingly designed and voice acted, always had something to say about life's meaning, or the dulling effect of daily jobs (and the threat of debtor's prison) in an alien, water-logged world.

But my return visits to the various wings of The Fedora yielded less and less surprise, or even change, as the days went on. By midgame, Harold had stumbled upon a seemingly huge reveal, with widespread implications for him, his shipmates--maybe even the human race--yet our daily tasks consisted of slow runs to the pharmacy with almost no diversity of content. It felt like we were being forced to play out an extended montage, a pain that only sharpened once the weeklong scenario ended with a literal montage.

Repetition in videogames is part of the act, of course. It can be gameplay, the ritualistic dance of combat that break up FPS campaigns, or the return trips of roguelites that build repetitiveness into their DNA as a means of player progression. But Harold Halibut seems to say: God, isn't capitalist bureaucracy boring and awful?" Yes, it is. And it's especially boring and awful when it's hammered home in a world as lush and gorgeous as Harold Halibut.

There is a payoff, and the narrative eventually does get going. But the jarring pace and tonal shifts never really go away.

I'm glad this game exists. And it's clear that there's a huge amount of work that's gone into this game and realizing its vision. Unfortunately, Harold Halibut isn't able to successfully navigate the choppy waters separating sincerity and comedy, and ends up splitting the two in a way that challenged me to go on.

In the end, Harold Halibut is way more niche than you might expect. Its messages on capitalism, and humanity's tendency toward resource drain even in the face of calamity, are all vital and integrated well into the story. I just wish the game, like its main character, was a little more self-assured.

A person's tolerance for Harold Halibut is going to depend on how much mileage they get out of slower games where inhabiting the space and conversations are the key focus, rather than anything resembling moment to moment gameplay.

I don't blame anyone who doesn't get on with that or think that any single approach is objectively better or worse, but I was drawn in by the game's beautiful handcrafted aesthetic and its hold on me never really faltered throughout the runtime. The ship you live on is full of memorable characters with their own unique idiosyncrasies, all helped along by a strong voice work - for Harold specifically there's a great balance between goofy ignorance and sentimentality, and that personality is probably one of the major factors that kept me going.

But I must emphasise again that this is a very slow game and there are quirks that come with that - sometimes your movement speed is slowed to a crawl as you'e made to follow another character, sometimes the dialogue goes on a little longer than expected, and this will put some people off. Thankfully for me, I used that time to take in the absolutely gorgeous world, animation and the small details dotted around all the locations you visit.