Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice

Did Tom ever play this? Strange thing about pc games but even if he’s wrong I like to know his opinion.

It is on my wishlist – strong female lead? Psychological depression? Free combat?

It doesn’t seem to be in the site’s list of game reviews. Not sure whether @tomchick ever played it.

EG gave it an essential last year:

The subject matter and the trailer are what convinced me to get it:

I’ve played the first hour or so of the game and wow. The game knows how to immerse the player and generate unease.

I’m playing with headphones, as recommended on the main screen; the sound design is phenomenal. The wind, the creaks, the moans and the voices surrounding you, guiding, begging, chiding, laughing. It’s quite the sound landscape.

On a big screen on the One X, it doesn’t look half bad either (I’m playing with the enhanced visuals rather than 60fps as combat really doesn’t seem to be a major part of the game at this point).

So far, so good!

1 million!

I’m really glad to see that. That game deserves a big audience.

Ninja Theory has announced that its stunning action-adventure Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is making the move to VR, and will come to Oculus Rift and Vive on July 31st.

That’s super cool. I bet this would be amazing in VR, especially with all of the 3d sound stuff they did for it.

I was going to skip the game, but it seems like another good excuse to buy VR eventually.

Not anytime soon. My list for that is still very short.

Just got this at 50% off. Been on my wish list a good while now. Does the VR version need VR controllers or will a 360 pad suffice?

Keen to hear your impressions @schurem. Discount is tempting.

Do it. Do it (whispering from twelve places at once, in all kinds of tones and inflections… Do it)

I paid 15 bucks for it and it’s worth it. Good headphones are a must tho. Turn up the volume, this thing is very much about the audio. It is disturbing and arty and I like it.

Well, I said that when this game hits Game Pass that I’d play it, and now I have. I’ll give some impressions of how I appreciated it, but I have to point out that TimJames summarized this pretty efficiently back before the game was even released:

All true. The game looks pretty amazing, and the sound is really something else. Playing with headphones really adds to the experience, and the game suggests you use them when it starts up.

But, there’s some stuff in the game that I found a turnoff. Like, it’s a third person perspective game, but it’s pulled in oddly close on Senua’s shoulder, such that she takes up a pretty big chunk of the left side of the screen and leaves me feeling oddly claustrophobic. Like I’m looming over her shoulder, reading a book over her shoulder. I can imagine her at a certain point just turning to the camera and going, 'Look, just back off a little, ok?"

And I don’t think much of the combat either. The mechanics are mostly ok, you’ve got your basic strike, heavy strike, dodge and block, and they work ok most of the time. But the game has an auto-lock on, and while you can flip between them with the right thumbstick, you can’t disengage as long as enemies are around. So trying to create a little space when enemies gang up on you - and they will gang up on you - means you’re likely to just back into one or not notice when one comes up behind you and wallops you. I eventually cranked combat difficulty down to easy just to move on.

I did like the puzzles and the environments. I thought the trial of blindness was a high point of the game and I get the impression that bugged a lot of people, but I thought it was interesting working my way through an area with almost no visibility, using sound mainly to get around. And playing a character that was tormented by psychosis was interesting. Not the first time it’s been done I guess, but probably portrayed more even-handedly than most games.

So I liked it and enjoyed it, but it was short and there’s really no reason I can see to go back. Perfect for Game Pass, and I’m glad I waited.

I only played it for the first time last month and enjoyed it too but I’m glad it wasn’t any longer. It was the visual and audio design as well as the fragmented and unreliable narrative that kept me playing. Some of the setpieces and sequences were really striking. Did you watch the documentary after you completed it? I found that rounded the experience out nicely and gave me a much better impression of how Ninja Theory worked with experts and people who suffered from psychosis to craft the effects in-game.

I did watch the included feature, and I almost wish I had seen it before I played, spoilers be damned. I tended to take what I was seeing in the game at face value, despite the fact that Senua clearly has some mental health issues with the voices, etc. But the business about the runes and gods and such, I just figured ok, she’s doing these things. Maybe I’m a litttle too credulous at times.

Yeah, I know what you mean. For a while I was erring on a lot of it being real but towards the end I was thinking ‘Wait, what if all of this is in her head?’ And that was kind of fascinating to see play out and then be confirmed in the documentary.

Strange that they wouldn’t have allowed a user setting for that.
I keep passing on this game, sale after sale. Been in my wishlist for a long time. But yeah, I’ve seen a few video clips in spite of trying not to because I know I’ll buy it someday, and that camera is one of the main reasons I keep holding off. I love the idea of the game though, and I think I’ll ultimately enjoy it.

Thanks for your write-up.

I think that’s an artistic choice rather than a functional oversight. Hellblade actually reminded me of the Hungarian film Son of Saul which follows the events of a Jewish worker at Auschwitz. The whole thing focuses mostly on Saul’s face as he witnesses, reacts and struggles with the atrocities taking place. The intimacy of the camera means the picture is as much about his inner distress as the outward horror he faces, without necessarily showing it.

In Hellblade I was surprised how similarly intimate the camera is. I favour first-person so third-person often bothers me, but here it felt appropriate. First-person would have felt too ‘possessive’ (it’s Senua’s story) while a further back third-person camera would have felt a bit distant and disconnected I suppose. I like too that the closer camera reveals the unsettling appearance of the enemies more. They’re vividly drawn.

Overall, I’m glad I got to play Hellblade. It was a different experience than most games.

The story itself was pretty good. It wasn’t complex, but the way the story was delivered was great. The voices in her head, the internal struggle, the emotion was all well done. The environments were attractive for the most part, and very atmospheric. The story bits that were available at the symbols were interesting too. My only complaint was that I sometimes would miss some dialog because it was drowned out by other sound, or they rattled off some detail that I didn’t catch.It didn’t really effect my enjoyment of the story at large though.

The puzzles were fun too and weren’t too tough, but not so easy where I just felt like I was going through the motions. A couple of them I needed to spend some extra time on because I didn’t see something I probably should have. Luckily they weren’t too spread out.

Count me as someone who liked the combat, except there were 2 or 3 encounters that went on for too long. The system was simple, but I needed to pay attention to positioning and not spamming attacks too quickly. I liked the way the stamina was handled - without an on screen meter. I could just feel her sword attacks slowing down if I went too crazy. I never learned to parry and just dodged my way out of bad situations. I did die a handful of times. The game was pretty generous about letting her get back up on the brink of death.

Sometimes the game would drift a little to far towards walking simulator, but it typically didn’t last too long.

This wasn’t GOTY material for me, but very much worth playing. The documentary under extras was an interesting look behind the scenes and a nice way to wrap up my play through.

So playing this now (because I got a trial Game Pass membership that came with the Xbox One X I purchased, otherwise I would have missed this - haven’t been paying much attention to this one) and have to agree. It’s not just the closeness of the camera, it’s that even when you set the camera dead center, or where you think it’s dead center, Senua’s body seems to be off center, giving you the feeling she’s walking 5 or 10 degrees to the right of where you want her to walk. It’s a little disorienting.

That aside, wow, very atmospheric game. The writing, sound effects, voice acting, all work really well.

The environmental puzzles in this game are really long so far. It takes me a long time to find what they want to me to see. This is going to be one of those really really long games isn’t it? Sigh. I was hoping it would be a quickie. But a month into it, some evenings I just explore and explore and am unable to make any progress at all.