Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice (Review)

So I wanted to get this review up a week ago when I completed the game, but work and The Defenders have managed to keep me at bay, so this is more my take, and less breaking new ground on what has already been said. The short version? Go buy it. If you have a PC, especially if you have a PS4, go buy this game. Go support this game.

Are you still around though? You want to know why I say this about my first review of a game, movie, or show? Well let me break it down for you. First? The combat. It’s Ninja Theory guys. The beautiful bastards who gave us Heavenly Sword and DmC? Yeah, expect solid, responsive combat. The dance back and forth is visceral, powerful, and straight up satisfying. Now don’t get me wrong, you won’t fight a lot. As the game goes along, the fighting picks up, sure, but don’t expect to hack and slash quite like DmC. You have light and heavy attacks, as well as a “melee” attack. Light and heavy are fairly explanatory, but melee is more of a “shield break” than a straight up punch to the face. Parry is also a part of the attack/defend, and there are charge attacks too. The different combos, attacks, and straight up ways to attack enemies are needed here to take on the 6-7 different enemy types, as well as the various bosses. Yes, there are bosses in this game, I won’t go too much into detail about them.

Second thing, the sound. Sound design in this game trumps the fantastic visuals. It’s crazy to say, and we will talk about that in just a bit, but the sound design Is phenomenal. I mean it when I say it’s straight up on another level. Between the voices in Senua’s, that are handled in such a way that it makes you feel like you yourself, feel like you have psychosis. Psychosis is a subject that isn’t talked about enough, especially here in America. Mental health isn’t a serious subject, and even before playing this game, I knew it was. However, this game gives it the light to more of a mainstream audience that it needs desperately. I’ll talk more about this as well a little later, but back onto the subject, the sound design. Besides the great voice work/voices in the main character's head, the action music that ramps up, as well as the eerie downtime music sets the creepy atmosphere. The clanging of the metal from the swords, the voices that egg you on, the light breathing of the head of your dead lover, all makes you believe what’s going on in this world, and makes you question everything you encounter throughout the game. If you play this game, play with headphones and thank me later.

Third? The visuals. The game was made “On a light budget” something that could be AAA quality that would only need 200,000 to 300,000 to sell to make back the money. In today’s environment, that’s insane, yet somehow NT sold their souls and made it happen. When I’m not enjoying the great sound design and voice work, I’m playing around in photo mode with this game. The visuals in this game are top notch, with a solid framerate to make the combat and the story just flow. Facial animations are just as breathtaking as the environment around our main heroine, and the VA/Actress should be commended as she nailed every emotional hit, and made me feel it in my chest. Also, there is no HUD. The voices in your head? Yeah, you might want to listen to those carefully as they are the closest thing you’ll get to one.

Final point, the story. This story is amazing, and told in several unique and interesting ways. First off, the voices. The voices will tell you when to dodge, when to attack, when the enemy is almost dead, when you are almost dead. But further more, you here the voices of your dead teacher, your dead lover, as well as your father and mother. They all tell fragments of your past, your present, and what could become of your future if you give in to your “darkness” or essentially your psychosis. But aside from the voices, are these stones, that tell of things from Nordic history/myth. Things from Odin losing his eye, Hela, and so much more. I loved to explore and take in every bit of this atmosphere as I searched for more of these stones scattered throughout the environment. There is a very powerful mother/father dynamic too that clashes with what is perceived back than as their “religious beliefs” and how it clashes with what Senua thinks she remembers, versus what she digs up as she delves more into her own darkness makes for great storytelling. The hands down best part of it all is the way they explain that psychosis isn’t something bad, but just a unique way of seeing the world around a person. Also, the main character isn’t defined by her psychosis, she is defined as a warrior, and a very skilled one at that. Her psychosis is a way she see’s the world, as well as how she copes, and even doubts herself, but it isn’t all she is known for by anyone around her besides ONE character, and in the end, that character is really as much of an antagonist as the Vikings Senua fights.

I could go on and on about the game as whole, but I’ll try to end it here before I ramble on too long. I thought about it long and hard about what I may want to take out of the game vs. what I would have liked to seen in, and to be completely frank, I couldn’t think of one thing. Every design choice that might seem “frustrating” is meant to. It’s simulating psychosis, which many of us would find “frustrating” to wake up with tomorrow, wouldn’t we? The game isn’t The Witcher 3 or Zelda: BotW, but it doesn’t need to be. Another thing I didn’t mention was that the story on Normal took me about 9-10 hours to complete, which for $30 was more than fine by me. Not every game needs to be the two I just mentioned above, or else they lose what makes them special in a crowded environment of “copy cats”. Final Score - 10/10

it also definttely deserves to be on your shelf, it’s just too bad there isn’t a physical copy for you to do such a thing.

So this wraps up my first ever review for what I hope is a long, and happy journey of me talking up the things I love, the things I hate, and the things I just tend to adore. Look for later this week a review I’m trying to finish up for with The Defenders. I have watched all the episodes, I’m just trying to finish up more of script than I had for this one. Til than, I’ll see you guys later.