Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice Reviews
With Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, Ninja Theory attempts to deliver a AAA experience in a $30 package and delivers on just about every front, with only a few problems.
Ninja Theory crafts a highly competent action game and a nuanced, powerful exploration of mental health.
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is a masterclass of atmosphere, storytelling, and the marriage of mechanical and conceptual design. While there are moments that feel shoehorned in to remind us we're playing a videogame, the care and attention Ninja Theory has clearly poured into Senua and her story has created something amazing. This is a game everyone should play, and I'm thankful for the opportunity to have lived inside the mind of Senua, however briefly.
Hellblade could benefit from more exploration and enemy variety, but it's a powerful portrait of the strength of will over personal demons.
Given the heavy subject matter, calling Hellblade "entertaining" feels inappropriate. However, it is undeniably memorable, telling a compelling tale that explores subject matter many consider taboo
Hellblade is not an Orphean quest to retrieve a dead lover from the underworld. It's not some epic tale of revenge. It's an education and contextualization of being psychologically different in the time of Vikings and Celts. Nearly every facet of the game — whether it's combat, puzzles or exploration — is deliberate, pointing back to the overarching theme of what people called “cursed” during that time. Hellblade successfully weaves metaphors of grief and loss into fundamental game mechanics and rich folklore, and through these I felt like I truly was able to understand how someone else sees the world.
Hellblade is a spellbinding and sympathetic game about loss and redemption.
This intense exploration of a young woman's personal anguish is a triumph of interactive storytelling.
For the majority of its run time, Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice felt like something much more meaningful than a generic action video game. It felt like a work with something to say, and it made me want to listen, even when what I heard frightened me so badly I could barely press on.
For all the warranted concern of AAA developers veering too far from gameplay into pure cinematic awe, there's no denying Ninja Theory's narrative depiction of mental health is an infectious one — the type of narrative that has been long overdue in this industry.
Hellblade is brave for tackling psychosis so directly, and braver still for pouring so much of its efforts into its narrative. It's unlike anything else I've played this year, and for that reason it deserves a slice of your time.
Despite familiar echoes and mechanical touchstones from other games, Hellblade’s psychological bent and the constant voices in Senua’s (and therefore your) head give it an identity very much of its own.
The ending of the game will leave you wondering just what was real and what was an illusion. I thoroughly enjoyed the dramatic arc of each major scene. It starts out calm, moves to disturbing, and then descends into chaos and madness. I think the storytellers and designers exercised tight creative control, with a game that is understated as well as explosive.
When you think you’re seeing a render in-game that looks too good for Switch, that’s because essentially a video is playing. Yes, the actual game part is lower resolution, and yes, of course if you can play it on PS4, Xbox One, or PC, you’ll get the better looking experience, but if you are a Switch-only console household then you’re getting a great looking game that sounds amazing, and tells a story with one of the best takes on mental health in a long time. Play it on handheld with headphones and you’ll be shocked, just don’t be surprised if it looks blurry (and sub-HD) on the big screen.
One of the most inventive games of the year, showing that time and patience can be behind a challenging, smart, and incredibly interesting game.
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is beautiful, discomforting, and compelling. It might challenge what you like about games, but challenge is good. You're doing yourself a disservice if you don't try it.
Ninja Theory has tried to provide a game with a distinctive fighting style with a strong story for the main character, a unique environment, and a promise of an experience that matches the games with huge budgets and at a lower price. I can say that the studio succeeded in its quest with Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice With 10 hours of gameplay fighting to save her beloved from the dark, in a dreary, bleak environment full of exciting and mysterious details, we are facing one of the most powerful games of the year, at a price of up to half of what other AAA games will cost you.
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Despite a bug that forced my first playthrough to end prematurely, Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is an incredible game that will continue to linger with me as a singular and emotionally affecting experience. For its audio and visual design alone, it is stunning, but for its ability to use the video game medium to bridge our understanding of mental illness while also telling a personal and powerful story, it is a masterpiece. If you feel capable of withstanding the emotional strain it requires, a dark and fulfilling tale awaits.
Ninja Theory, you moved me. Hellblade's gameplay is polished, the writing is fantastic, the acting is superb, and the ending managed to make me cry. But even then, all of this pales in comparison to everything this art piece truly represents.