#mastodongaming — Public Fediverse posts

August 29, 2023 - Day 241 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 261

Game: Hellblade: Senu'a Sacrifice

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Aug 8, 2017
Library Date: Jun 29, 2019
Unplayed: 1522d (4y2m)
Playtime: 31m

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is a third-person action-adventure game, in which you play as Senua, a Viking-era Pict warrior, on a mission to enter Helheim, and save the soul of her dead lover.

The game opens with a mental health warning that it features representations of psychosis, with good reason.

Senua is experiencing psychosis, and hears voices.

I immediately found this challenging. I have lived with mental health issues for all of my adult life. While I have not experienced psychosis, I felt... a familiarity... with the game's expression of psychosis.

The game opens with Senua in a canoe paddling into a horrifying gorge in which bodies are floating in the water, and are impaled on stakes along the riverside, as the narrator speaks of Senua in the third person.

Senua is paddling into Helheim.

This tableau, however, is not an expression of Senua's psychosis.

The narrator is.

As the Senua paddles on, the narrator joins with a cacophony of other voices challenging, attacking, and goading Senua.

This is discomforting.

As Senua makes landfall, and progresses on foot through an environment that is no less harrowing than the river, light appears and fades; the screen distorts, the voices rise and fall.

The weight of this presses down on me. On Senua. On us.

Memories explode into view, and then fade.

Senua reaches the gates of Helheim, and engages in her first battle, which is frightening, and devastating in turns.

This has been a difficult and long review to write; the way in which the game shifts between the mental and physical is both visceral, and somehow weightless.

This too, feels familiar. It makes this a complicated game to play.

On a technical level, the visuals are excellent. The sound design is is something else; it lifts this game to another level.

There is no HUD, no health bar. No instructions on what to do.

With keyboard and mouse, the game relies on the standard WASD + F to use. Swordplay and blocking felt instinctive.

This game is only a few months newer than yesterday's game, yet almost perfectly embodies "show, don't tell". The attention that was seemingly lacking for gameplay in yesterday's game, is seen here in buckets, and the game is better for it.

However, these reviews aren't entirely a review of the quality of the game, but also whether I want to invest my gaming time in a particular game.

That is far more complex, because while this IS an excellent game, it's a difficult one for *me* to play; it is affecting on a level that I need to assess further.

As such, for me Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is:

4: Good

#HellbladeSenuasSacrifice #ThirdPerson #ActionAdventure #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay