4/5 ★ – Endless_backlog's review of Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice.

10hrs Hellblade: Senuas sacrifice is a dark fantasy indie title that elevates its traditional category by utilising Unreal Engine 4 graphics and motion capture. Set in late 8th century Orkney, Scotland, you play as Senua, a Pict warrior set out on a quest to save her lovers soul from eternal rest in Helheim. There is a large focus on Norse mythology, with your friend and mentor Druth narrating snippets of ancient stories of the gods throughout the campaign. His appearance is captured through real footage of his actor, which I was unsure of how well it mixed with the graphic design of everything else. Melina Juergens stars as Senua and what makes her performance even more impressive than simply how incredible her acting is, was the fact that she isn’t an actor and was originally the video editor who was testing the motion capture, unknowingly auditioning for the lead part herself. The journey is long and difficult, and Senua will simultaneously have to battle with her Pschosis every step of the way. Multiple voices will ridicule Senua and the choices you make, often all at once. It was commendable that the developers sought out people with this condition and mental health specialists so that they could accurately depict what it is like to live with it. There is a mini movie on this in the game menu that is worth a watch. The games progression is linear, with puzzles to solve along the way. Senua will be stopped by locked doors branded with rune symbols and will need to find shapes in the environment such as in tree branches and gaps in wooden panels that mirror them. She will align them and scan using her “focus” to unlock the doors. Her ability to do so is due to her Apophenia, a tendancy to find pattern or meaning in unrelated things. These can be quite obtuse and took me a while to get into that frame of mind, but even then they recycle the same thing over and over and it gets repetitive. There’s some other ideas in there like archways that alter the area and one scene where you stumble around in the dark avoiding enemies based on sound which to be fair was nerve wracking. Combat is fairly straightforward with light and heavy attacks, dodge and parries, although when executing a combination it feels fluid and enjoyable. You can also combine sprinting towards a target to perform a lunge and stab, or kick enemies off of bridges. There is no UI on the screen or tutorials at the beginning and this really helps with immersion and forces you to figure things out on your own. When the Focus mechanic is activated, Senua can slow time to help deal with multiple enemies or survive low on health. The camera fixes on one enemy at a time, and there is no warning indicator when another is about to strike from behind, but instead the voices in her head alert her of an unexpected blow. Hellblade also introduces a permadeath mechanic. Everytime Senua dies black rot spreads from her fingertips to her neck and after so many it will reach her head and your entire progress will be deleted. This made every enemy encounter feel much higher in risk. What Hellblade communicates so efficiently is not only the reality of living with Psychosis, but the added depth of doing so in this time period where it would not be recognised. Stemming from the torment she received from her father as a child, and who continues to plague her thoughts throughout the game, Senua herself believes she is cursed with a darkness and even blames herself for a plague that happened to her town. Combine the hallucinations that she would be prone to with the barbaric raiding of the Vikings in this era and it’s easy to be terrified of what is reality and what is in her head. The developers at Ninja Theory have really rose to the challenge of making a AAA standard game that can have up to 500 people working on it, with an Indie studio that only had 20. the combat and puzzle solving may split opinions depending on the player, but for its fairly short runtime it works well enough. Gameplay aside, Hellblade is a phenomenal piece of art with a unique premise, that is executed brilliantly.