Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice Xbox One Review
Posted on: 2018-04-27
Our rating:
What Ninja Theory has created is truly a masterpiece, and now it is on Xbox One where more people can experience this piece of video game art.
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice Xbox One Review
Isolation unlocks the deep and dark inner thoughts when it is starved of human interaction, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is a game that really got to me with its emotions of loss, sadness and anger. This game delves into the mind set of someone who suffers with psychosis and it can be rather disturbing at times. This is an experience that only the strong should push through but is great awareness for mental health.
Hellblade’s story sees you take control of Senua, she is on a journey to try and resurrect the soul of her dead lover. She goes through trials of blood and mind where she battles entities that are both physical and manifestations of her psyche. Throughout her journey she constantly questions what is real or not, coupled with the constant whispers she hears inside her head telling her what to do. The story is well told and considering there is only one main character it is surprisingly engaging, the story is narrated by one of the voices in head which is a good story device showing her mental state. This game is not a happy one which had me in a range of emotions from scared, sad and disturbed it’s not for the light hearted.
Hellblade is split up into three gameplay mechanics exploration, puzzle solving and combat. You explore the environments and find rune stones that will give you information about the time period that this game is set in, which is Norse mythology, which is really interesting the bits of information it conveys to you. Puzzle solving is not the hardest thing in the world as generally all you have to do is find certain shapes and line them up on a door, it’s not going to strain your brain. Combat is really satisfying and can get rather challenging when they introduce multiple enemies and different types of enemies. The combat is great, think of it as a more simplistic Dark Souls sprinkled with a bit of For Honour, where you have to time your strikes, blocks and dodges depending on the attacks that come your way.
The presentation is fantastic in this game, I was impressed by how realistic it looks especially Senua’s character model, and they really nailed the animations throughout with both facial and body movement. The game nails the dark and oppressive atmosphere; I could really feel the game’s environments weighting down on me in some segments with nothing but a dimly light torch at the end of a dark and foreboding corridor.
Overall Hellblade is another good example of interactive storytelling and really highlights obstacles of what a person with psychosis and with mental health in general go through on a daily basis. What Ninja Theory has created is truly a masterpiece, and now it is on Xbox One where more people can experience this piece of video game art.
5/5
Article by:
Sam has lived in Bristol all his life. A keen cyclist he speeds around the city but video games are his bread and butter. Whether the old Nes and Snes games or the XBox One and Playstation releases he loves them all. Sam runs his own gaming blog called Bristolian Gamer where he had been reviewing indie games, doing retro reviews and venting his anger at the industry when it does wrong since 2010. Sam joined the 365Bristol team in December 2014.
