Höllenritt mit Substanz

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice gelingt ein sehr fundierter und erwachsener Umgang mit seinen mächtigen Themen.
Herausragendes Sounddesign, eine äußerst glaubhaft geschriebene und verkörperte Protagonistin sowie die emotionale Verschmelzung der Faszination nordischer Sagengeschichten mit dem realen Schrecken psychischer Erkrankungen lassen über das auf Dauer etwas dünne Gameplay hinwegsehen.

Pros:

• Thematik des Spiels (Auseinandersetzung mit Psychosen)
• Stimmung, Atmosphäre sowie Musik haben sehr gut zueinander gepasst
• 3D-Audio mit den Stimmen im Kopf
• die Kopfstimmen sind stetig verschiedener Meinung und man weiß nicht, in welchen Situationen man auf sie hören sollte oder nicht (lässt einem in gewisser Weise erkennen, wie Psychosen auf Personen einwirken können)
• Vermischung der Realität mit Wahnvorstellungen
• gute Kampfmechanik
• simple Spielmechanik und Funktionen, die schnell erlernbar sind
• die Rätsel zur Abwechslung (vor allem das Areal mit Valravn hat mir sehr gut gefallen)
• Geschichten über die nordische Mythologie
• ändernde Spielmechanik und Tastaturbelegung zwischen Kampfsituation und normalem Erkunden
• düstere Grafik und Darstellung
• Idee, dass man das Spiel erneut von Vorne anfangen muss, wenn man zu oft stirbt (bringt einem dazu, sehr konzentriert und möglichst ohne Tod bis zum Ende zu kommen)

Cons:

• keine richtige Möglichkeit sein Ziel bei mehreren Gegnern im Kampf zu ändern
• Variation der Gegner (bis auf die Bossgegner nur wenige Gegnertypen, die im Laufe des Spiels lediglich in verschiedener Anzahl und Kombination auftauchen)
• keine Hilfestellungen bei Steuerung und Fähigkeiten (aufgrund der simplen Mechanik und wenig benötigten Tasten allerdings nicht so schlimm)
• teilweise Überschneidung der verschiedenen Audiospuren (Stimmen im Kopf, Erzählsteine, Hauptstory)
• innerhalb der Kämpfe kann es passieren, dass man von den Gegnern am Rand kurz festgebugged wird und erst nach ein bis zwei eingesteckten Treffern wieder raus kommt
• das Ende hat mir persönlich nicht ganz zugesagt

Mini-Review :

Pros :

Cons :

10/10

Psychosis.

Combat and gameplay loop:

Combat:

My take:

The Gist:

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice Review

Gameplay:

Graphics:

Main Pros and Cons:

• Immersive story.
• Tremendous graphics.
• Interesting dark theme gameplay.
• Great audio work.
• Brilliant work done on character designing and facial expression.
• Amazing cutscenes.

• Can feel repetitive.
• Mismatched subtitles with audio and visual.
• Long intro.
• Feels like a walking simulator.

Miscellaneous Information:

Honest Rating:

Positive:

• Absolutely brilliant from a cinematic and psychological horror perspective: [olist]
• Dare I say that the graphics for this game is on par with the latest God of War (PS4). Even when presenting horrific scenes and landscapes, Senua’s Sacrifice is absolutely gorgeous. I was especially impressed by the handful of scenes that managed to juxtapose beautiful scenery with immensely cruel themes/events. In addition to the spectacular environments, it is clear that a lot was invested in capturing, designing and animating Senua’s face. The story revolves around Senua’s journey as she battles her way through Hel, both literally and metaphorically (fighting her own psychosis). Although I cannot recommend this game, the masterful depiction of her struggles and suffering is undoubtedly the shining centerpiece from beginning to end. I can’t praise Melina Juergens enough for her astonishing motion capture and voice acting performance.
• Very few games are able to depict psychosis/madness as well as Senua’s Sacrifice has. The larger and more obvious features, such as the well designed atmosphere and storytelling (which again, is highly accentuated by Melina’s performance) held me captive in my own discomfort and anxiety throughout the game. The smaller details, such as the internal conflicting voices that plagued Senua, really convinced me of her madness. Slowly but surely the intensity of the game picks up momentum. More of the depressingly cruel backstory is presented and every subsequent area/challenge is increasingly terrifying, until you reach the climax in Hel. By the end I was left wondering how much of the brutal journey was “real” and how much took place in her own mind. [/olist]
• For a title that focuses on storytelling, it was surprising to discover that combat is very smooth and responsive. The controls are simple to learn but there are small nuances that add complexity and keep the flow of combat smooth. I also found that the parry and dash/dodge roll, arguably your most important tools, worked incredibly well. Both feel intuitive to use and cancel attack animations (big fan of this feature). Finally, combat is quite forgiving: missed parries will still block attacks (at least to some extent), your health regenerates (damage indicated by the redness of your screen), your inner voices warn you when you are about to be attacked, and you will only die if you take 3+ direct hits in quick succession.

Neutral:

• My favorite feature are the hidden collectables, lorestones. Each discovered lorestone unlocks a piece of Nordic mythology, with subsequent lorestones stringing together the complete story. Each piece is narrated expertly which adds to the already fascinating (and gruesome) lore. However, there are two reasons why this is listed as a neutral point: [1] lorestones are missable and there is no chapter select feature at the end of the game; and [2] there is no feature in the main menu to relisten to the unlocked lorestones (huge missed opportunity).

Negative:

• Sadly, most of the gameplay felt like an uninspired afterthought: [olist]
• ~70% of gameplay is literally walking/jogging around at a slow pace. The only puzzle elements are: [1] walking through portals that add/remove obstacles, and [2] aligning your point of view to fix things and/or identify shapes. That’s it. No progressive difficulty or added mechanics. Just repetitive, mindless and tedious tasks that will cost you 4-5 hours of your life. The brilliant cutscenes could not make up for such boring gameplay.
• Combat breaks the flow of the walking simulator but unfortunately also suffers from the lack of progressive complexity. Although well executed, there is no difference (in terms of mechanics) between your first fight and your final fight. There are a handful of enemies and a few interesting bosses but combat essentially boils down to parry or dodge and then attack. It also doesn’t help that practically every attack can be parried. Enemy kicks you? Parry. Large bull-like boss slams his body at you? Parry. It also seems like the developers lost inspiration half way and decided to ramp up difficulty by throwing more enemies/longer waves at you rather than putting some thought into innovation. [/olist]
• Cutscenes are central to Senua’s Sacrifice and are the pillars that drive the intensity of the story. Therefore it is severely disappointing that the audio and video falls out of sync so often. Out of the 4 gaming sessions it took for me to finish this game, the audio fell out of sync in 3 sessions. Needless to say, this diminished the impact of the cutscenes tremendously. Furthermore, I experienced many situations where audio lines overlapped each other, usually when I walked into a cutscene while Senua was still talking. Sadly both issues take away from the experience (massively) and I hope that they can be patched in future updates.
• With the permanent game over in mind, I spent most of the game playing very carefully to avoid the progression of the curse. However, towards the end I found myself stuck in a maze with a sort of fire demon that chases and kills you. This segment is uncharacteristically unforgiving and is impossible to get through unscathed unless you are already familiar with the maze’s layout. From the moment you respawn, you are literally given 1 second to get a move on or burn up in flames. I must have died close to 10 times before I managed to escape the maze, rendering my earlier efforts futile. I have no idea why the developers thought it was a good idea to combine permanent game over with such an unfair segment.
• All the effort put into building a progressively thrilling story was ruined by an ending that inappropriately flipped the tone of the game from psychological horror to bright optimism. The sudden uplifting conclusion, made worse with the addition of a generic pop song, felt like a slap to the face. I would compare it to having the Teletubbies share a motivational quote at the end of a Saw movie.

Verdict:

★★★☆☆ Severely disappointing