REVIEW -- Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is a dark fantasy action-adventure game developed and published by the British video game development studio Ninja Theory. Self-described as an "independent AAA game", it was created by a team of approximately twenty developers led by writer and director Tameem Antoniades. It was released worldwide for Microsoft Windows and PlayStation 4 in August 2017, with an Xbox One version in April 2018. The game features support for virtual reality, which was added in an update in 2018. A Nintendo Switch version was released on 11th April, 2019.

Inspired by Norse mythology and Celtic culture, Hellblade follows Senua, a Pict warrior who must make her way to Helheim by defeating otherworldly entities and facing their challenges, in order to rescue the soul of her dead lover from the goddess Hela. In parallel, the game acts as a metaphor for the character's struggle with psychosis, as Senua, who suffers from the condition but believes it to be a curse, is haunted by an entity known as the "Darkness", voices in her head known as "Furies", and memories from her past. To properly represent psychosis, developers worked closely with neuroscientists, mental health specialists, and people suffering from the condition.

The game blends several genres, including hack and slash, puzzle solving, and psychological horror. Voice acting is an integral part of the game, while its cutscenes combine motion capture by Melina Juergens, and live action performances by other actors. Hellblade was a commercial success and was well received by critics, who praised it as a work of art and applauded its uncommon choice of revolving around psychosis, the quality and uniqueness of its approach of the condition, and its story and main character.

Plot: (SPOILERS!!)

Crazy how some of the best games over the last few years have been influenced by Norse mythology as of late. First, this game, then God of War (PS4) and I'm sure there's a few more that touch on that subject manner as well. 

Set in the late 8th century, the game starts with Senua (Melina Juergens), a Pict warrior from Orkney arriving at the border of Helheim in a quest to save the soul of her dead lover, Dillion (Oliver Walker), from the goddess Hela. Senua believes she suffers from a curse, and hears "Furies", voices in her head commenting her every actions, notably one, the Narrator (Chipo Chung), who is aware of the player's presence and talks to them. She is also followed by the Darkness (Steven Hartley), a dark entity at the core of the curse. She carries Dillion's severed head to use it as a vessel to his soul, and is also guided by her memories of the stories of Druth (Nicholas Boulton), a former slave of the Norsemen well versed in their legends, now deceased, who became her friend and mentor during a year-long self-imposed exile. To enter Helheim, Senua defeats both the fire giant Surt and the spirit of illusions Valravn, but as she crosses the bridge to Helheim, is attacked by Hela, who defeats her with a single blow, shattering her sword. Barely surviving the encounter, she follows visions of Druth and a man-shaped light she believes to be Dillion to a great tree where she faces four challenges linked to her past, and is rewarded with the legendary sword Gramr, strong enough to kill gods.

Meanwhile, Senua's backstory is unveiled through her hallucinations, revealing that her mother Galena (Ellie Piercy) suffered the same curse she did, but did not believe it to be dreadful. However, Senua's devoutly religious father Zynbel (also performed by Hartley) did, and burned Galena alive. Senua witnessed the event at age five, which caused her psychosis to worsen significantly and led her to convince herself her mother died willingly. Her father, convincing her that her condition was a curse, abused Senua emotionally and physically and isolated her from the rest of the world until she met Dillion when he visited her village. The two fell in love, and Senua left her father to be with him, as he saw her as different and misunderstood instead of cursed. However, after a plague killed many in Dillion's village, Senua, believing the fault to be hers, left in exile. When she returned a year later having hopefully left the Darkness behind, she found everyone killed by Norsemen who had invaded, sacrificing Dillion in a blood eagle to their gods. Remembering the stories of Druth, Senua departed on her journey to save Dillion's soul from the gods of the Norsemen.

Ultimately, Senua fights against the influence of the Darkness and defeats the beast Garm. She then realizes the Darkness is a representation of her father's abuse and beliefs, and frees herself from the Furies. Soon after, she faces a legion of Hela's warriors in a hopeless fight, and is killed. In her final moments, she recalls Dillion telling her of the importance of the acceptance of loss. As the imagery of Helheim fades away, Hela drops Dillion's head into the abyss, but as the camera returns to her, Senua is standing in her place, with a dead Hela in place of Senua's body. Having accepted that it was never possible to bring her lover back, and that she is not responsible for his death or anyone else's, Senua frees herself from the Darkness' influence, and accepts the Furies not as a curse, but a part of who she is. She invites the player to follow her, while the Narrator says her goodbyes to the player.

The Verdict: (Some Spoilers Discussed Here)

The fiercest battles always start in the strongest of warriors' minds well before they step onto the battlefield. 

When this game was first announced, I was thinking that it was going to be sequel/spin-off to Ninja Theory's launch title for the PlayStation 3, Heavenly Sword. As much as I enjoyed that game, I'm so happy that this game wasn't that. Hellblade is it's own creature entirely - physically and mentally speaking.

Right off the bat, I feel that this game is best experienced with a headset on. The voices that Senua hears throughout the game are echoed in surround sound if you play with a headset on. There were several instances where I found myself stopping to look around in my room as if I wasn't going nuts. These voices will encourage you when you are doing well and discourage you when you make mistakes and stumble along the way. It is best described as Senua's self-doubts and conscience given a voice that echoes throughout everything that she does in the game as a result of the player's actions. That being said, the main novelty of this game is portraying how one deals with psychosis/mental illnesses.

Truth be told, I live with a case of anxiety that runs in my family. I used to take medicine for it while I was in college, but I have gotten to the point in my adolescent years where I can manage it for the most part without relying on medication to keep it under control. Playing a game like this where the main protagonist, Senua, is physically and mentally battling her own demons concerning her own mental illness, really hit a home to me at the core. This isn't a very long game - maybe 6 to 8 hours tops if you're really taking your time exploring all of the environments and looking for the lore markers, but there were points of this game that really cranked my anxiety to eleven and I literally had to take a break and calm myself down. No video game that I have ever played has ever done that to me. It literally triggered my anxiety. My hands were shaking and heart rate was elevated - not in a bad way, but in terms of I could physically and mentally relate to what Senua was feeling. I think everyone who has some sort of mental illness will be triggered during the several "trials" that Senua must overcome without any weapons or abilities/skills of any sort about halfway throughout the course of the game's narrative, especially that damn "blindness" trial that got me on edge. Between that blindness trial and the trial by fire, there's a flood of topics on Reddit from players who talk about how those sequences affected them mentally or hit them pretty hard in terms of a roadblock as gamers. Not in a bad way either, but just as genuinely great sequences in gaming.

Mental illnesses used to be a sort of a taboo or subject manner that was a tad bit off-limits in gaming at one point. With this game, I can confidently say that this subject manner is handled in a tasteful and respectable manner. I would like to credit that to psychological analysts that Ninja Theory had on hand to offer their insight and feedback on portraying psychosis/mental illnesses in this medium. I cannot stress enough to my fellow gamers that they check out the Making Of featurette on the main menu after finishing the game. It details the process that Ninja Theory went through during development of this game and thorough research and feedback from psychology professors who were shown the game. The behind the scenes featurette highlights the method that the voice actors recorded the "voices" in Senua's head along with talking with the actors behind the voices of the several characters that Senua met her journey.

Melina Juergens' extensive work on this game as not only Senua's voice actress and motion capture model, but Ninja Theory's video editor assigned to this game was a happy accident. She was asked to fill in until they were going to hire someone else, but they were so happy with her performance as the character that she landed the job. I can see why, really. Just look at her.

I can look at this gif a hundred times and still appreciate Melina Juergens' subtle nuisances to play up Senua's mental state, not just here but in the game as well. 

It goes without saying that Ninja Theory are among the top (if not the top for me personally) in the gaming industry at motion capture and visuals. Melina Juergens' performance is top notch here and she deserves every ounce of praise that she got for her contributions in-front of and behind the cameras to the benefit of this game.

If I played through this game again, it would be mainly for experiencing it's combat again. I was disappointed that Ninja Theory didn't have more of it in the game.

Combat-wise, I thought the gameplay in Hellblade was simple and bare bones, but pretty straight-forward. It's easy to pick up and master over the course of the game, but there's not enough of it to say that how good it is for this title. All of your actions are slow and methodical as you tackle your foes one by one and strategically move around the battlefield for you won't be cornered, surrounded, or blindsided by attacks from other enemies. Senua has light and heavy attacks with her sword, a kick to break the defenses of shielded enemies, a running option that she can combine with any of the previously mentioned attacks, and most importantly a guarding option that can parry incoming attacks if hit at the precise moment of impact. I thought that parries were a little overpowered if you mastered them early on. Senua gets an upgraded sword, Gramr, at one point of the game's narrative that allows you to charge up her heavy slashes to dispel the shadows around particular enemies that they use for protection. Alternatively, you can dispel that same barrier of shadows around these enemies by parrying their attacks without even having to charge up Senua's blade. I could count on one hand how many times I actually used that ability before relying on parries one hundred percent to dispel the shadows instead, especially towards the end of the game where you have at least 3-10 enemies engaging you at once. Your Focus ability (indicated by the rune that decorates Senua's hip that glows when it is available for use) slows down time/freezes some enemies in place, allowing you to get more hits in to dispatch them quicker or for strategic means. This ability recharges insanely fast off successful parries; thus giving players another reason to master that skill. I know it's used to "reveal" or "weaken" particular bosses as well, since the voices in Senua's head will constantly shout for you to use it.

My personal favorite boss out of the entire game, Valravn - Master of Illusions. As you can see, a perfectly timed parry/counter knocks him to the floor for additional damage.

Speaking of bosses, this game only features about three "major" boss encounters while everything else that Senua combats against are normal demonic soldiers (single blade, sword/club & shield serve as "common" foes while dual axe wielders and foes with huge clubs serve as mini-bosses). Those three bosses are tons of fun to fight against and to test your understanding of Senua's skills against. The game recycles them again once you confront Hela during the game's climax, but at that point, you have Gramr, which already increases Senua's offensive power, and Senua's willpower (due to the narrative at that point) increases her power even more that most foes that she faces during the game's final battle go down with at least a single blow in most cases. The bosses put up a fight here, but they are don't hold a candle to their former glory when you encountered them in the story for the first time.

Puzzles in this game primarily involve searching out patterns/motifs such as this in the environment and lining them up properly with your Focus ability. 

The other half of gameplay consisted of puzzles. I thought a lot of them were hit or miss since they either mostly involved searching for objects in the environment to fit a designated pattern or motif or lining up specific "shattered/broken" objects to be repaired from a precise camera angle in combination of Senua's "Focus" ability. Most of these are a little too easy to spot as the game clues you in very early on that the voices will aid you in locating these patterns with subtle hints while at the same time, Senua's senses will be ripe with the pattern in the air (as show by the image above) if you are close to the object in question. Other puzzles won't be as simple as there's a few where Senua will be forced to juggle between the light and dark worlds to manipulate objects in the environment to progress further. Another will have her distinguish between reality and illusions in Valravn's forest or find a means to traverse around or through the flames without being burnt alive in Surt's region. These puzzles aren't really groundbreaking material or anything but they each tend to fit the theme of the environment that they are attached to, such as the illusion puzzles in Valravn's realm, the fire puzzles in Surt's domain, Senua's struggles with "blindness" in the dark within the confines of the blindness trial and Garm's dungeon that follows shortly after that point in the narrative.

If this game had one major flaw or rather a very minor gripe that I had with it is that there's far too much "slowly" striding around environments for my taste. Even when I had running ticked on to be toggled on and off, I still felt the general movement in this game for general traversal from point A to point B was at a snail's pace. To be fair, it wasn't at the game's detriment though as the slow movement(s) left Senua to her thoughts and more importantly, the voices in her head as the game went on. The funny thing is that the slow, methodical movement worked to an outstanding degree in the combat portions of gameplay, but within the general movement, it felt more like a crutch to extend the gameplay time an extra hour or two otherwise. I will admit that the slow movement to traverse from point A to point B added to the powerful portrayal of the seemingly never-ending battle that Senua engaged in with the voices in her head.

I have to repeat that this isn't a very long game either as I'm sure if one was to sit down and play this in its entirety over the course of one afternoon if they were pretty quick to get a grasp of the combat (namely parrying) early on and solve majority of the puzzles with minimal effort, the game can be completed within six to eight hours. I think my total game time was roughly around seven to eight, but that was mainly because I was fumbling around with solving the various puzzles.

The game offers you this warning with a truth within a lie.

Before I end this review, I want to mention one thing that's regarded as a massive spoiler in terms of the narrative but tied to gameplay. Senua is "infected" early into the story by a rot that grows little by little with each failure all the way up to Senua's head if you continuously die/fail objectives in the game. The game scares you with this warning even further by saying that your save file will even be deleted from excessive deaths. I'm here to say that concept is complete bullshit. If you watch the infection throughout the course of the story, it grows on it's own throughout the game. I only died early onto the game in the opening realms, but by the time I got to Garm's dungeon and the final confrontation against Hela, the rot was all the way to Senua's shoulders out of nowhere. The "rot" is merely a plot device and is an artificial device to add more stress and better yet, anxiety, to both the player and Senua on this journey. I'll admit that it worked up to the point where I realized that it was complete bullshit. As part of the narrative, the rot consumes Senua completely to the point where she is on the point of death, but she powers through her inner darkness and summons the courage to keep on fighting.

This game deserves the wealth of praise that it's gotten. 

The biggest question on everyone's minds if you haven't played this game is that does this game deserve all of the praise and awards across the board that it's received since it's initial release? I can confidently say, "YES!" To say that this game was made by a team of a mere twenty individuals on hand is a feat on it's own, but to see what this game manages to do firsthand is something that I cannot recommend enough for my fellow gamers. Simply words cannot do this game justice in a sense.

Play It or Don't Bother?

With it's re-release on the Nintendo Switch and the physical edition landing on both PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, now is a better time than ever to check this game out. It's definitely high on my list of games every gamer must experience that's for sure. I'm kicking myself for waiting so long to experience it myself, despite having it for free on my PlayStation 4's hard drive for at least a year or two now.