I recently upgraded my PC and have been poking through my backlog looking for games I picked up over the years but held off on playing to await a better GPU. Hellblade: Senna’s Sacrifice always looked like the kind of game I’d want to play with the graphics nearly maxed out, if not completely maxed out. The screenshots I’d see and the snippets of gameplay provided glimpses into a stunningly moody world of swamps, mountain pathways and creepy ruins.
With the enhanced graphical horsepower ready to go, I installed Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice for the first time and took my first steps into this super grim world set in the dark ages of Norse mythology.
Just as I expected, the game was stunning to see. I just wish the gameplay held up to the delivery.
The main gimmick of Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is that Senua experiences multiple voices in her head that are constantly chiming in. As the player in control of Senua, you get to hear the voices too. It’s a cacophony of dialogue that, at its best is spooky, but is mostly too revealing.
It’s hard to feel like it’s your first time truly exploring the already-linear world of the game without a voice chiming in to basically tell you how to solve a puzzle or what to do next. “Look at the rune, Senua—The rune. It’s the rune, Senua. Go to it—Go to the rune, Senua. See it? See the rune?” Imagine hearing that every time you have to do anything.
On top of the overlapping voices bouncing around in her head, Senua stumbles across runestones that can be activated. They trigger a man’s voice who speaks to Senua and provides extra narration, IN ADDITION to a third not-Senua-not-runestone-guy voice that will just pop in and flood the few moments of silence with more hard exposition.
As you get talked at while you walk or slowly jog through the desolate (but beautiful!) landscapes of Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, you’ll come across puzzles that gatekeep you from the next areas. Almost every puzzle I came across was literally a matching puzzle where you are given two or three runes and have to find random objects around you that form the same shapes as the runes.
It’s as exciting as it sounds.
There was a few illusion puzzles that were decently fun to work through, and a fire-based puzzle area (no spoilers here) that I also enjoyed. But after a few hours of matching runes, slogging through an empty world, and fighting some big, viking-like warriors with a boringly simple combat system, I ran into a maze puzzle that was so annoying to deal with I called it quits. For those of you who know (no spoilers, don’t worry), it’s the maze with the light that resets your progress if you look at it, or it gets too close.
I couldn’t justify playing this game anymore.
I wasn’t having fun. I couldn’t get into the story. The audio and visual representations of Senua’s mental illnesses (if that’s what it ended up being) was more of a hassle to deal with than it enhanced the story with an extra layer of flair. I could, and maybe should, write a whole other article about why I think game developer’s should dial back visual effects in video games. I don’t think I’ve ever played a game and thought, “If only the graphics blurrier I’d feel more immersed and have more fun.”
But as far as Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice goes, it was all too much for far, far too little crumbs of story and the faintest wisp of fun. I rarely shelve games, especially single-player narrative games that are generally rather short….but I really just don’t care to play another moment of this game.
This game was reviewed using a retail copy of the game, purchased by the reviewer.
