My personal game of the year 2017.

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice does everything it can to trigger strong feeling while sharing Senua's journey into her devastated inner world -with great success.

Prioritizing seamless, immersive delivery over complexity, it might not entice those exclusively looking for deep gameplay, but might leave a lasting mark on those approaching the title as a inclusive gaming experience.

Heavily recommended.




The good

+ Most impeccable delivery
+ Acting/Motion Capture
+ Sound and visual processing
+ Well optimised

The Meh

= Some textures occasionally look dirty
= A couple of fight feel cheap
= More interaction with the environment would have been nice

The bad

- Subtitles are botched
- Character limit on Steam reviews makes it hard to tell everything the game has done right.

WARNING

/!\ Depending on your personnal experience, this game might sometimes feel deeply overwhelming (confirmed).


The people at Team Ninja are trying their very best to elevate Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice from grimdark-ish walking simulator to a short but intense AAA experience where the main target is to make you share the feelings of Senua, a mentally struggling Pict warrior gone into a maddening decent into her own, hellish mindscape.

To do so, the whole game strictly focuses on delivering a seamless narration, through immersive and at times gruesome visuals, clever use of sound production and, yes, simplistic gameplay.

If the combat, based on reflexes, timing and reach, feels visceral and on point, it is only there to add some spice to trivial visual puzzles and platforming sequences. This, though, is deliberate, as the title goes through lengths to keep you immersed into Senua's mind -complex game mechanics would have gotten in the way.

As you play, though, and especially if you're looking for a narrative experience, Hellblade well creep under your skin and manage to genuinely make you feel ill at ease. Topography will change as you visit the levels, voices will surge from everywhere (headphones are recommended), and the game will constantly bend its own rules to make sure you take nothing for granted.

Supported by gorgeous visuals and a top notch acting/motion capture, the ambiance of Hellblade is supposedly meant to raise awareness about mental disorders. As no two people with disorders and no two people without disorders are alike, your mileage may vary, but the excellent production, story and technique of the title will make sure that emotions are triggered, especially if you, yourself, have already been through a rough patch.

These emotions are ugly. Fear, doubt, anger, despair, and a pinch of double-ick, they go far beyond simple jump scare and visual disgust. This is why I personally classify this game as noir psychological horror: as soon as you get into it, it will mess with your head, and you might want to delay playing it if you are currently struggling with depression or have recently experienced the loss of a loved one.

The game isn't perfect, though. Some bugs are still around, the subtitles are botched and, sadly, some sounds appear to be missing (no wet splash when Senua walks into puddles).

These flaws, though, are easily forgotten given how well Team Ninja has hit its mark, both in creating one of the best narrative games of 2017 and, given the content of many comment sections, providing an entry point a real dialog around mental illness.

Heavily recommended, especially if you're looking for a noir narrative experience.