We critics start our writing process with finding the angle of our piece. Each of us has a perspective, a lense through which we view each experience. Our angles are the whittled down point that we seek to communicate to our audiences in our reviews. You might have noticed that these angles make up the titles of the articles we publish, so we better make it snappy. No one clicks on lukewarm statements. You already know that, right? But would you be surprised to know that positively-angled reviews get less readership than negative reviews?

This is for a number of reasons. Boiled down, according to recent studies, people feel compelled to read a negative review. Think back. “WAIT I WANTED TO PLAY THIS. WHAT’S WRONG WITH IT?”

I like to think I operate a little differently, since my critiques are not click-based and I don’t receive ad revenue for the number of times someone wants to read up. That being said, I always attempt to highlight both the good and bad. I’ve never found myself sitting with a game for which I couldn’t at least suggest significant improvements.

But, I’ve spent a week chewing on it and, people, I… I think I found it?

I rarely catch true feelings over games, but I did with Hellblade. It was actually more like the game spat the feelings on the floor at my feet, wanting to play catch.

Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is a heavily immersive adventure that blends hack and slash with both psychological horror and puzzle-solving genres. Drawing their inspiration from Old Norse pagan mythos and Celtic cultures, Ninja Theory crafts a world in which the heroine, Senua, must navigate the trials of Hel to save the soul of her dead lover. Sounds like a pretty standard hero story, except for one game-changing difference-- Senua, your in-game analog, experiences extreme psychosis. In turn, you have to experience it with her. This shrouds the entire story in a veil of uncertainty as your mind reaches for the comfort of familiar elements of reality, but never really gives you the satisfaction.

It’s visually stunning, with a film-like quality to its fluid transitions between player-controlled content and cutscenes.

The award-winning performance of Melina Juergens as Senua cuts like a knife. You can almost peer into Senua’s soul and see her at her most vulnerable. I was extremely moved.

Throughout the game, Senua has intense auditory and visual hallucinations, so sound designer David Garcia moved to replicate the experience as closely as he could. Working closely with a focus group and medical professionals, he took a non-traditional approach to recording the voices, providing you full 3D binaural sound. It’s chilling and unique, rendering me speechless for the first five minutes of gameplay. If you aren’t wearing a headset, you’re Doing It Wrong.

If you’re familiar with my work, you’d know that I am a staunch supporter of in-game tutorials, which Hellblade doesn’t have. There is a trend in game development now to streamline, cutting tutorials out of games either for pacing purposes, or to avoid “insulting” The Player’s intelligence. I firmly believe that relying on either a player’s game literacy or intuition is an unintentional form of gatekeeping, sometimes driving away the uninitiated who could enjoy the title without having prior experience. I managed to figure out the controls, and enjoyed the combat design and execution, but I can’t help but think of the experience of other people in my life. My friend threw up her hands after being unable to finish the first battle sequence. I’m lucky to have not had an issue, but sometimes I want to be able to pass my dad a controller and say “you need to try this” without worrying about his video game illiteracy and perception frustrating him enough to miss out on something so incredible. So players, take note.

The moment the game slam-dunked was in the included documentary that detailed the development process. I watched it after playing the game. The most important element of this feature is explaining the way in which Ninja Theory did their research in a respectful and responsible manner. They really took care to create a character with a mental illness in a way didn’t degrade the strength of her character.

Why is that important? The societal stigmatization of mental illness generally gives us the characters who fill video game mental hospital and prison levels, and serve either the role of villain or tragic side character who exists as a point of drama in the protagonist’s character development. This isn’t to say that there aren’t games that have contributed to a positive representation of characters living with a mental illness, but you begin to crave some sort of positive role model anywhere.

I say this because it provides basis for discussion on some common criticisms of the story. Some fellow critics have complained that the game’s depiction of psychosis is limited to the experience of symptoms but lacks the depiction of their consequences. However, expecting the story to center on the consequences of her psychosis would ultimately tune the focus further away from the core story. The way I see it, the psychosis is merely a character trait for the player to experience, an immersive element, an interesting garnish to the meat of the meal. Wanting to focus solely on her psychosis as the driving factor of the story is an expected, but short-sighted perspective relative to the larger, most simple point of the game:

It’s that Senua, in the face of her challenges, has learned to embrace the ways in which her hallucinations help her. She persists with the grit and spirit of a true hero without bending to the negative facets of her condition. It’s not the story of an illness. It's the story of a hero.

I highly recommend this title. It changed the way I think about storytelling in games, and I’m grateful for the experience.

P.S. I don’t know if I’d be able to keep from crying if given the chance to play this in VR, which is probably a thing you should check into if you’ve got some of that nifty tech. I look forward to the opportunity, given how floored I was by the initial release.