SallyNasty's Game Club — Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice (Feb. 2019)

From the makers of Heavenly Sword, Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, and DmC: Devil May Cry, comes a warrior’s brutal journey into myth and madness.

Set in the Viking age, a broken Celtic warrior embarks on a haunting vision quest into Viking Hell to fight for the soul of her dead lover.

Created in collaboration with neuroscientists and people who experience psychosis, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice will pull you deep into Senua’s mind.

Sounds cheery.

Hellblade is available on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. It is available to download as part of Xbox Game Pass. We'll be starting on Friday, Feb. 1, so please join in! If you've already played this, feel free to follow along and comment as you'd like.

I think I have this on Steam and I loved Enslaved.

I'm in.

For those of you that have the cyber-goggles and are playing on PC, there's a pretty great VR implementation that's a free update to the base game.

Awesome! I just picked this game up on GOG (or Steam maybe?) and have been looking for an excuse to play it. Also, thanks to Godzilla Blitz for pointing me in the direction of the game clubs! I'm looking forward to diving into this game with everyone!

Are there any parameters for playing along with the group, such as difficulty requirement, or only playing through to specific parts of the game?

BDiggla wrote:

Are there any parameters for playing along with the group, such as difficulty requirement, or only playing through to specific parts of the game?

Not really. The goal is to have fun and provide a chance for people to play the same game at the same time even if it's well after launch. The only thing we expect is that you use spoiler tags for plot events and surprises. If you're not sure if something counts as a spoiler, use spoiler tags just to be on the safe side.

Thanks for joining! I look forward to seeing what you think of the game. I haven't played it before, either.

Oh nice I picked this up on sale and am definitely interested!

I’m in. I’ve a renewed desire to work on my PS4 backlog and this happens to be on the list. I’ve been interested since hearing about some of the themes it involves.

I think I'll start this late tonight or sometime tomorrow. Ashen has absorbed a lot of my interest, but I'm pretty keen to get this one going.

This was my number 2 game of last year. I don't know if I'll be joining in this playthrough, but I hope a bunch more people get to experience this. It's not perfect, but it's something special.

Two recommendations. Play with headphones. Drop the difficulty if the combat is getting in the way.

Play with headphones for sure!

I really want play this, but don't own it and not the best timing to pick it up. I'll bookmark this page and head back to see what you thought when I do get round to it

Huh. I really want to play this sooner rather than later, so I'm going to try to join in this month.

Bubblefuzz wrote:

I really want play this, but don't own it and not the best timing to pick it up. I'll bookmark this page and head back to see what you thought when I do get round to it

It's currently on sale on the EU PSN store, if that helps.

Hellblade 50% off on Steam New Year sale until the 11th!

I finally found some time to begin playing yesterday. I only played for about 20 minutes, but I loved the intro! It has me excited to continue my journey with Senua!

Spoiler:

I had to stop right before I opened the gate, when Senua was talking to her... dead friend? I can’t wait to see what’s beyond the gate!

I’m playing on PC with the difficulty set to easy.

Oh, only 7-8 hours to beat this. I didn't realize it was so short. Great news!

Chaz wrote:

This was my number 2 game of last year. I don't know if I'll be joining in this playthrough, but I hope a bunch more people get to experience this. It's not perfect, but it's something special.

Two recommendations. Play with headphones. Drop the difficulty if the combat is getting in the way.

IMAGE(https://memegenerator.net/img/instances/41206872/me-too.jpg)

Few experiences have stayed with me like this game.

First impressions:
I played up to the end of the first "world" last night. It only took 90 minutes or so, but felt a lot longer! It's much more oppressive than games I usually play. I'm going to keep playing but this will definitely be a "short session" game for me.

It's a little distracting that it shares a lot of the Nordic myth and iconography used in God of War, which I played not long ago. My dumb brain keeps expecting Senua to fight and move like Kratos, but I'm sure I'll get over that. She is beautifully acted and animated, to the point that it's actually distressing to see her die (not to mention she is permanently scarred by each death).

Visually there is almost too much going on for comfort. On top of the surreal, hellish backdrop is layered various visual effects and distortions which make it quite unsettling to linger in one area too long (presumably this is deliberate). On the other hand, the gameplay mechanics are already starting to feel a bit thin after one world, so I'm hoping this will open up in subsequent areas. I don't have headphones, so I'm not getting the full audio experience, but at this point I'm quite OK with that

I played this game last year and was a great new experience with this hobby. It's a short game(7-9hrs), that must be played with Headphones to really get the most understanding of Senua, which is a character that you will get some alike to any of you who play in the way you make and think in your every "normal" day life.
I really liked it and its great to see it here to be played this month by many of you, superb choice.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

I think I'll start this late tonight or sometime tomorrow. Ashen has absorbed a lot of my interest, but I'm pretty keen to get this one going.

Update after completing my second world (seems like there should be a better name than this - domain, trial, gauntlet?) and the event that comes after...

The game is starting to come into its own for me as it reveals more about Senua and her sacrifice. I think this is what will carry me through the game, because honestly it's not a pleasant experience in most other ways. Both worlds so far have followed the same pattern, ratcheting up the discomfort and then giving a moment of respite when you complete them. Both have taken me about an hour or a little over - I hope they don't get longer as the game goes on.

I don't have any personal history of mental illness, but some of the lines have been quite evocative - I know I'm doing it wrong not using headphones, but I have had subtitles turned on the whole time so as not to miss anything. I'd recommend this as there are often multiple voices overlapping (the subtitles include them all). Also as suggested by others, I switched the combat to easy, after hitting a frustrating encounter. Much better.

For real, try it with headphones, even if just for a little while. The recording technique they used creates an incredible effect that you literally can't get without headphones. The overlapping voices are easier to make out too.

If I had some headphones here, I'd definitely try it out!

I finally started this tonight, and I regret not having gotten to it sooner. I can already tell that it's going to be a special and memorable experience.

I'm not typically a fan of this style of game: third-person, heavily scripted, very "cinematic". It's a style I associate primarily with Sony, but other studios have gone for it, too, like Crystal Dynamics. They always feel to me like bad compromises: made-for-TV quality movies interrupted by polished-but-safe gameplay mechanics. There's nothing safe about Hellblade.

I'm mostly indifferent to the mechanics here. The combat is simple but fine, and the environment alignment puzzles are likewise. But the visual style, audio design, voice acting, and motion capture are otherworldly. I'm very happy with my decision to play the game with headphones, because the quality of the work there is phenomenal.

I don't have the kinds of mental illnesses Senua seems to suffer from, but I've done some research into them over the years and listened to a number of 3D audio recordings made by academics to replicate audio disturbances in mental health patients. The work they've done here with Senua is toned down a bit but otherwise fits right in with those recordings and first-hand accounts that I've read.

My only gripe is that the video recording they opted to use for Druth looks terrible. It has a grainy, cheap look to it that reminds me of FMV games in an unflattering way. Given that this was a self-funded indie project, I assume that it was too expensive to do the level of motion capture for his character that Senua received, but it's nonetheless a little disappointing when he pops up and looks so out of place.

Still, I'm looking forward to playing more, and I'm pretty excited by Microsoft's acquisition of the studio. I'd love to see the kind of passion project this team could make with the kind of funds that Microsoft could provide. This is the kind of gutsy art game that Sony used to finance.

I had a great session last night, and think I've almost finished it. Really pleased with the pacing, which I feared would slow down following the usual videogame progression of small to larger worlds, but in fact went in the opposite direction.

For others who are playing/have played - do you think the "gameplay" parts add to the experience? They're clearly not the point of the game, although there is some loose thematic connection to being a warrior and gifted with "the sight". And the times when they kill you are also the weakest, most jarring moments. Nothing screams "videogame" like failing some arbitrary challenge, fading to black and starting over. But I also think the game would lose some impact if it was just walking through environments ala Dear Esther.

... and it's done. That was something else. Need some time to chew it over, but it would be great to hear from others too!

Started this last night and can echo positive comments already expressed about the audio experience with headphones. I also turned off the lights to add to immersion.

I cleared the beginning and Valravyn’s Keep. Even on easy I was having some difficulty with the boss encounter. I then realized I was mostly using dodge and not blocking and countering much. Once I made that adjustment, I beat it. Experienced some frustration in the process though. Didn’t really need to bother with blocking prior to that.

I also had a hiccup in one of the puzzle rooms. The largest area with the platform in the middle. One of the passages that opened up wasn’t apparent to me because it was tucked away in the corner and it took me a while to find it.

The audio and visual experience and the fact that it explores mental illness are what drew me to the game and that’s what is appealing so far. The combat and puzzle elements, I think I’ll have to see more of them to decide how I feel.

I found the boss fight against Valravyn weirdly frustrating even though I'd already been using the block-counter move pretty extensively by that point. Although I don't know if the difficulty was increased because I had played through Surt's area first.

I don't mind the puzzles, overall, at least not yet. There's nothing terribly difficult about them, and some of the illusory paths in Valravyn's keep were actually interesting. The combat's a bit of a different question, though. It lands in an uncomfortable middle ground where it's not actually interesting enough to fully engage with but not easy enough (even on easy) to mindlessly hack through. I wouldn't mind there being just less of it overall and what is there a lot easier, especially with the threat of permadeath hanging over everything.

This is the kind of game I'd want to recommend to people who are less experienced players, but the combat puts up a huge barrier to that, and that's a shame.

When I played it, I found the combat just got more and more frustrating as I spent time with it (and I'd not really had that complaint with this company's previous games). It felt like a lot of polish went into other areas, and that one aspect never really came together.

While I might not recommend new players to actually play it, I do think this game also would lend itself well to a Let's Play (that didn't have much in the way of player narration/interjection).

ClockworkHouse wrote:

It lands in an uncomfortable middle ground where it's not actually interesting enough to fully engage with but not easy enough (even on easy) to mindlessly hack through. I wouldn't mind there being just less of it overall and what is there a lot easier, especially with the threat of permadeath hanging over everything.

This is the kind of game I'd want to recommend to people who are less experienced players, but the combat puts up a huge barrier to that, and that's a shame.

This is pretty much exactly how I feel so far. A nice addition would be a “storytelling” mode that makes the combat trivial. I’m not sure yet if I’d prefer using that myself, but it would definitely make the game more accessible to those that are just interested in the themes and setting.