I found the presentation, which include the setting and audio department, great. As you said, the voices don't just add a lot to the atmosphere, they are the atmosphere. The gameplay itself was mediocre, with half of the puzzles being copies of the other half, repeated ad nauseam. Combat isn't particularly good either, but at least the voices can help by shouting "Behind you!" sometimes.So I just quit Hellblade, and I feel like venting about it a bit.
On the onset, I was really fascinated by what this game attempted to do, which is focus on a protagonist with psychological issues. The setting itself is also really interesting, deeply mired in Norse mythology, though Senua and her tribe themselves aren't Norse.
I love the presentation of this game, especially the sound, you always hear a cacaphony of voices representing Senuas inner conflict. It's playing a lot with various optical effects, and often overdoing things quite a bit, I felt.
But the worse element, to me, is how this game is obsesses with being cinematic. The entire game is set, "filmed" you might mockingly think, in a close-up on Sensua, just over her right shoulder. It's much closer than even the classic RE4 perspective, and in my opinion wholly in appropriate for action scenes, though this is mitigated luckily by the camera pulling back a little bit for those. The tank controls are a mess, though, and led me to quickly set the combat settings to easy, no way was I gonna bother with that.
What really killed the game for me, though, was a scene where I needed to find three runes, while locked in a room which was being taken over by fire. After the fourth time Senua somehow collapsed, and I had to redo it, I decided not to bother anymore.
It makes for a nice interactive movie, but not a great game, exactly.
Still, it's a very beautiful game, so I can't complain too much.
Loved its photomode a lot, too. Probably the most enjoyable part of Hellblade.
This is one of those rare cases where the act of playing the game detracts from the experience. In that sense it reminds me of Bioshock, which would have been amazing if it wasn't for the tiny fact that it was a playable game. Guess they would be far more enjoyable on Youtube than on Steam.
Pfft, singles' day? Try singles' month, or year, or life.Steam will have Singles Day Sale:
...No, I'm not a miserable pile of loneliness, why do you ask? :'(
