Now Playing: Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice

I think the best way to describe how I feel about Hellblade is that it’s a better experience than it is a game. One of the things I love about video games is how they can be used to explore concepts and present narratives in a way that wouldn’t be possible in any other medium.

Hellblade is the story of Senua, a young Pict warrior on a perilous journey into the underworld of Helheim to save the soul of her dead boyfriend. It’s a wonderfully immersive and compelling mix of Celtic and Norse mythology, but with a very personal story at its heart.

What makes Hellblade such a unique and fascinating experience is that Senua struggles with psychosis. We see the world through her eyes, and the game does an impressive job of simulating the visual and auditory hallucinations she experiences. What’s real in the world of Hellblade? To Senua, all of it is real. It’s a dark, unsettling, tragic and occasionally terrifying journey. And yet, there are moments of beauty too.

The way Hellblade tells its story, with its fantastic use of visuals and sound, is the most impressive part of the experience. Senua is an engaging character with whom you embark upon this journey, seeing and hearing her dark and troubled thoughts manifest within reality. At times, it’s not just overwhelming for Senua, but for you, as you’re assaulted by a kaleidoscope of colours, voices and sounds.

And the way the game weaves these hallucinations into the gameplay – and particularly the combat – is clever and thoughtful. Hellblade is a game that had me gripped from beginning to end, thanks to its narrative and the character of Senua. It’s a unique experience and one which, as I’ve said, simply couldn’t be achieved in any other medium.

Where Hellblade stumbles, unfortunately, is the game part of the experience. The combat system is simple, but stylish. You have heavy and light attacks, and a block move which, if properly timed, can create an opening for a counterstrike. It’s not a system with a great deal of depth, but it is a lot of fun. What Hellblade really needed, however, was more enemy types.

There’s only a handful of brutes to fight, and although they try to mix them up a little with say, a shield bearing enemy or a ‘heavy’ type enemy, you don’t really need to vary your tactics for any of them. The best fights in the game are easily the excellent boss fights, as these do follow unique patterns of attack, forcing you to stay on your toes – I just wish there were a couple more of them.

I do really like how Hellblade handles its UI – it doesn’t have one. No health bars, no XP pop ups, no skill trees or crafting systems that seem to be crammed into every bloody game these days. It feeds information to the player purely through its visuals and audio – a wounded enemy will move more slowly, their body sliced and bloody. The voices Senua hears will warn you if you’re about to be attacked from behind – there’s no little exclamation mark appearing over her head to alert the player.

Probably the weakest aspect of Hellblade are the environmental ‘puzzles’. As you progress you’ll frequently encounter doors sealed by Norse runes. You then have to locate these runes in the local area, searching for their pattern within the environment – perhaps as a shadow, a hole in a wall, or by lining up various objects to form the shape.

It’s another clever way of representing an aspect of Senua’s psychosis – pareidolia. Unfortunately, it can prove tedious for the player to locate the various runes. Although the game does give you a pretty specific clue where to look, it doesn’t always trigger correctly – not unless you’re standing at just the right spot or looking at the shape from just the right angle.

Hellblade is a pretty short game – about six hours – but I’d say it’s as long as it really needed to be, and it’s a game I’ll certainly play again. Whilst the actual game part of Hellblade – the combat and the puzzles – may be a little lacking, it provides such a unique and compelling experience that I can forgive its flaws.

To tackle such a concept and to do it in a way that doesn’t feel cheap or manipulative is to be applauded. It succeeds because at its heart, it’s Senua’s story. It’s not about the technical challenges of simulating her psychosis – it’s about weaving the way she sees and experiences the world into every stage of her journey. It’s one of the most immersive, gripping and satisfying experiences I’ve played. Highly recommended.

8/10