In a short essay I wrote about Celeste a couple weeks ago I explained that talking about anxiety and mental health through video games is hard. Not that it’s impossible and that we shouldn’t attempt to try to explain it, but more like the way we explain it to the player is not always going to click. It would be neat if another developer attempted to handle the themes of such a game like how Celeste does. Would you look at that? Somebody tried handling mental health in a video game. That team is known as Ninja Theory and the game they made was one hellish journey. In 2000 a group of three people decided to establish their own game company, possibly thinking competition in the video game market was forgiving enough. These three individuals would create Just Add Monsters and they were quite small for the time, but they were determined to make their first ever video game which they were praying to be a success. The first game the company developed was a fighting game named Kung Fu Chaos released on the original Xbox….. and it sucked. I mean the first game genre you chose was the fighting genre? You're asking to compete against the likes of Street Fighter, Mand Smash Brothers buddy. This almost led Just Add Monsters to near bankruptcy.
Luckily Sony came by afterwards to offer the company a chance to develop a new exclusive for the Playstation 3 which could potentially save the company from shutting down. The next game they made was an action adventure hack n’ slash named Heavenly Sword…. and it also sucked.. Just Add Monsters' partnership with Sony ended shortly afterwards and they were forced to look for someone else to work for. All seemed lost with the company until they decided to develop a new action adventure game entitled Enslaved: Odyssey to The West. This time being published under Bandai Namco Entertainment, a company who are always open to new creative ideas, and Enslaved: Odyssey To The West actually did pretty well. May not have been a commercially successful game since it sold poorly, but it was the first time they hit the mark towards success. That’s when Just Add Monsters changed to Ninja Theory.
Ninja Theory went on to partner up with Capcom and help develop a reboot to Devil May Cry that was released in 2013 known as DMC: Devil May Cry. This was considered their second biggest title receiving decent reception, but unfortunately they received backlash from hardcore Devil May Cry fans. It reinterpreted the characters and universe the previous games spent so much time building, was edgy not in a funny way, and Ninja Theory even received death threats from fans. Devil May Cry has always been a series praised for it’s high octane action and funny over the top plotlines, but the 2013 reboot developed by Ninja Theory had an offsetting tone. It didn’t fully understand what made the Devil May Cry games so enjoyable in the first place and opted for something that focused more on the edgy side of the spectrum. After the release of DMC: Devil May Cry, Ninja Theory decided to go independent. No longer would they rely on publishers to judge the fate of their games. Now they could work for themselves.
Later in 2014, Ninja Theory announced the production of a new action adventure game titled Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice. Rather than focus on blood pumping action like previous developed games, the folks at Ninja Theory wanted to focus on character development and experience. They wanted to tell the tale of a woman with mental health issues, and how her struggle with them affected a stressful adventure. You would expect Hellblade to be a flop now that it had no official publisher, but when Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice was finally released it got picked up by critics. It was a diamond in the rough, and suddenly tons of praise began surrounding the game. It received high praise from critics for its storytelling and visuals, won quite a few awards, and for some it was considered a masterpiece. It’s a pretty unique game and offers a unique twist on depicting mental health. Currently they are developing a sequel, Senua’s Saga, and I decided to check out Senua’s Sacrifice just to see what the talk of the town was. I’m gonna admit out of the gate that I may not enjoy Senua’s Sacrifice as much as everyone else, but I absolutely adore the way it told its mind-bending story. Today we’ll be talking about why I think Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is pretty dang good and why it deserves your attention. So sharpen your blade, calm down the voices in your head, and prepare to journey deep dark depths of Helheim.
Story
We follow the footsteps of a young Pict warrior named Senua as she leaves her tribe to sail towards the shores of Helheim. It’s a good thing I played God of War, another action adventure with a norse mythology inspired setting, otherwise I wouldn’t understand what half the norse terms are in this game. I really like games that take inspiration from other world cultures and mythology. If you don’t know, I'm a really big world history guy. However, the problem with these games is that your basic gamers are most likely someone who has little to no knowledge about world history and mythology. They’re going to have a difficult time understanding the setting and characters of your game, and the religious/political themes you may try to address, but it isn’t a problem for me as I still enjoyed the story and the main theme it centered around.
Anyways, if you don’t know Helheim is practically the norse underworld where all dead souls go to be punished for the sins they have committed throughout their lives. Senua sails towards the shores of Helheim and carries with her the severed head of her husband Dillion. We aren’t told how Dillion died, but what we do know is that he was killed right in front of Senua and didn’t even get the chance to say goodbye to her. Senua journeys into the depths of Helheim to reclaim his soul from the goddess Hela who is the ruler of Helheim. Senua has been told by tribe members that she suffers from a curse, and the several voices in her head known as the Furies constantly judge every action she takes and blames her for the death of Dillion. When Senua reaches the gate to Helheim she is surrounded by a bunch of hellish horned creatures that want to kill her. She defends herself from them using a sword that she brought along with her, but eventually a really powerful creature shows up and cuts her down.
However, Senua doesn't truly die and is brought back to life because of some unknown causes. She is then afflicted with The Rot, a disease that will slowly travel through her veins towards her head everytime she dies. If the rot reaches her head then she will truly die and her journey will come to an end. Senua is worried what will happen if she is consumed by the Rot completely and fails to save Dillion’s soul. However, she is then helped by the soul of her old mentor Druth, who tells her that she must build up the confidence to defeat two demonic spirits in the area to open the gates of Helheim and journey deeper into its depths. Wanting to bring Dillion back from the dead, Senua pulls out a blade from her hilt and prepares for the twisted illusions that Helheim will bring. Ready to reclaim Dillion’s soul. Even if it means reliving the trauma.
Gameplay
Senua’s Sacrifice focuses on two major aspects, combat and puzzles. Let’s start with the puzzles and how they work. There are countless locked gates throughout the game and you need to open them up to progress. You look at them and you are given a total of three red glowing symbols. You have to search the environment for structures or scenery that match up with these symbols and once you get all of them down you are allowed to progress forward. This is pretty unique because you make the player examine their surroundings to form a specific shape or structure. Senua’s Sacrifice even helps the player when finding what they need to progress by having red symbols float around the player when they are near the solution. Once in a while it’s a bit tricky to find the solution because you have to wander around a big area until something pops up, but it's pretty fair for them most. Occasionally the game will make good use of illusion, and you’ll need to take advantage of them illusions to progress.
Now it’s time to move onto the combat, which is both enjoyable but gets tedious later on. It plays out like any ordinary action game. You can perform both light and heavy attacks, deflect enemy blows, transition into certain combos, and dodge enemy attacks just in case you can’t block them. Certain enemies have specific weaknesses and if you deflect their attack at the right time you can open up a window of opportunity. Time will slow down and Senua can perform a flurry of blows. One unique ability Senua has is focus. When you activate focus you can slow down time to a crawl similar to when you perfect parry which makes enemies easily exposed to attacks. Using focus at the right time can make a difficult group fight with enemies coming from every direction much easier as they give you more time to optimize an opponent. Just be careful that it has a recharge rate and that recharge rate is very long.
Now what makes the combat somewhat flawed? Well it’s mainly two aspects. The first is how the camera is angled for each attack animation, and second it’s how there are a good handful of combos but your basic attacks will carry you the entire way through. The second complaint really isn’t a problem, because a majority of the action games I have played are beatable using the most simplest behaviors. During fights with two or more enemies the camera likes to jolt around when switching between foes. It’s a third person action game, but the camera is so close up to Senua that you aren’t given enough peripheral view to see enemies from the side. It’s made even worse with how difficult it is to turn and see enemies coming from behind. The combat doesn’t do anything mechanically interesting and is generic overall, but it is functional and does moments where you truly are being a skilled swordfighter is awesome.
Plus the combat isn’t the main focus of Senua’s Sacrifice and it’s more on the storytelling. Besides that there really isn’t anything else I can say. There are a few scripted segments in the game where you can screw up very easily without much of a warning signal, but we’ll touch on those in a few seconds. Hopefully you’ll be able to guide Senua through the underworld and recover her lost loves’ soul.
Thoughts
Senua’s Sacrifice was a game I found hard to understand even when I was done playing, but beautiful once I took a look back. The story has a lot of depth and representation of mental health. We get to watch this tribe woman slowly break down as her inner thoughts overwhelm her. Each thought judging every action she takes. Reminding her of all the tragic events of her past, the people who ridicule her for being a burden, and reminding her that at any moment she can die. Even with all the inner stress she learns to overcome these looming threats and push forward. It’s through these moments that Senua demonstrates what it means to overcome anxiety. The demons within us. To tell ourselves that we can do it as well. It’s a really intriguing story, but the way it’s presented keeps me thinking. It gives hints rather than fully explaining story bits clearly, so this is one of those scenarios where you must piece it all together on your own. You may even have to look up an explanation to to find what you missed.
Another aspect I think Senua’s Sacrifice handles best is how tense the game can be at times. It’s an action adventure game, but it doesn't treat the player like they're in some brave powerfantasy. The environments in this game can be dreadful at times and make the player doubtful of what is around them. One of the first sections in the game is marching through a forest filled with illusions and when I looked at a nearby wall I realized some of the shadows looked like eyes and they were blinking at me. That or I was going insane which I think the game was intending. There are some more insane sections later in the game that got my blood pumping, but I don’t want to spoil it for you since they work best when going in blind. It’s weird how a horror game like Resident Evil can’t scare me, but games from other genres like Senua's Sacrifice or Subnautica can scare me. Probably with how they nail the atmosphere, audio, and tone.
Now I do have criticisms of this game. I don’t want to offend anybody, but one of the reasons why I may not love Hellblade as much as other players is because the game itself is fine. I know you aren’t supposed to play it for the gameplay, and it’s designed decently enough to get you through. However, gameplay-wise Hellblade isn’t really all that inspiring and there are a lot of other games that do what it does better. The combat can be somewhat generic depending on how you approach it, but it gets the job done. Light attack, heavy attack, and a parry. I know some people said there are combos, but I never figured them out during my playthrough and honestly the most basic attacks are good enough. One big problem I do have with the game is the lack of replayability. Due to how linear the game is it means certain moments will only work once and one time only. Scripted moments that are supposed to stress or scare the player will only work the first time, because you’ll know the correct way to perform it next time. Once puzzles are solved it means you know where to find the solution the next time. Bosses are rough, not hard just rough, and one fight later on is just messy.
My final complaint is somewhat of a spoiler, but from a mechanical standpoint it is somewhat bad. They explain early on a mechanic where if you die too many times during your adventure you’ll slowly get corrupted by The Rot and your journey will be over. Meaning your save file will get deleted. This is actually a big fat lie. I died quite a bit during my playthrough and it never felt like my playthrough would abruptly end. I looked it up and it turns out I was in fact right as you can’t truly die even when you reach seventy plus deaths. This is a trick thrown in by the developers to get the player worried in the hopes they would care more about the adventure. There are benefits and downsides to this. The benefit is that it gets the player to play more carefully. Improve with each passing moment and let each death have an effect rather than ignore them. The downside is that once the player figures out this mechanic has no effect at all by either dying a bunch or looking this up then it won’t work. This especially ruins a second run of the game as they can die all they want knowing there are no consequences for doing so as the devs lied about the mechanic.
Overall I think Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is a great game. I didn’t overly obsess over it like a majority of players and I do think it has a few problems that could have been addressed more from reviewers like the lack of replay value and how stale the gameplay is, but I enjoyed the story and how Ninja Theory conveyed mental health. Although I enjoy the more lighthearted examples like Celeste, I think people will enjoy the more mature interpretation Ninja Theory has in store for players. Find out why it’s one of few video games out there that tackles mental health right. In the end I give Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice an 8/10 for being pretty good.
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