Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice

Despite a bug that forced my first playthrough to end prematurely, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is an incredible game that will continue to linger with me as a singular and emotionally affecting experience. For its audio and visual design alone, it is stunning, but for its ability to use the video game medium to bridge our understanding of mental illness while also telling a personal and powerful ...

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice manages to tell a thoughtful story about mental illnesses while also providing exciting gameplay and some absolutely fantastic visuals and audio. For anyone looking for a tight, well-paced, linear action game, this is it.

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Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is a masterclass of atmosphere, storytelling, and the marriage of mechanical and conceptual design. While there are moments that feel shoehorned in to remind us we’re playing a video game, the care and attention Ninja Theory has clearly poured into Senua and her story has created something amazing. This is a game everyone should play, and I’m thankful for the opportuni...

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is beautiful, discomforting, and compelling. It might challenge what you like about games, but challenge is good. You're doing yourself a disservice if you don't try it.

It's all a matter of perspective.

It could be a whisper or a shout but Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice will stay with you. Deftly crafted with stunning detail and an expert depiction of psychosis, it's a journey that's as torturous as it is heart-breaking.

Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice opens with a warning screen, which tells you all you need to know about Ninja Theory’s challenging new character action game. Developed in conjunction with physicians and mental health patients, the title tackles the taboo subject of psychosis – a disorder which causes hallucinations and delusions. As you may suspect, this makes for difficult viewing at times – but the...

Hellblade’s mundane mechanics help underscore a powerful story of overcoming your demons, if you’re willing to subject yourself to the honest portrayal of mental illness it presents.

A wonder of sight and sound, Hellblade explores psychosis while dissecting demons.

Hellblade is not an Orphean quest to retrieve a dead lover from the underworld. It’s not some epic tale of revenge. It’s an education and contextualization of being psychologically different in the time of Vikings and Celts. Nearly every facet of the game — whether it’s combat, puzzles or exploration — is deliberate, pointing back to the overarching theme of what people called “cursed” during that...

When that patch does come out though – and for everyone else who doesn’t have AMD cards – then Hellblade is well worth buying. Some segments are a slog, and mechanically it's nothing special, but it’s worth battling on to experience the multi-layered story that explores themes that other games daren’t.