It’s here: the long-awaited sequel to the “Wow Mental Health is Real and Serious” game of 2017.
Jokes aside, I mostly enjoyed Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice (despite the misophonia) and was excited to see what Ninja Theory were going to turn out for the next instalment.
A big deal is made about the graphics in Hellblade II and rightly so. Thousands of hours were clearly poured into making the environments look as realistic as possible, faces are painstakingly facelike and the water is very splashy-looking. So why does the DLSS/upscaling/whatever technology constantly introduce artifacting to every single aspect of this game? Crashing waves full of digital squares, hair that looks crafted out of jpegs of pubes, pixels that pop in and out causing 99% of the game to shimmer in a headache-inducing fashion. It just destroys the hard work of the artists when Super Great Technology adds so much visual noise to a scene.
On the topic of Noise: for a game with strong themes of loneliness and isolation, Hellblade II never leaves the player alone. The “Voices” in Senua’s Sacrifice felt like a reasonable, if mawkish, portrayal of self-doubt and anxiety (and maybe schizophrenia, I’m not qualified to comment). Here they exist solely to fill each and every nook and cranny in the audio with constant, incessant babbling; hammering the player with encouragement, hints, exposition, occasional disparaging remarks, general word soup. The list goes on. Figuring out a puzzle naturally is verboten because the voices will immediately give the answer within about two seconds.
If that’s not enough, the game will often outright move Senua quite some distance if it believes the player has “more or less got the solution” which feels like being coddled towards the end of the game as fast as possible.
But don’t imagine that Hellblade II is desperate to reach a conclusion, it’s just really hoping to skip all this “gameplay” nonsense and get back to the real meat-and-potatoes of the experience: holding Forward and Left Bumper. Most of this game is holding Forward and Left Bumper and when it isn’t, it’s making the player wish for the halcyon days of F and LB by offering up some of the least intuitive and exciting combat a game has ever had. Fighting enemies in waves of 3-10, one at a time, with very little in terms of variation. Three button combat. Technically the player never even has to touch the joystick. Innovative.
As far as the story is concerned; Hellblade II is a step down from Senua’s Sacrifice. Gone is any semblance of a real goal with “tangible” antagonists and an environment as seen through the eyes of an unreliable narrator. Here, Senua is on some kind of revenge-trip-gone-wrong in which she is repeatedly sidetracked by people being hassled by Big Bads. Is it really that different from Far Cry 5?
Ultimately Senua's Saga: Hellblade II manages to be the worst thing a video game can be: condescending. It treats the player like an infant; solving puzzles for them, railroading them through the environment and badgering them incessantly to “Focus” and “Look over there” before jangling a shiny in front of them and congratulating them on “a Job Well Done”.
Jokes aside, I mostly enjoyed Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice (despite the misophonia) and was excited to see what Ninja Theory were going to turn out for the next instalment.
A big deal is made about the graphics in Hellblade II and rightly so. Thousands of hours were clearly poured into making the environments look as realistic as possible, faces are painstakingly facelike and the water is very splashy-looking. So why does the DLSS/upscaling/whatever technology constantly introduce artifacting to every single aspect of this game? Crashing waves full of digital squares, hair that looks crafted out of jpegs of pubes, pixels that pop in and out causing 99% of the game to shimmer in a headache-inducing fashion. It just destroys the hard work of the artists when Super Great Technology adds so much visual noise to a scene.
On the topic of Noise: for a game with strong themes of loneliness and isolation, Hellblade II never leaves the player alone. The “Voices” in Senua’s Sacrifice felt like a reasonable, if mawkish, portrayal of self-doubt and anxiety (and maybe schizophrenia, I’m not qualified to comment). Here they exist solely to fill each and every nook and cranny in the audio with constant, incessant babbling; hammering the player with encouragement, hints, exposition, occasional disparaging remarks, general word soup. The list goes on. Figuring out a puzzle naturally is verboten because the voices will immediately give the answer within about two seconds.
If that’s not enough, the game will often outright move Senua quite some distance if it believes the player has “more or less got the solution” which feels like being coddled towards the end of the game as fast as possible.
But don’t imagine that Hellblade II is desperate to reach a conclusion, it’s just really hoping to skip all this “gameplay” nonsense and get back to the real meat-and-potatoes of the experience: holding Forward and Left Bumper. Most of this game is holding Forward and Left Bumper and when it isn’t, it’s making the player wish for the halcyon days of F and LB by offering up some of the least intuitive and exciting combat a game has ever had. Fighting enemies in waves of 3-10, one at a time, with very little in terms of variation. Three button combat. Technically the player never even has to touch the joystick. Innovative.
As far as the story is concerned; Hellblade II is a step down from Senua’s Sacrifice. Gone is any semblance of a real goal with “tangible” antagonists and an environment as seen through the eyes of an unreliable narrator. Here, Senua is on some kind of revenge-trip-gone-wrong in which she is repeatedly sidetracked by people being hassled by Big Bads. Is it really that different from Far Cry 5?
Ultimately Senua's Saga: Hellblade II manages to be the worst thing a video game can be: condescending. It treats the player like an infant; solving puzzles for them, railroading them through the environment and badgering them incessantly to “Focus” and “Look over there” before jangling a shiny in front of them and congratulating them on “a Job Well Done”.