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HELLBLADE: Senua's Sacrifice is the new game by Ninja Theory, known for making the best worst Devil May Cry game, the pretty good Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, and the tech demo Heavenly Sword. Gameplay is HUD-less, there's no map button, no prompts come up to tell you when you can interact with something. It's an Experience, taking about 8 hours-ish, mixing exploration, light puzzle solving (that is often very, very clever), and a deceptively simple combat system with its main draw: the story. You are Senua, a mentally ill woman rowing your boat down a river to the Norse version of Hell. To say any more at all would be spoilers. It's only $30 and I would have been happy if I'd paid twice that. It has quickly leaped into my top 5 games of the year, which is crazy when you consider what's come out this year. I was going to link a trailer here, there are several of them out there but they all contain what I would consider to be significant spoilers, in the sense that you're gonna want to see that poo poo yourself.
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Aug 10, 2017 02:37
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| # ¿ May 9, 2024 05:35 |
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I didn't use headphones on my first playthrough and it makes a WORLD of difference. The Voices say SO MUCH. I'm kinda interested in the attack/combo system too, I can't really figure out how to do some things. Like, you can do a quick forward-stab somehow but hell if I know how. Also, one thing that was a major roadblock for me: remember there is a "melee" button. Also, there's a choice early in the game. You have to do two areas, basically. The Green one has harder puzzles and no combat and is the much harder boss. The Red one has easy puzzles and an easy boss.
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Aug 10, 2017 04:32
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I hope they patch in a free mode that's just "boss rush/waves of enemies". It seems really weird that beating the game doesn't unlock some kind of thing like that, the combat has so much care put into it for what is basically a game that nobody would love for the combat alone. I keep comparing this game to Silent Hill 2 in my head, where it's something where you get to see a crazy world, real madness, and unravel a pretty good story, with gameplay that is not objectively mindblowing on its own (SH2's combat is downright bad, but its exploration/puzzles are pretty decent). With this game though, the only reason I would hesitate to recommend it solely on the strength of gameplay is that there isn't a whole lot of it. I would play a whole spinoff game using this engine with less story but a ton of puzzles and combat.
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Aug 10, 2017 04:50
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Rookersh posted:Can someone actually sell this concept to me better? Well for one thing, within the first couple hours, you figure out that's not what the story is about at all. Like, it's nominally what she's doing, but you quickly learn a lot more about Senua and what she's "about".
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Aug 10, 2017 13:39
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Without headphones it's easy to never figure out you can Focus in combat
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Aug 10, 2017 16:03
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veni veni veni posted:I really hope the permadeath thing is actually a bluff because I have died like 8 times in this burning house. That is far and away the worst part of the game. If there's a gimmick that makes it easier, I never figured it out. You just have to learn where the runes are and then keep eating poo poo until you get lucky enough to focus on them without dying, or getting killed in the maze. There's another maze later that is much better and I'm just like why did they leave the burning house as is, didn't anyone say "yo this part is hard in a way that isn't fun and a lot of people will probably stop playing here"
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Aug 11, 2017 04:34
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The part where you're being chased by the fire monster
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Aug 11, 2017 04:37
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I think what's hard about that part is that it's very hard to know if you have time to "scan" the rune or not, and because looking at the thing makes it come for you faster, it can be very difficult to keep track of exactly where it is. Plus there is at least one dead end in the maze as a gently caress you.
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Aug 11, 2017 05:03
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veni veni veni posted:Holy poo poo the trial in the darkness is spooky as all hell. I was getting severe Silent Hill vibes, and not in the good way  For that matter the river of blood with the writhing bodies was very "Silent Hill" and made me feel really gross, but in a good way
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Aug 11, 2017 05:08
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Honestly though the scariest moment in the game to me was quite early - when you see Hela's giant head coming out of the gate on the bridge Also the whole Venravn Trial is basically "welcome to Blair loving Witch" so despite it being well-lit I was freaked the gently caress out the whole time.
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Aug 11, 2017 05:17
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Yeah I don't think I died in the River of Blood. You do a lot more damage at that point so I just prioritized not being flanked and taking out the easier guys first. Perfect parries give you Focus, and any time you can use the charged blade attack do it. You should be able to literally (on Normal) take out 2-3 guys in quick succession if you Focus at the right time.
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Aug 11, 2017 06:55
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The autosave is also what screwed my game up before, I think. I quit playing after finishing Red Area, and when it loaded me back into the game, I couldn't go anywhere new and I could clip through doors.
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Aug 11, 2017 09:04
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Yeah Surt is way easier but Valravn isn't hard, he just takes a while. His attacks don't do much damage so as long as you button mash to get up he shouldn't be able to kill you. Definitely remember to block his thrown dagger attack. Also, Parry seems to block ALL damage from ALL attacks even if you don't time it right - lots of times I would just hold Block when I saw a big attack coming and I'd get knocked back but take no damage.
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Aug 13, 2017 00:26
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One thing I really liked is that Dillian wasn't some Manic Pixie Dream Boy, his stories about his dad perfectly explained why he was nice to Senua, to the point where I feel like it might have been a better choice if they had been "just friends". A note on doing the two areas in the beginning: The Red Door has combat encounters in it, the Blue Door does not. If you do the Blue Door first, the combat behind the Red Door will have stronger enemies and more of them, so if you don't really like the combat much it's to your advantage to do Red Door first.
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Aug 13, 2017 01:10
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There are other puzzles of that type later, but not many. Yeah, it kinda comes out of nowhere.
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Aug 13, 2017 20:30
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Weird thing about the lorestones, I missed one but I still got the scene with Druth that you're only supposed to get if you find all the lorestones.
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Aug 13, 2017 21:50
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PantsBandit posted:Just beat Surtr. That whole sequence was great. I feel like the shape-puzzles are pretty pointless though and don't really add anything to the game. They felt pointless because the game shows you exactly where to go. It would have been more fun if you could Focus to get a hint but otherwise had to actually find the shapes on your own, because some of the later ones required pretty clever thinking.
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Aug 14, 2017 03:07
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I definitely meant it when I said I'd have been happy to spend $60 on this, lord knows plenty of 8 hour $60 games are much worse, but pricing it at $30 hopefully means it'll sell better and we'll get HELLBLADE 2: SENUA'S GENOCIDE
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Aug 14, 2017 04:45
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To me it seemed like the ending was directly setting up a sequel, though I do share the concerns that it might not be as good.
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Aug 14, 2017 20:44
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Torpor posted:Choosing to not have a HUD but then have your loving achievements pop up on screen with stupid names attached to them is goofy as gently caress. I don't think developers have a choice in that matter, at least not on PS4. It's why I've had the "Trophy Alert" turned off forever. Has anyone figured out if anything happens if you just keep fighting infinitely at the end?
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Aug 15, 2017 00:25
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Game keeps topping PSN's sales chart and even got up to #2 on Steam at one point. I'm so happy this game is doing well, probably do a second playthrough tonight on Hard to see the balance changes.
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Aug 22, 2017 00:37
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Mindblast posted:From what I understand (endgame spoiler) without Druth everything would have been different for Senua. Her culture is quite different, if it werent for Druth she would not have that information on northern mythology. Not only did it provide a form and fuel for her psychosis, it also gave her the illusion of an objective to chase. She was glad she met Druth but in the long run it ended up being detrimental. Well, also she outright says she would have died if she hadn't met Druth in the wilds, and that he suffered from psychosis as well and is the one who helped her understand that she can fight it off
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Aug 22, 2017 07:53
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Started my Hard Mode replay and the balance changes are great, it makes me wish there was an "endless arena" mode. I'm seeing combos I didn't know existed still! Also got the Platinum. Turns out the ONE Runestone I missed is one I hadn't actually missed at all, it just hadn't triggered before for some reason.
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Aug 25, 2017 22:15
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I'm really glad that there's a twist involving Druth, but it isn't anything cliché like most devs would have done, ie "he was actually terrible to Senua" or "he wasn't a real person" or whatever. Druth > Dillion
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Aug 31, 2017 19:00
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I usually don't get mad at Yahtzee's reviews but he gets actual facts wrong (the permadeath thing, for starters) and the whole tone of it was like "punching downwards". Like yeah, it's his gimmick to hate, but I can think of dozens of reviews this year where he talked about how good the game was while criticizing the few things it got wrong. Dumping so hard on a $30 passion project that at least tries some cool stuff is just lame. I expected him to at least praise the fact the game has no HUD and teaches you everything about how to play it without text boxes saying "press button to parry!" etc.
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Sep 3, 2017 05:25
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New patch, no idea what it did. How come nobody knows the real answer as to whether the game erases your save file? I keep seeing stupid people trashing the game for doing that, but as far as I can Google, Ninja Theory haven't actually said if it does and some guy tried dying dozens of times and never had his save erased.
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Sep 9, 2017 21:20
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It would be nice if Ninja Theory would come right out and say it never happens, though, because then all the people claiming that it's happened to them (who all just happen to also hate the game for being "SJW") will look even more stupid than they already do.
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Sep 9, 2017 22:44
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I died at least 20 times during the Burning House segment, and then a bunch later during the Bridge, and had the same thing happen (reset to elbow), on Hard. It's ridiculous that people are claiming it's happened to them, or that they care so much about this game to make poo poo up.
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Sep 9, 2017 23:04
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Has the dust settled on how well the game did financially yet?
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Nov 3, 2017 21:26
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Yeah I imagine it's the kind of game that will have a pretty long tail sales-wise, like Journey.
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Nov 3, 2017 22:40
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Ineffiable posted:This is also a game they published themselves if I remember right? Which is why there's no physical edition and they could settle on a $30 price point. So they pretty much broke even already and we still have holidays to give people lots of gift cards or steam library gifting. And it hasn't been on sale at all on PC or ps4, those sales should give it a real boost. Yup. I think they did good here. haldolium posted:I find the comparison fitting, SpecOps is what I'm reminded of mostly as well here. But not in a good way. Different strokes, but I legit loved the gameplay in this game, to the point where I actively want an arena/boss rush mode.
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Nov 5, 2017 01:14
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| # ¿ May 9, 2024 05:35 |
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Extremely surprising but cool!
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Mar 29, 2018 00:30
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