HIGH Looks gorgeous, but at the cost of 60fps on console.

LOW A torturously unexciting puzzle gauntlet midway through the campaign.

WTF Key story beats presented like the holographic recordings from Tacoma.

In developing the original Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, Ninja Theory famously consulted with mental health experts in creating a sympathetic portrayal of a character with psychosis. I’m not someone who experiences visions or hears voices, but I’ve had my own struggles with mental health, and I saw parallels between this Pict warrior’s acceptance of who she is and my own. Like so much great art, Hellblade had a specific and intended meaning, but could also be appreciated on broader levels.

As such, it gives me no pleasure to report that Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II made me feel very little on any level. Whatever their faults, I would never accuse Ninja Theory’s past titles of lacking a clear sense of direction, but I suppose it makes sense that their first sequel would be the one to break that streak. Every multi-part narrative, given enough time, eventually reaches the point where things just happen for the sake of having more story. With Hellblade, we’ve reached that point by episode two.

It’s difficult to pinpoint where exactly Hellblade II goes wrong when, on its surface, it treads closely to the original formula. One might expect Ninja Theory’s first major release under the Microsoft banner to be their most bloated, but initially it almost feels praiseworthy for what it doesn’t do. There’s no open world, no resource gathering or crafting, no skill tree that adds an extra 3% damage to Senua’s strong attacks, and no upgradable bracer that increases her parry window by a fraction of a millisecond.

In a climate where seemingly every major release is a months-long commitment, there’s something refreshing about a triple-A videogame that can be completed in a weekend and doesn’t force its players to learn a hundred new systems. If the mission statement with the original Hellblade was to offer big-budget production values at a modest scale and for a modest price, the sequel at least upholds the tradition of not wasting too much of our time.

However, while Hellblade II avoids many of the most frustrating tropes of modern gaming, it struggles to fill that space with anything else of substance. It can’t be overstated how much of Hellblade II is spent simply traipsing along linear paths with literally nothing to do but stare at the pretty scenery and wait for Senua to reach the next cutscene. My instinct is to say that an experience this beautiful and empty tends to arrive at the start of a console’s life cycle, when there’s new tech to show off and not much else to play, but that’s being unfair to forgettable launch titles. At least the action in Ryse: Son of Rome heated up more than once an hour.

The original Hellblade was admittedly light on mechanics, but it was story-first fare that trapped us in Senua’s version of hell and made us question what was real, going so far as to gaslight players into believing that their save files were at risk. It was a mean, oppressive, and grueling experience. It played with audience expectations up until the very end, when it beautifully tied the experience together with an empathetic message about accepting loss and living with — even embracing! — what can’t be changed.

Hellblade II, in stark constrast, has no edge and no sense of purpose. With Senua’s psychosis now mostly under control — the voices and visions are still there, but nowhere near as overwhelming — she’s forced to wander the “real” world, engaging in bland heroics and preaching messages of love and acceptance across a desolate landscape of pillaging and plundering. My most charitable reading of Hellblade II is that it reworks the sinister imagery of its predecessor into what feels like a morality tale for children — light versus darkness, love versus hate. I’m sure there are people out there who aren’t yet convinced that empathizing with one’s enemies is a more productive solution than enslaving them, but I doubt Ninja Theory will be the ones to change their minds.

I would go further, though, and argue that Hellblade II actively harms the franchise’s standing as a well-researched and sympathetic portrayal of mental health. The original lucidly visualized the invisible demons that people with mental health struggles deal with on a daily basis. Although it ultimately taught us to see Senua’s psychosis as a feature rather than a bug, it didn’t mince words about how self-destructive the mind can be, and how torturous such an existence often is.

That’s why Hellblade II largely lacking any sense of danger has repercussions beyond the game simply being boring. It portrays Senua as a singularly gifted force of good, but that’s rarely reinforced in any of the things that we’re actually doing as players. Without spoilers, there’s an excruciatingly long sequence midway through the campaign in which Senua is searching for something ancient and forbidden that can only be unearthed by “proving” herself. These trials are hyped up to be The Ultimate Test, and the ground is littered with the corpses of those who’ve failed.

Once there, it turns out that The Ultimate Test is just a series of rudimentary puzzles that largely involve flicking switches in the correct order. Putting aside the arbitrary nature of these puzzles — the rune-hunting exercises in the original Hellblade weren’t everyone’s cup of tea, but at least they served a thematic purpose! — they’re just insultingly easy. Even someone with no intuition for this sort of thing could bumble through using simple trial-and-error, yet Ninja Theory treats completion of this task like a show of worthiness on par with lifting Thor’s hammer. It’s infantilizing to both the player and to Senua herself, who’s seen by everyone in this world as some sort of mystical fairy child for essentially completing a dungeon from a junior-level Zelda clone.

As expected with Ninja Theory, presentation is not the problem here. They’re industry leaders when it comes to performance capture — working with Andy Serkis will do that for ya — and the way its animations seamlessly transition in and out of cutscenes is remarkable, even given how much we’ve been spoiled by modern tech. Hellblade II‘s announcement predates COVID-19 lockdowns, and while its long development cycle doesn’t feel evident in the scope of its story, it’s at least evident in the visuals and the level of polish.

On another positive note, the combat is still enjoyable. It’s simple and easy to grasp, and the camerawork, effects and sound design sell the power of every sword swing. It worked in the original as one of Ninja Theory’s tools of oppression and claustrophobia. Here, I just appreciated the jolt of energy in an experience where I was often pausing every few minutes to get up and pace around the room in order to stay awake. Sadly, while the fleeting combat segments are the only time Hellblade II builds any momentum, it’s never sustained for long. The climactic moments, for all of their flash and pomp, feel gamey and artificial, like the multiple instances in which Senua must run from cover to cover to avoid insta-death. That kind of thing would be a lot easier to forgive if I were engaged in the story, but alas.

Until now, I’ve liked each new Ninja Theory game more than the last, and I can never deny the craft on display. Given that this is their first major release since the Microsoft acquisition, I credit Hellblade II for not feeling compromised by corporate interests, but that only makes it more baffling that it lacks any real vision that I was able to discern. It’s not an offensively bad experience, and yet I can only offer one of the most damning criticisms imaginable — I have no idea why it was made.

Rating: 4.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Ninja Theory and published by Xbox Game Studios. It is currently available on XBX/S and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on both XBX and PC. Approximately eight hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated M and contains Blood and Gore, Intense Violence and Strong Language. Not for kids! This is a spooky, sinister game full of impalements, dismemberments, and human sacrifice.

Colorblind Modes: Colorblind modes are present.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. The subtitles can be altered and resized. Considerable attention was paid to make Hellblade II more accessible in this department than its predecessor. I don’t recall any sequences in which hearing audio cues is an outright necessity, and the game includes a number of accessibility options such as closed captioning, menu narration and speaker direction. I believe this game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: Yes, this game offers fully remappable controls.

The post Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Some of the most clever puzzle design I’ve seen

LOW The timed puzzles

WTF Broken Cameras

Hi everyone! Eugene Sax here with another review from GameCritics.com!

I like puzzles, up until I don’t.

I’m not ashamed to admit that there have definitely been times when I needed to look at a guide or walkthrough just to be able to continue gameplay, and puzzles don’t feel great when I have to search out help to get the answer.

On the other side, there are puzzles that feel almost too easy and the “puzzle” is just busywork to pad out the running time of a game, which doesn’t feel great either.

Viewfinder threads the needle by making its solutions vague enough to be challenging, but also offers forgiveness in the solutions with answers that don’t need to be perfect.

Viewfinder is a first-person puzzle title that has players going through the remains of digital worlds created by a group of scientists working on a revolutionary project. It’s up to the player to find whatever the scientists left behind, mainly by using… pictures. As players explore, they’ll will find images that they can hold up and place in the world. When they do, the picture then becomes tangible, and the player can interact with it.

For example, there might be two platforms with a gap between them, and the player has a picture of a bridge. Players can visually line up the bridge image with the real-world gap in the platforms, and then set the bridge in the world so they can cross the gap. If they place a picture wrong, or place the picture in such a way that they can’t complete the level (like placing a photo that erases the exit) players can hold a button to rewind and then place the picture in a different spot.

Without spoiling too much, Viewfinder doesn’t hold on to any one particular gimmick like this bridge trick long enough to become stale. For each set of puzzles, it introduces a new gimmick in some way, then a puzzle or two that expands on it, and then finally some advanced puzzle options. Players then move onto another gimmick altogether.

The best part, though, is that it feels like each puzzle has a range of solutions. Viewfinder feels as though it exists in the same space as something like Portal or Scribblenauts — the solution can be obtained a couple of different ways.

One obstacle required me to take a picture of an unreachable exit and put it in a new place where I could actually get to it. However, I found a way to snap a picture of the level and place it so that I could reach the exit where it was. It was the complete opposite of the intended solution, but it still worked.

Thankfully, Viewfinder realizes that placing photos around the world won’t be an exact science, and that geometry may not line up in every occasion. Smartly, there’s a sense of ‘close enough’ and the game sorts itself out to allow players to progress… Well, right up until the final set of puzzles, that is.

The last set consists of nine puzzles that must be solved within a time limit. If players have to rewind time to place a picture differently or to erase a mistake, the timer keeps moving forward regardless. Players who miss a key element early on will find themselves rewinding a lot in order to get back on track, and that rewinding eats away at the time they have.

That said, this one single gripe shouldn’t dissuade players from Viewfinder when the rest of it is so great. While the story is pretty obvious from the jump, I still enjoyed it and the great sense of atmosphere that abounds — I was eager to dive deeper, and the flexibility of the puzzles always made me feel clever. In that sense, Viewfinder is an experience I’d readily recommend to anyone, whether they’re a puzzle aficionado or not.

For me, Viewfinder gets an 8.5 out of 10.

Disclosures: This game is developed by Sad Owl Studios and published by Thunderful Games.  It is currently available on PC and PS5. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 4 hours of play were spent playing the game, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated E and contains Mild Language. There are a couple of times that “D***” comes up, but that’s about it.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: There is text in-game, and text is resizable. Audio mostly serves aesthetic purposes and is not needed for gameplay. The game is fully accessible.

Remappable controls: Controls are completely remappable.

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