How A Fast Food Giveaway Made Me Love, Then Hate, Hellblade

Let me tell you a story: the year is 2018. Your good friend Stacey is not yet a games journalist. She’s not really anything. She left her teaching job feeling unfulfilled, but didn’t know where fulfilment lay. Probably not in the Burger King she visited each week on her way home from therapy, but visit it she did. It was here that she met 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Hellblade.

See, Xbox once had a short lived partnership with Burger King wherein you got a week’s worth of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Game Pass with a meal. I&rsquo♈;d always played video games and had a significant interest in understanding them (hence🎀 the career path that unfolded shortly after), so the deal appealed to me. I went home, typed the code into my Xbox, and booted up Hellblade.

Hellblade Was The Rightt Game At The Right Time

Hellblade Senua's Sacrifice - Senua Reaching Her Arm Into The Glowing Blue Light To Pull Out A Sword

I loved the game. There was something special about the aching slowness of the way its story unfolded, how creatively and hauntingly the psychosis was depicted on the screen (and in my ears). It had a narrative that pulled me in, its sharp fingers clawing at my flesh, and gameplay that served the story rather than intruding on it. I look back on it as one of my favourite games of the generation, which is why 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Hellblade 2 was so disappointing for me.

Part of it may have been my own headspace. I was drifting through life at the time, a little lonely, a little lost. Therapy was for my transition, then in the early, pre-medical stages where my bones still felt like jail bars, and those visits to Burger King - eating junk food alone in too-bღright fluorescent lights in the back of an old booth - was one of the few sources of meagre joy in my life.

Of course, I did not have psychosis, and Senua does not have depression in Hellblade. I didn’t really see anything of myself on the screen, but still I felt a connection. I was playing games regularly, but too many washed over me as I stared at the screen with glassy eyes and moved the thumbsticks listlessly. Hellblade made me lean forward. Hellbla🀅de helped bring me back.

Obviously, there were a lot of factors in getting🌱 me from there to here. I wouldn’t even call Hellblade chief among them - there was more work to be done and my decision to move into games journalism wa🔜s not motivated by Hellblade itself, but by a presentation I saw at my local university a few months later on games journalism. But I still look back on Hellblade fondly, as an important game that entered my life at the right time.

Hellblade 2 Doesn't Live Up To Its Predecessor

Senua lights a Hidden Folk brazier in Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2

Maybe I simply don’t need Hellblade in my life anymore. But I fear the simple fact is just that Hellblade 2 is significantly worse at every single thing it attempts. The story feels more shallow and is no longer a personal journey of discovery but a fairly standard quest, the gameplay is even more rote yet given increased screen time to make it feel like a triple-A, and you ꦛget less control than ever because every key moment is wrestled away from you for a choreographed motion capture cutscene.

It’s interesting that both Hellblade games are in the respectable low 80s on OpenCritic, yet have very different responses. The first game lingered around the 7s and 🍒8s, with an understanding that it was good, but not quite there yet. I understand the hesitation - it’s barely a video game at all, with limited gameplay interactions and a short runtime. There was a sense it was a solid foundation for greatness, but not quite greatness itself.

But Hellblade 2’s lo𒆙w 80s🐲 score runs the gamut from 5/10 to 10/10. It’s far more divisive - some point to the extra gameplay as proof it has built on these foundations and thus finally ascended to greatness. Others, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:such as myself with my 3/5 review, feel the strength of Hellblade has been diluted by 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:turning it into a gamier game. The 168澳洲幸ꦡ运5开奖网:pacing now stutters in fits and starts, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Senua’s psychosis is de-emphas🌞ised to give more space for puzzles and combat, and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:the story feels shallow without Senua’s struggles at their centre.

F✨rankly, this is not a game that would have motivated me out of my stupor had I gotten it alongside a Long Rodeo (RIP to a real one). I feel nothing for Hellblade 2. Maybe worse than nothing, with pangs of disappointment and resentment piercing the nothingness.

I still hope 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Ninja Theory gets to make Hellblade 3, firstly because I donౠ’t think (as seems to be the case these days) that one misfire should kill a studio, but also because I stillꦬ trust that the first Hellblade is the real one. I’d love to see more of that Senua without stale gameplay getting in the way.

Whether a game would have cheered me up had I played it via Burger King during the height of my depression is not a fair measuring stick. But it is an appropriate one for Hellblade, and when it comes to the sequel, the answer is a resounding &lsq🧸uo;no’. And ultimately, that’s how I’m going to remember it, if I ever think a🌠bout it at all.