Mental health is something really important but there are barely people who really cares about said theme, if we talk about gaming, the only franchise I´ve played that actually talks about mental health in the best way possible is Psychonauts and maybe Silent Hill 2, but we are not here to talk about Psychonauts and Silent Hill -not yet- it was until yesterday that I managed to play Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, probably the only game that lets you be a person with severe psychosis, in the most accurate way.
In this game we´ll follow Senua, a warrior who wants to save her beloved one, she must go to Helheim in order to save his soul who is trapped in the absolute darkness, as you can see, Helheim is like hell in the norse mythology, all of this game is heavily influenced on the norse mythology. Senua suffers from severe psychosis, she actually believes she lives in all of these places from norse mythology, she really believes that in order to revive her beloved one she must go to Helheim, and this is not even a spoiler tho, it´s the premise.
When someone suffered from a mental ilness at that time, it was said that one person was cursed from the gods, I don´t know much about this but I think these people even had to be exiled, they were deprived of their home. Senua suffers from severe psychosis, meaning she literally hear voices in her head telling her all kind of stuff and hallucinations that doesn´t allow her to be in touch with reality. Since a child, Senua was told all of that, the voices in her head are nothing more than darkness consuming her, a curse from the gods.
In Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, we´ll control our protagonist through a desolated world, most of the times we´ll move from point A to point B, there´s not much into it to be honest, sadly, there´s not much we can interact through our enviorment, you could say this is half a walking simulator lol and you wouldn´t be wrong at all, still I can´t deny how beautiful this game is regarding its looks, the screenshots doesn´t make justice to this game, one must play it in order to see how beautiful is graphically speaking, it´s even more amazing when you notice this is an AA game that were produced by 20 persons if I´m not mistaken.
There´s a combat system too because this is Ninja Theory we are talking about lol, it´s a pretty easy combat system to follow not gonna lie, you have a strong hit and a weaker one, all of this with a sword, we can defense ourselves with said sword and even do parries if we have the correct timing you see, Senua is a warrior so it´s common sense that she uses a sword. The game is pretty easy but when there are three or more enemiges in the screen, things can get challenging, there is not a big variety enough of enemies but enough to complicate our way to Helheim.
I´d like to tell you that death is heavily punishable in this game, you are allowed to die just a few amounts of times, if you die too much, darkness will absorb Senua, meaning you´ll lost all of your progress and you´ll have to start from the begining. This is an easy game but that small detail make things all more complicated, every single battle becomes in a rush of dopamine, you´ll have to be extra careful in order not to die all the time.
There are puzzles in this game and they are not that hard to solve, they are pretty easy actually, it´s a little hard to explain but there are runes scattered through the place, sometimes a door will be closed and in order to open said door, we must use a certain skill of Senua called ¨Focus¨, the skill let Senua to...well, focus, this way we can change the perspective of the enviorments, the thing is to find said runes through the zone and using Focus on the door, I know it might sound confusing but it´s a little complicated to me to explain these puzzles as they are pretty weird.
The doors I´m talking about we´ll be seen like this, and the runes we find they must look exactly like the door shows, this way our path will be open, this is a game mechanic that will repeat through the game.
The Focus skill can be used outside of puzzles, for example, we´ll find through the game this kind of pillar I don´t know its name, if we focus on it, there will be a voice explaining a lot of the norse mythology, it´s not something that will affect on Senua, but if we want to get the true ending we must focus on every single pillar through the game lol, I recommend to do so, there´s a lot of things about the norse mythology I didn´t know and it´s actually interesting to hear all of that stuff, first time in my life I actually get attracted to the norse mythology.
We can use Focus on battles as well, it´s pretty useful, when Senua hit the enemy she´ll be able to use Focus, it´ll allow Sena to slow time for a certain short time, it´s so useful when you are surrounded by a lot of enemies.
In the end, Hellblade is a journey about Senua and how she must deal with being a person who suffers psychosis, I´m really impressed because this is the first time I ever see a videogame does a excelent job at showing us how it feels to live this way. There´s something I´d like to mention but this is some of a SPOILER, so if you don´t want to read the SPOILER, don´t keep reading this.
It´s true that the game tells you that if you die many times you´ll lost all of your progress and will have to start from the begining, that was actually a lie, I mean, yeah, the game tells you that, don´t get me wrong, but that never happens, doesn´t matter how many times you die, you don´t lost your progress, this little lie from Ninja Theory was told so we could empathize with Senua a lot more, in order to make us feel paranoid and psychotic, damn, I loved that, it really helped me to empathize with Senua, every combat felt frantic and as I said before, they felt as a rush of dopamine.
I don´t have much left to say, only that playing Hellblade Senua's Sacrifice has been a great experience and that it´s that kind of game that I´d recommend to anyone, not saying is for everyone, but I really think Hellblade Senua's Sacrifice is a game that you should play once in your life.
All of the screenshots were taken by me