Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 review – featuring the best console graphics ever-GameCentral-Entertainment – Metro

Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 – you don’t need a next generation with graphics like this (Xbox Game Studios)

The latest Xbox exclusive has the best graphics ever on a home console, as its troubled heroine takes on Viking slavers and hungry giants.

If Hellblade 2 achieves only one thing it is to act as proof that there is absolutely no need for a new generation of consoles, despite rumours of Xbox planning to start one as early as 2026. It also proves that modern games don’t need hundreds of people to make amazing looking graphics, since it was made by a team of just 80. Hellblade 2 is probably the best-looking video game to ever appear on a console and yet it’s still almost the only first party title on the Xbox Series X/S that isn’t also on Xbox One – hinting at how much more the hardware still has to give.

The facial animation and recreation of 9th century Iceland represents the most believably photorealistic graphics ever in a commercial video game and, apart from some occasional issues with draw distance, the impression of exploring a real world, filled with real people, is almost perfect.

That’s not how you’d describe the rest of the game though, which is deeply flawed at a conceptual level, when it comes to gameplay, storytelling, and what it’s trying to portray in terms of mental illness.

In the original Hellblade, created before Microsoft bought developer Ninja Theory, you’re introduced to a Pict named Senua, who survives a Viking raid on Orkney that kills everyone else – including her lover and mentor. Senua already has a type of psychosis, and this is made worse by the massacre of her village, as she is tormented by voices she refers to as the Furies and embarks on a journey to reclaim her lover’s soul from the goddess Hela.

The problem with this set-up is that it was never clear whether any of this was literally happening or not. We took it all to be imagined and since there were no other human characters in the game there was no one to dispute that. It also didn’t really matter, because the various encounters were clearly metaphorical anyway, whether Senua was really venturing into the underworld or not.

Strangely, the original game never played up this uncertainty and it was never even clear whether that was meant to be a factor in the experience. This creates a problem in the sequel because it features multiple characters, all of whom are convinced that Iceland is being overrun by giants who are eating the local population.

At times it’s vaguely hinted that they’re misinterpreting natural phenomenon, but you may have seen the gameplay reveal trailer a few years ago, featuring a crippled giant on a beach, that involves several other people fighting together – so are they really battling a supernatural being or not? Strangely, the game doesn’t even pose that as a question.

The storytelling in general is extremely muddled, as not only are the Furies constantly nagging at Senua but so is a monster voice who seems to be a representation of her abusive father. Either way, her father is vitally important to the denouement of the story and yet he’s barely mentioned in the rest of the game or the recap of the original. But then the entire finale feels extremely rushed, as if both the final gameplay encounter and the thrust of the story were suddenly changed at the last minute.

Hellblade 2 is also the latest in a long line of pretentious narrative-based games that ends with the character making a life-changing choice, over which you have absolutely no control. Hellblade 2 even rubs salt into the wound by constantly talking about ‘choice’ during the ending, as if taunting the player at the fact that the supposedly interactive entertainment they’re playing is anything but.

We’ve not mentioned the gameplay yet because, as in the first game, it’s not very substantial. The combat system is entertaining enough but it’s different from the first and relies much more on simple combos as a follow-up to a dodge or parry. And by simple, we mean pressing light attack, light attack, and then heavy attack is all you ever need. It’s very easy, and while quite dynamic, it doesn’t feel as physical and distinctive as the first game.

It also grossly overdoes a trick where Senua is only ever fighting one person at a time, only for their defeat to suddenly reveal someone else nearby who immediately attacks her. We can’t speak to how well the game represents psychosis, but it’s excellent at portraying someone who has no peripheral vision whatsoever.

Constantly reusing the same gameplay and presentational tricks is another of Hellblade 2’s key problems, as fights with multiple people constantly shows your allies asking for help and then being brutally killed a moment later, to the point where its predictability becomes overtly comical.

Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 – the combat also has a minor bullet time effect (Xbox Game Studios)

Other repetition is more welcome though, such as a beautiful kaleidoscope effect for various blocked pathways, that have to be unlocked by lining up multiple objects to form the shape of a rune, as a sort of optical illusion. According to Ninja Theory this is meant to represent a common experience from those experiencing psychosis, but it’s blatantly just the Riddler puzzles from the Batman: Arkham games, which makes you wonder how much else of the condition is being trivialised for gameplay purposes.

In the first game these types of puzzles were the only other gameplay element, beyond the combat, but in the sequel there’s also another type of puzzle involving floating spheres of water that change the layout of the immediate area. These are sometimes mixed with the Riddler puzzles and while they’re momentarily distracting, they’re not particularly interesting or difficult.

Hellblade 2 is frustrating on several levels because the work that has gone into the game, in terms of the visuals and audio is exemplary. Ninja Theory is only a small studio and yet the graphics are staggeringly good, and the voice-acting equally convincing. The presentational flourishes are frequently jaw-dropping too, especially a section in the middle that, while it steals a bit too liberally from the movie The Descent, plays with Senua’s perception in other ways beyond just the kaleidoscope effect of the doors.

And yet, as astounding as the graphics are the game never really finds anything interesting to do with them and a large percentage of the game is just slowly walking forward while listening to the Furies and/or your various companions. It’s not quite a walking simulator but it’s not far off.

There is clearly industry-beating talent at Ninja Theory and yet taken as a whole Hellblade 2 is a deeply unsatisfying video game. And that’s ignoring the anticlimactic ending and the fact that it’s less than eight hours long.

What’s also questionable is the developer’s insistence that Senua’s portrayal is based on medical science and real people’s experiences. And yet all this translates to is generic video game puzzles and voices in her head, which anyone could’ve made up without any research at all. The game also presents Senua’s altered perception of the world as something similar to the shining, muddying the water between a recognised medical condition and video game superpowers.

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Despite our issues with the game, it’s worrying to think what might happen to Ninja Theory in the future, given Microsoft’s culling of developers that make anything other than hyper successful triple-A games. But what Ninja Theory has done with such a small team should be celebrated and used as a template for the future, at least terms of the visuals and production.

We can only hope that what Ninja Theory make next is something considerably more satisfying in terms of narrative and gameplay. Because if those elements were as good as Hellblade 2’s graphics this would be one of the best video games ever made.

Formats: Xbox Series X/S (reviewed) and PC
Price: £49.99
Publisher: Xbox Games Studios
Developer: Ninja Theory
Release Date: 21st May 2024
Age Rating: 18

Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 – a very beautiful game (Xbox Game Studios)

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