Polygon has reviewed the action game Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice:

Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice review

The developers of DmC take on human psychology in this enlightening action game

Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice uses everything in its arsenal to perpetuate feelings of dread, anxiety and fear: camera perspective, light, sound, visuals, combat. There are no scary monsters, no jump scares, none of the traditional horror fare. Instead, it taps into something infinitely more terrifying: human psychology. And it is wildly successful.

loading...

Developer Ninja Theory worked alongside a team of mental health specialists, professors of psychology and people recovering from psychosis to convey their experiences. The depiction of main character Senua’s hallucinations and delusions feel vivid, honest and terrifying. From seeing literal fragments of reality to wandering mazes guided by a grieving ghost, every little thing you do skirts the line between myth and a terrifyingly inescapable reality. Every battle and puzzle ties back into the underlying themes and experiences of psychosis.

[...]

WRAP UP

"Hellblade is both a psychological terror and an enlightening experience"

Hellblade is not an Orphean quest to retrieve a dead lover from the underworld. It’s not some epic tale of revenge. It’s an education and contextualization of being psychologically different in the time of Vikings and Celts. Nearly every facet of the game — whether it’s combat, puzzles or exploration — is deliberate, pointing back to the overarching theme of what people called “cursed” during that time. Hellblade successfully weaves metaphors of grief and loss into fundamental game mechanics and rich folklore, and through these I felt like I truly was able to understand how someone else sees the world.

Score: 8.5/10