Friday 12 April 2024

Sacrifice of Senua

With the sequel coming out, I decided now was the time to play the first game.

Senua visits Hel to get her love back... unfortunately, she has severe mental illness that led to others to cause her problems. And so she travels through Hel, defeating opponents and finding runes, with voices in her head giving extreme commentary, sometimes helpful, oft times not.

This was not a game I sped through. I can't say I entirely could put myself in Senua's position mentally, it definitely wasn't a light breeze of say, a walking simulator or a Call of Duty. Story-wise, this was certainly a journey.

However, I have a lot of gripes about the game mechanics. First it doesn't tell you any of the controls (they are in the options menu) so I missed the first recording entirely, thinking it was a save point (before remembering it autosaved). The fighting is a whole thing, with, again, not telling you the controls, and there were combos?? Also, the combat starts as "Automatic"... which is harder than Hard. I did get quite far on Auto (up to Fenrir), but just got too annoyed with the combat that I knocked it down to just get through the game (which was already taxing, see above). And the game swivels wildly between combat and puzzles (which mostly aren't hard, just annoying to traverse around as even running Senua doesn't move quickly).

This is an experience (is it art?), and a thinker, but the game side of things could be better.

[END]

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