Half of the gameвЂ™s experience is in its sound design, and the voices that swirl around in SenuaвЂ™s head. Oh, and I nearly forgot: play it with headphone if you can. Simply put: I fucking love Hellblade: SenuaвЂ™s Sacrifice, and will likely be playing it again sometime this week. It truly kicks stigma of psychosis and mental illness right in the teeth, in a way that is easily approachable for the gaming medium. IвЂ™ve never felt so badass overcoming mental illness. And I think this is due to the gameвЂ™s balance and pacing of story, character, environments, and puzzles. The fights are far between, which is refreshingly welcomed.Д®very fight feels warranted, unsuspecting, and rewarding. Something else thatвЂ™s handled by the game brilliantly is its combat, which is surprisingly rare.

ItвЂ™s truly raw and almost invading at times. The cinematography is personal, shaky, and up-close with Senua from the very start to the very last shot of the game, usually inches away from her face at all times. It had a focus on mental health and psychosis (two themes still not commonly explored in games, let alone in a game that has a Norse focus to it), and it looked massively impressive for coming from a studio made of about 20 people. But still, it piqued my interest for several reasons. If youвЂ™re a fan of Life is Strange, Stranger Things, and being a teenager, then youвЂ™ll likely really dig Oxenfree.ДЄnother game I slept on, but, unlike Oxenfree, didnвЂ™t really have anything thatвЂ™d usually immediately appeal to me, is Hellblade: SenuaвЂ™s Sacrifice. This one just has the exception of an over lingering mystery on an island - but itвЂ™s one, like its characters, that I found uninteresting and uninspiring. I see its value, and understand why itвЂ™d work for others, but I simply have trouble relating to cliche teen characters with personal battles and themes that have been explored time and time again with coming of age stories. And when the games core mechanics are dialogue choices, I feel even less compelled to play it. When a game is heavily character and story focused, and IвЂ™m having trouble relating to its characters, that leads me to having low stakes in their outcome. I eventually completely zoned out and let Juliana pretty playthrough the whole thing. This exploration of their personal battles often felt cliche, and like its dialogue, forced and underwhelming to me. I donвЂ™t think a couple youngins would be snapping back and forth at one another with witty remarks while their lives can be possibly in danger.Д®ach character has their own personal battle and story that they have to overcome while also maneuvering the spooky situation theyвЂ™re in.

I found the dialogue to be overly fabricated and forced to be coming from a couple of teens in a heightened supernatural situation. It isnвЂ™t long until something mysterious about the island is afoot, and leads our characters to exploring weird electric statics and hums coming from the islandвЂ™s caves.ДЄn interesting mechanic is that youвЂ™re armed with a hand radio, which allows you to tune into radio stations surrounding the area, a guided history tour of the island, and, itвЂ™s most important and primary function, deciphering some of the electric frequencies and hums you come across. The game operates in a similar fashion to most modern adventure games with timed conversational choices, that can stem to different outcomes depending on what you say. It consists of following a group of teens to a mysterious island thatвЂ™s common for kids to hangout on and do the usual things teens are often written to do: hangout by bonfires, eat weed laced brownies, and have existential conversations about life. Juliana, on the other hand, just finished Life is Strange: Before the Storm and the first episode of Life is Strange 2, and Oxenfree felt like the right follow-up for her. But, for reasons I couldnвЂ™t place at the time, I just sorta didnвЂ™t feel compelled to play it. The game fit a lot of criteria for what would normally be up my alley: it was a story/character driven game, with a modern illustrative design, that was dialogue and choice heavy.

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