Senua's Saga: Hellblade II | Review

Gaming
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Senau’s journey. Senau’s. First sentence. :wink:

Great work ! Can’t wait to play later today.

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Metacritic 81.

Told you that reviewers would find a way to keep it in the 80s despite everyone gushing over the previews. Wasn’t expecting it to be quite this low, though. :roll_eyes:

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pay them no heed.

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I wouldn’t be so quick to judge; from everything I have read, '80s is great (it’s a boutique AA studio), offering some of the best in class experiences. It has its shortcomings but is getting huge reviews from some interesting places.

For me, the only suspect review is PC Gamer and Metro (surprise). I think the rest are fairly well-reasoned. Its also a big win for the studio. It also opens the narrative for ‘what is the Coalition doing if NT is doing THIS’

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First impressions:

  • Best graphics on a videogame ever by far (30 fps but smooth).
  • For me combat feels weighty and satisfying.
  • For now story beats seem interesting and things happen fast.

Willing to play more!

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I really hope it is for them. It was a while ago but I remember how a certain dev which I can’t remember felt that the MC score was super important for a game. Something like “it should at least be this…let’s strive for it.” is MC really that key for studios?

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Yeah some of the reviews I’m reading are basically saying it’s not fun to play as they don’t really like heavy games.

I find Last of Us (particularly the second one) to be one of the most misery-inducing, horrific-for-the-sake-of-it games ever - in places it’s traumatic rather than fun, and the story isn’t actually that great.

But I respect it’s a type of game I don’t enjoy, and I respect its artistic value - if I worked for a site, I’d not review it and leave it to someone who enjoyed that type of game.

It really does sound like some Hellblade 2 reviewers though should have left it to other members of the team - and if this was Last of Us, Sony’s PR team would be threatening “no more review keys for you” and their fanbase would be up in arms that someone who didn’t appreciate that style of game was reviewing it…

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And i am stuck. Any guides available yet.

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And this is why Copilot on Xbox is going to be huge.

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The ladies where screaming ’ focus focus focus’ but I didn’t listen.

Now all clear.

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They scored the original a 6, so it’s on point for them at least.

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Cant wait to play this tonight. Sounds like exactly what I wanted… a commitment to the vision of the game, doubling down on what the studio wanted to do and has excelled at doing.

Seen a few reviews complaining that the game doesnt have enough variety in gameplay. I suspect mileage will vary. My own expectations were that the committment to the vision of Senua as a character would mean that there wouldnt be such a dramatic shift in gameplay variation. Doing so in my opinion would have altered the tone they were so clearly pursuing.

Congrats to Ninja Theory on the great overall reviews and from what I can see, successfully pushing boundaries in audio and visual fidelity in the medium.

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I will say this, the graphics and audio are on another level. Best graphics in a game so far no questions. Walking and panning the camera around realizing this is being rendered in real time is really something.

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Yeah a number of the reviews and comments on them seem to be expecting this to be AAA just because they’re a first-party now.

Ninja Theory have stuck to their vision - yes they may have had more funding for mo-cap etc. but they’d have had that anyway with the success of the first one.

It does seem a lot are just “this isn’t the game I expected” or “I expected a massive AAA game from Xbox because it’s been a while” - which strikes me as reviewer / commentator issues rather than a game issue

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The shit just got real. :skull:

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I’m 100% done with reading or using review scores as a value for a game or for platform fodder.

It’ been bias fanboy wars for decades now, tired of that crap.

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Agreed. One review said

  • Senua looks like a make-a-wish child that wished she was in God of War.

Seriously, what kind of shit is that? I know reviews are opinions and all but that right there is some straight up childish console war bullshit.

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The dangers of working from home! I had to drag myself away after defeating the mini-boss, the game’s sucking me in. So far, so good. The performances are probably my favourite thing, just the little things that the characters do during a fight, take it to another level.

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Yeah, this just confirmed me that no Xbox game will get good MetaCritic scores, no matter how good they are. Most reviewers actually do their job pretty well, but some bad actors really ruin it.

But the good thing is that you can simply try the game and see it for yourself on Game Pass.

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