To give credit where its due, the fear imbued by Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is intense to say the least. While it is generally successful overall in creating an in-depth experience, it does tend to toe the line between walking sim and action-adventure/psychological horror that leads to some disappointment if you’ve got the wrong idea. Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is one of the more impressive examples of this approach, especially given the dedication of its developers toward creating a dark, brooding world, that’s faithful to its Norse mythological roots. It takes a truly iron-clad narrative to fully showcase the potential of this approach to a game, especially since many players become interested due to the gameplay itself. In general, I don’t mind games that pride themselves on telling an incredibly strong narrative while only being ‘walking simulators’ without many other mechanics.

They’re sometimes the most difficult sort of game to pull of effectively without completely sacrificing making the game itself actually fun to play. Story rich games are my personal bread and butter.

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