Hellblad: Senua's Sacrifice

[DrownedAmmet]

Also apparently the game deletes your save if you die too many times. Which is just fucking dumb.

Hopefully these things get fixed soon. I really do want to like this game.

Not a bug. This is a perma-death mechanic to make you have to think about shit instead of ramming into something until you win.

I didn't say that bit was a bug. I said it was fucking dumb. Which it is.

It doesn't even accomplish what you say it's supposed to. If someone fails and gets their save deleted then their only choice is to start over. That is to say, to ram into the game until they win. (Or, y'know, say, "Fuck this, I'm off to play a better designed game.") Except this way will waste a ton of their time for no good reason.

Jim's thing is just that he fucked up and the autosave is bad.

Exactly. Bad enough that it can screw up your entire save beyond recovery if you miss a torch.

Whether you call that a bug or not is merely a matter of semantic. Either way, it's potentially game-breaking.

Some folks tested it and apparently there isn't a save-delete feature, so either they lied about to get the player to be more cautious, or those people encountered a bug

Either way I think it's a dumb feature, give me real and lasting consequences for my failures, don't make me replay 99% of the game because I fucked up the last 1%

 

[CritialGaming]

Also apparently the game deletes your save if you die too many times. Which is just fucking dumb.

Hopefully these things get fixed soon. I really do want to like this game.

Not a bug. This is a perma-death mechanic to make you have to think about shit instead of ramming into something until you win.

I didn't say that bit was a bug. I said it was fucking dumb. Which it is.

It doesn't even accomplish what you say it's supposed to. If someone fails and gets their save deleted then their only choice is to start over. That is to say, to ram into the game until they win. (Or, y'know, say, "Fuck this, I'm off to play a better designed game.") Except this way will waste a ton of their time for no good reason.

Jim's thing is just that he fucked up and the autosave is bad.

Exactly. Bad enough that it can screw up your entire save beyond recovery if you miss a torch.

Whether you call that a bug or not is merely a matter of semantic. Either way, it's potentially game-breaking.

Turns out that the game never deletes saves and only tells you this to instill a sense of fear into you for failure. It's part of the mental health theme I guess.

 

[Dalisclock]

I'm still looking over reviews as they trickle out. So far they're generally positive but if the Torch/Save bug is real I'm gonna wait for a patch.

I'm also curious if the Permadeath thing is a serious issue or if you really, really have to suck at it in order for this to be an issue.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

Oof, this review situation is exactly why publishers need to give reviewers more than 24 hours to review a game before launch. To clear up stuff like this perma-death/savepoint bug/feature/bit of both.

Imagine a 24 hour review period for a AAA game with a 20 hour campaign. We wouldn't be getting a review so much as a first impressions article and some barebones analysis of maybe the first half.

Not pro-consumer at all.

 

[burnout02urza]

Oh my God, this was not a good game. It was really, REALLY not a good game at all.

It's not like Dark Souls, not remotely. At most, it's like Amnesia with very, very rudimentary sword-fighting thrown in: there's a very small variety of enemies, and they don't really attack you in interesting ways. (Combat feels very floaty to me, but there you go.) Your main method of overcoming swarms of enemies - and there *are* swarms of enemies - is that after a certain number of parries, you can slow down / stop time, then you can run around doing tremendous damage to your opponents.

But let me get to the my main beef with the story. And it's a major one.

Spoiler

The ENTIRE adventure takes place in the heroine's head. That's it. That's the big twist. Nothing is real, and the heroine is simply crazy. To elaborate - She is completely delusional. You can basically ignore the entire plot until the end, where Senua's basically in Hell battling the final enemy: At this point, she's *aware* that she's delusional, which means that the final boss isn't especially representative of anything - It's sort of a metaphor for her myriad of problems.

Also, the battle is unwinnable. Effectively, you fight endless hordes of the same enemy types, and you keep fighting until you fall. After that, the final boss chokes Senua to death, and impales her on the Hellblade, 'killing' her. But as it turns out, the Senua you've been playing as is the deluded one: the final boss morphs into Senua's form, and discards her lover's head. Her entire journey has no mystical elements - She's simply coming to terms with her grief.

It's an extended metaphor. Also, the permadeath? It's a lie, the way the entire story is a lie. Senua's not infected with Helrot, she's crazy.

 

[gsilver]

Yeah. This reminds me of the Breath of Fire game on the PS1 where it had a counter that ran up to 100%. I didn't know what it was and was intentionally running it up as quickly as possible, to try to get whatever ability activated when it reached 100%.

What happened when I reached it? Instant death.
I never played the game again after that.

 

[Schadrach]

As for its' take on mental illness, my money is still on Depression Quest being the better mental illness simulator.

Ugh.

No, really. Depression Quest wasn't unique for dealing with mental illness as a central theme. Not even depression specifically.

Hell, it wasn't even unique among indie games with minimal game mechanics released in Q1 2013 whose central purpose is to tell a story about depression. It wasn't even the first such title released in that tiny niche and I'd even argue it wasn't the best one. It just got an exceptional amount of press attention, for what it was.

 

[Dalisclock]

Yeah. This reminds me of the Breath of Fire game on the PS1 where it had a counter that ran up to 100%. I didn't know what it was and was intentionally running it up as quickly as possible, to try to get whatever ability activated when it reached 100%.

What happened when I reached it? Instant death.
I never played the game again after that.

I didn't play Dragon Quarter but I heard it was made pretty clear that reaching 100% was a bad thing. I could be wrong.

Also, aren't you pretty much required to replay the game mutiple times with ever higher D-sync ratios so you can access more and more of the game? Essentially a NG+ built into normal progression.

 

[Erttheking]

Also apparently the game deletes your save if you die too many times. Which is just fucking dumb.

Jim did mention this in his new review. He said that it's not really an issue, but he said he couldn't say why because of spoilers.

OT: I'll be getting fifty extra bucks for doing favors on Thursday, so I'll be buying it then.

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

I'm just wondering what excuses NT will make up if the game doesn't sell. I'm surprised they're even still around.

 

[Zhukov]

So bought it and played a good chunk.

Actually really enjoying it! I'm pleasantly surprised.

I wish the combat was a bit better animated. Then again, I'm super picky in that regard. It will probably impress the average pleb non-snob. But there are some obvious flaws. For example attacking an enemy who has been knocked to their knees will cause them to be instantly standing upright in order to receive the hit. One could try and hand-wave it off as the enemies being questionably corporeal since they're illusions and ghosts and gods and whatnot, but it still looks weird.

Also, the puzzles seem rather arbitrary. Find this image to open door. Okay, but why? I don't mind so much, I even kinda like the perspective puzzles.

It looks great, it plays well enough and I'm very interested to see where it goes. I like how Senua herself comes across both in story and gameplay as desperate but utterly driven. Not something we get to see in video game protagonists all that often.

 

[maninahat]

This would be one of those few games I've bought full price on immediate release (I only usually do that once a year at most). A game studio wants to tell an interesting story with tremendously good facial graphics, whilst offering it at a sensible price? Sold! I'll support that kind of behaviour, even if I end up not liking the game in the long run. Sterling's review was what pushed me over the line to buy, confident that I won't suffer the unfortunate bug he had that ruined his game.

I've yet to play it, because I'm still finishing up Horizon: Zero Dawn, that other game with a horribly generic name and a noodly haired, pseudo-tribal lady protagonist.

 

[Kingjackl]

I like the idea of this game, but having seen an LP of the first hour or so, I'm less convinced. It promises a lot, but there seem to be too many repetitive simplistic puzzles and walking sections between combat encounters. I'm all for building atmosphere and the boss fights look stunning, but too much padding in what is clearly not meant to be a long game.

One for a sale maybe. Hopefully the bugs'll be worked out by then.