8 Intense Games That Kept You On The EDGE OF YOUR SEAT

2. Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is an absolute face-melter of an action-adventure game, for while its actual combat isn't terribly complex or stressful compared to most other games on this list, the overall audio-visual experience absolutely is.

Hellblade does a masterful job of conveying protagonist Senua's psychosis, using binaural audio to inundate the player with a constant stream of Senua's inner voices around the soundscape.

With that in mind, it's not without good reason that developer Ninja Theory recommends you play the game with headphones, even if it might ultimately be too immersive for many.

Beyond this, there's the early warning of a permadeath mechanic, and though in retrospect we know that players are never actually in danger of having to restart the entire game, on an initial run-through it makes the game even more nerve-wracking.

All in all, Hellblade's fine-tuned atmosphere is so suffocatingly thick you'll be glad it's over after only around five hours. That and those thoroughly naff runic puzzles, of course.