Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice Review: 3 Ups & 2 Downs

Downs

2. Continued Walking & Puzzles Kills The Pace

For such a short game, as it takes about six hours to complete, Hellblade sure takes its time. This doesn't only involve pushing the story back through puzzles, which are interesting at the beginning, but with time become frustrating.

Since Senua is supposed to be a special warrior that saw patterns no one else did during battle, she is too often left walking around, looking for shapes. In the land of Surt there's some real danger involved when looking for patterns, and you have to run in order not to get burned, but in other levels, not so much.

Walking and running are the crucial words in the last two sentences, because even when Senua's running, she's not moving very fast.

It's a carefully planned move by Ninja Theory, as that way it can tell the story and the player doesn't have to sit through another cutscene, but can actually feel like they're doing something. That "something" is still a bit of a drag, though.