[Game Playlist] Hellblade Is The Most Unique and Most Essential Game in 2017

The theme of psychosis - or psychiatric disorders - is often adopted in horror-themed video games. Call of Cthulhu, Amnesia, Eternal Darkness are some titles that take advantage of it. However, only Ninja Theory has tried to dig deeper into the theme and make it an important element in the gameplay through their new game, Hellblade.

Described as 'game independent of AAA', development of Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice was carried out by the team that created Heavenly Sword and DmC: Devil May Cry together with neuroscientists and people with psychosis. For the first time, phenomena schizophrenia implemented in sound design to build horror through audio. The result is experience Gaming which is second to none.

You will feel the uniqueness of Hellblade as soon as the game starts. A woman narrates the journey of the main character, Senua, and tells of her intention to infiltrate hell to bring back the people she loves. It doesn't take you long to discover that the narrator is one of the many voices that fill Senua's head.

Audio and voice acting is the best part of Hellblade. These voices accompanied, commented on, and even judged Senua's every action. For example when Senua descended to a location where he could not return, one voice would laugh at him. On the other hand, these voices can also help him in battle, warning him when the enemy tries to attack from behind.

The second thing that is the mainstay of Ninja Theory is in terms of visuals and setting game. Developer take advantage of technology motion capture sophisticated technology to create digital faces and record movements as realistically as possible. Melina Juergens was given the trust to play Senua, even though she is actually a video editor in Ninja Theory. Developer take advantage of Unreal Engine 4, then work on the visuals as best as possible to ensure the graphics of this game look very beautiful.

Hellblade takes the background of Norse and Celtic mythology - Senua himself is a member of the Pict tribe. There, you will face mythical creatures and gods such as Valravn, Surt (Surtr) to Fenrir. Your 'standard' enemies are not humans. They generally appear suddenly and attack in groups. Senua is only equipped with one blade, and your skills in attacking, dodging and parrying are crucial to keeping the protagonist alive.

The biggest weakness of Hellblade is its use of repetitive battle formulas. It took only a few encounters for me to read the opponent's moves, and use the same tactics over and over again to defeat them. Fortunately, the battle session with boss much more unique.

Ninja Theory's decision to use audio to provide clues again deserves thumbs up. Like when warning Senua to dodge enemy attacks, the voices in his head sometimes told him to 'focus'. When fighting against Valravn, I thought this warning was only symbolic. As it turned out, I had to press the focus button ('E' on PC) to return Valravn to the human dimension so that it could be attacked.

I highly recommend Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice for anyone who loves games third-person action. The reason is not only because of serving gameplay special. For a game new with more than eight hours of playing time, Hellblade is also priced at a very affordable price, only IDR 200 thousand Steam.

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Game Playlist is a gaming article in collaboration with MSI and DailySocial.

Game played from notebook unit MSI GT72VR 6RE Dominator Tobii, powered by a 7GHz Intel Core i6700-2,6HQ processor, Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 graphics card, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD-based storage and 1TB HDD, and equipped with Tobii Technology eye-tracking technology.