Abandoned

Cute little game, pretty much plays like a suped up Flash game while doubling as a WWI history lesson. However! My game bugged and got stuck on a level in the middle of the game, and if this was a game I was enjoying MORE I might've tried troubleshooting / reloading a prior save etc, but...not quite! So although this was not a bad game by any means, it unfortunately gets tossed in the bin nonetheless. NEXT!

Completed

Now this was probably the best game I've played all year, what an experience. It does play like a God of War Lite in some respects, but the main differentiator that makes this standout is the portrayal of Senua's psychosis. All throughout the game you constantly have voices in your head whispering things to you (headphones are a MUST, the audio design is so good) - sometimes encouraging you, sometimes giving you hints, sometimes yelling at you, and oftentimes taunting you. I can't tell you how demoralizing it is to be stuck on a puzzle and hearing a chorus of voices giggling and making fun of you all the while. Also adds an interesting dynamic to fight scenes, besides the intensity of the voices constantly telling you you're gonna die, it actually adds to the mechanics by telling you when an enemy's about to blindside you so you can react and parry (the camera's fixed in such a way where you can't always see all your enemies onscreen). The list goes on from there but damn, the psychosis element alone is totally worth playing this game for.

Rest of the game is p good too! Combat is solid, very simplistic but satisfying. Senua's motion capture, voice acting, and especially character design is definitely a highlight, she's a great protagonist. Weirdly though they eschew motion capture for some other characters in cutscenes and instead have them as live-action...I assume it was for budgetary reasons but it definitely took me out of what's otherwise an extremely immersive game.

One thing I'd maybe ding it for is the length, even though it's not an especially long game (took me around 9 hours), it probably would've been even better at 5-6 hours. Some of the puzzles and fetch quests definitely felt like padding at times, which is definitely not UNIQUE to this game but it's always a pet peeve of mine whenever any singleplayer game artificially extends the playtime. It's really okay if you only have ~5 hours of story to tell!

But ya, great game. There's actually another really cool element of the game that I won't even talk about it since it'd be hard not to spoil anything, but suffice to say it definitely lends itself to the character's psychosis.

Didn't even find out til after that there's a sequel coming out, will definitely pick that up when it comes out