Hellblade 2 Drags Because It Tries Too Much To Be A Video Game

168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Hellblade 2 is a short game. And yet it feels like it should be shorter. That's not supposed to be nasty - I'm not wishing it was so short that I had not bothered, as I have with some games I’ve played. There is a good game somewhere in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Hellblade but it’s tangled up in an identity crisis, poor pacing, abandoning what made the first ga꧋me great, and an impossible amount of planning.

It took me between eigh𒁏t and nine hours to get through ♋Hellblade, and I know that 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:puts me on the longer side of things for players. But it's not just a question of the mathematics of chronology that Hellblade feels too long. At maybe two thirds of the way through, there is (what feels like) an epic conclusion. You battle your way through rivers of lava by hiding behind rocks, and reach the peak of the bubbling, molten pit to see a giant trapped by chains.

Hellblade 2 Stretches The Runtime With Dull Puzzles

the sun sets over the hidden folk's lake in Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2

Your job is not to kill the giant, but to free them. That's in line with Hellblade's sensibilities, even if it introduces a lot more generic combat here (something else that stretches the runtime). Without wanting to get into specific spoilers, Hellblade 2 is about appeasing the giants. Freeing this one trapped in lava, and following through on its storyline, would have wrapped Hellblade 2 up nicely. The reveal is a little cliche, but so well disguised that - especially in a shorter story - it feels surprising and moving.

This 'battle' should have been the end of the game. It offers a thematic conclusion, is grand in scale, and feels like a natural endpoint. Instead, it is followed by another couple of hours in which new characters are introduced, we replay a very simple set-piece, the lore becomes far more convoluted, and we're asked to feel sympathy for a slaver the game has given us no emotional connection to.

There's a point in this additional section where you are separated from your fellow travellers and when you reunite, the game asks you to choose whether to cross the stream to be with one, or stay on your current side with the other. But as I crossed, the one I was with followed me, and nothing seemed to happen.

Hellblade 2 Has Several Endings, But The First Is The Best

This is why Hellblade feels so☂ long. So little of it matters. Even if it kept the runtime and ended at the natural conclusion, that could have given what remained much more depth. Instead, it slows you down with rote puzzles and slow-moving expositional sequences, then suddenly dashes forward once some narrative starts to appear.

It ends so many times, and each ending feels a little worse. It's difficult to complain about padding and simultaneously wish the game could be stretched out, but (depending on how you wander) the first four-to-six hours are the real Hellblade 2. The next two-to-four hours, after the volcano, feel parasitically attached to Hellblade 2, adding to it in a literal sense that can be measured in numbers but draining the life from it in all the ways that count.

Hellblade 2 is visually stunning but I wonder if the more blank cheque approach of game design has derailed it. No longer an exercise in precise focus, instead this feels more reckless, adding in elements just because they can rather than because they 🐈are necessary. Perhaps we should be glad this has not ballooned into a 30 hour long affair mimicking the action-adventure genre, but it instead keeps its own short runtime and more precise storytelling, while throwing in the puzzles and combat that would have been used in this 30 hour game anyway.

The first Hellblade felt like a short game. This one feels long. When you're clocking in at single digit hours, that's a problem. It's never really sure what it wants to be, and we don't get long enough with any version of Hellblade for its identity to shine through. Trimming those away to a much more concentrated experience would have made for a far richer game.