➤ Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, the review for Nintendo Switch 🎮

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice it was published about a year and a half ago, more exactly in August 2017, on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC: the world and the critics remained banned. Ninja Theory, the most recent of the Microsoft acquisitions, had hit the mark once again, telling a profound and fascinating story, addressing very intense and profound themes, accompanying everything from a truly remarkable technical sector and artistic direction. Many still carry the story of Senua with them, others (hopefully many) will be able to do so now that Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice lands on Nintendo Switch, the hybrid console of the Kyoto House with an apparently unstoppable success. Surprisingly announced during the last Nintendo Direct, the game has already been available on Nintendo Switch for a few days, only in digital version, the result of a conversion that took a long time. The point of arrival is a complete, satisfactory product, probably the best that could be expected on Nintendo's (also) portable console: the fact remains that the porting required numerous compromises. We tell you about them in ours review of Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice.

Plot: Celts, Norsemen, psychosis

It seems that April 2019 should be remembered as the month of long-awaited ports on Nintendo Switch, even if they belong to very different genres: the other day we proposed the review of Cuphead on Nintendo Switch, now it's the turn of that of Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice. However, do not expect to find in the second of the two the same light-hearted themes of the first, and not even the same videogame genre: the adventure of Senua is a tortuous path in the abyss of madness, in the neurosis that afflicts the mind and the person of the protagonist; it is played on two different levels of reality, the inner one of the tormented heroine, the outer one of the Celtic world recently conquered by the Norse invader. And the external and contextual world of Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice will definitely delight fans of Nordic and more specifically Norse mythology, the same as in the most recent chapter of God of War.

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, the review for Nintendo Switch

La plot it is also apparently linear and simple: Senua is the warrior of a Pitta village (pre-Roman Scottish population). Her tribe is attacked and decimated by the Norse invaders, who in the brutal operation of raiding and conquering also kill Dillion, the man she is in love with: therefore she begins her journey to the kingdom of the dead, Hel, in an attempt to bring him back to life. . A bit of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, but on the contrary, and with Eurydice in a strong state of confusion: after all, Freudian psychoanalysis, of which the production of Ninja Theory is full, has taught us well how the functioning of the human mind can come easily compromised by traumatic experiences. The enemy invasion, the destruction of a village and the death of a loved one are definitely traumatic experiences. But these brief considerations are not sufficient to explain the psychological depth and the scientific precision that accompany Senua's journey to Hel. From an early age the girl has manifested forms of neurosis, the same ones that for a long time the Western historical tradition (pre-Christian and then Christian) has considered (almost always) mystical experiences, real encounters with the divinity. The madman has always been a privileged one, one who was in contact with the divine world: he could have experiences that were closed to the rest of mortals.

For Senua exactly this happens: the voices in her head, the Furies, lead her to the realm of the dead. Here he must face a series of minor and major deities, all dangerous, in a desperate race against time to save Dillion. We do not anticipate you further, nor would we ever dare to anticipate the conclusion of the journey, but never as in this case is the experience of the journey itself more important than its real goal and its end. Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is a videogame experience that oscillates between theinteractive adventure proper, the action, the exploratory title and the puzzle game. Most of the adventure is in dialogue, Senua constantly talks with the voices in her head that answer her, guide her, deceive her, pursue her, taunt her. The player controls the protagonist in a third person view, through various types of Nordic and infernal environments; solves rather basic environmental puzzles and others a little more complex, but never really difficult (unfortunately, however, very repetitive); from time to time he fights enemies in white weapon duels, also in this case never really insurmountable and without a system of progression or enhancement of his abilities, which in the adventure in question would have no reason to exist.

Conversion on Nintendo Switch

We come to the thorny knot of the question, namely the conversion on Nintendo Switch from a technical, graphic and acoustic point of view. Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice arrives on the hybrid console of the Kyoto House with a more than decent porting: it looks great on the Full HD TV in the living room, a little less well (but still in a widely acceptable way) in portable mode, you always listen with attention and pleasure preferring a nice pair of headphones. From our point of view, playing Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice in portable mode paradoxically, on the other hand, it risks distorting the production itself, which always requires a lot of attention from the player: losing a detail, a word or facing a level thoughtlessly affects the understanding of the entire story.

If you really feel the need to play the title in this last configuration, it is probably better to do it indoors and where you are sure not to be interrupted constantly or shortly thereafter, otherwise the narrative situations and the whole experience will be fragmented. ; completing the game takes about nine hours, and it's not a bad idea to organize sessions of about two hours each, possibly close together. Even aliasing and lower performance in portable mode, however, provide a decent incentive to enjoy Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice in TV (or docked) mode: the title runs at 30FPS (fixed) and 720p in fixed mode, while at parity. of frames the overall graphic rendering decreases a little more in the portable version (or tabletop). To make a purely illustrative comparison, remember that the game could be enjoyed on PlayStation 4 Pro with two different settings: 1440p and 30 FPS or 1080p and 60 FPS. Considering that Nintendo Switch still has hardware-related limitations, the conversion by Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice seemed like a happy medium: it's not excellent, but it still represents a good job, from whatever point of view you want to consider it.

It is certainly nice, however, to see an enlarged user base and players who will be able to play Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice for the first time, enjoying a truly unique adventure of its kind. The Ninja Theory team has thoroughly studied the theme of neurosis and madness, thanks to the support of a team of scientists and specialists in the field; Added to this are the extraordinary skills of acting, identification and expressiveness of Melina Juergens, face and body of Senua thanks to the most sophisticated motion capture systems. The version for Nintendo Switch also includes, among other things, the special contents related to the making of the title, an additional value for all those who want to investigate further on the development phase and the background of the game.

Comment

Tested version Nintendo Switch Digital Delivery Nintendo eShop Price 29,99 € Resources4Gaming.com

8.2

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8.1

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Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is an important title in the recent history of the videogame medium, probably one of those productions that will also be studied in the near future: it has helped to spread the theme of neurosis and mental instability within our much loved artistic form. , achieving remarkable results and employing a serious, rigorous, scientific methodology. All this without neglecting of course the gameplay and the still necessary "fun factor": the title of Ninja Theory lets itself be played with pleasure in its nine hours required to complete the narration, alternating different genres such as the narrative adventure and the action in third person. The conversion on the Nintendo Switch is not technically perfect, but the overall graphic rendering is quite good and the 30FPS almost always solid: it is also the only way to take the journey into the abyss of the protagonist with it.