When I’m not reading, writing, working, spending time with family, recording audio, practicing bass, etc, I will occasionally play a video game.

If you recall, last time I played Firewatch. An oddly interesting and depressing video game with fun graphics.

This time I decided to play a shorter game again and played Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice. I knew going in that this game dealt with phychosis and disturbing mental imagery. Combined with multiple background voices that constantly talk in the characters head. That’s about all I knew going in. That this was a disturbing game.

Yeah, it’s a disturbing game. I know there is a sequel in the works and I’m anxious to see what the second will bring.

That said, I played the game and watched the video feature that was included. The gameplay was good. Some tricky puzzles. There is NO explanation at all in how to play the game. You need to figure things out as you go. That means battle can be a little tricky and just when you think you’ve got it figure out, you’re pinned against a wall, can’t get up, and you’re dead.

Oh, and I didn’t mention that if you die too many times, the game will consider you dead (there’s a cool visual trick they did that I really liked.

Now, I’m a casual gamer. I’ve reached the point in life where I can buy all the games, but it comes down to how much time do I have to commit to a game. That’s why I picked this one. I read online that it takes an average of 4-6 hours to play. Well…I’m me. I like to stop and look around. Take in all the sights. See all the flora and fauna. I died a few times because I was busy looking at the details on the enemy instead of button mashing.

Whoops.

This game has some beautiful graphics. I don’t know it’s just me, but for some reason I was cruising at 60fps the entire game (on PC) until the final boss when I dropped to 25 and dipped under 10 fps even when I tried to lower the graphics. No idea what was going on there.

Even so, the game is beautiful, fun to play, and really creepy if you pay attention to the story and run around and read all the signposts, checkout all the abandoned buildings and see all the…you get the point.

Yeah, I spent 8 1/2 hours in the game. What can I say. I like to look around.

Anyway, really fun game. Worth the time.