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Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice</div>
3.8 hours playtime
7 of 17 achievements
Virginia’s Main Theme – Mood Music
Virginia. Where to even begin? It’s a game that attempts to play like an experimental movie with no dialogue, down to its roughly 2h long running time (I had it running for longer to get all the cards). I first got curious about the game when hearing things like “if you like Twin Peaks, you’ll love Virginia”, etc, but after playing it, I don’t really see much of Twin Peaks in it– but there’s definitely a Lynchian feel to its approach and mood, namely hints and dashes of Blue Velvet above any of his other work. When all is said and done, the inspirations for Virginia seem to be many and varied, I personally even saw some Apocalypse Now in there; but for the most part, Virginia played to me like an extended version of one of those more down to Earth, entirely focused on the character relationships, X-Files episode.
I won’t tackle anything that happens in the story because of spoilers, but I will say that there’s an almost pervasive sense of nostalgia and perhaps even echoing sadness throughout the entire experience and the final act is as beautiful, hypnotic and thought-provoking as it can also be a tad confusing. Of course this is all down to interpretation because the game is very open-ended that way– where I saw sadness you may see happiness, who knows? I won’t go into detail over such personal matters here.
I actually wanted to replay the game in one go as soon as I finished it now that I had more knowledge of the story as a whole and of the characters, but I didn’t for the same reason I couldn’t even play the game in one sitting, despite its very short length: in all my many years of gaming, Virginia was the first and only game to have ever made me physically ill while playing it. I had to play it over the course of 3 separate sessions and I was feeling such motion sickness at the end of one of those I was feeling dizzy.
The FOV and the head-bobbing are ridiculous and the camera movement, while probably attempting to convey some sort of dream-like state, just made me feel like the character was drunk all the time! Which is funny, because there’s a scene where the character may potentially be rather tipsy, yet the camera behaves the exact same way as before and after. Turning off motion blur helped a tiny little bit, but overall this is a game I will never be replaying, despite really wanting to.
In the end, my favourite elements were the fantastic editing (worthy of an actual feature film!) and the soundtrack, which is so so incredibly beautiful and probably the closest thing to Twin Peaks in the entire game, but even then only during specific tracks.
PS: I’m thinking of just having monthly updates after this post, unless you want me to continue doing these individual, more in-depth “reviews” after I beat a game. Let me know? ^^
Post your updates how you like it. Or how you like to read them when others write :)
I played this game one time so far, not long ago. Will write comments later. There were so many small details during whole game explained only in the late episodes, that new walkthrough should tell a lot more, and I hope some day to replay the game, but I didn’t feel like playing it again as soon as I finished first walkthrough. While generally it was interesting and quite beautiful, I had some not pleasant after-tastes.
1) Game tries to be too hard something on par with well-known mystery films/series etc, but copies from them to extent of being rather a fan-service for lovers of this ‘genre’. Too many references for them to be a tribute. Brings feeling of non-originality a bit too strongly, for me. E.g. in Life is Strange there were references too, some open and obvious, but it didn’t feel this way, it was somewhat solid thing on it’s own (not discussing existing stories about butterfly effect here).
2) Then, simplistic gameplay and mechanics are totally not the interesting part. And this viscous motion.. I tried to ignore it whole game.
After beating the game I checked the achievements.. searching and collecting some scattered feathers etc, it is no-no for me, this in my opinion breaks the experience and atmosphere. I was picking flowers during my first walkthrough [and apparently missed some]. In some stages I was slowly moving through lawns to find them. And pfff, it wasn’t worthy after all, quite boring, contradicting to feeling from this game otherwise. I just saw a couple of flowers in my room afterwards. Well, one-two would be really enough, which I could find without spending time on looking into the grass. There was no real content in this activity. I hoped there would be something more than just achievement. Like giving all of them to your partner and seeing some happy cut-scene.. no, I don’t think anymore there is. And I wouldn’t want to do this just for Steam achievement. I liked things like finding application to make the child pass into the school, this was good and had meaning.
The interesting part is stepping inside this ‘movie’ and noticing details and mending the whole truth together, with all the possibilities, theories etc. As FBI agents do ;3
Hi there, I’m not feeling very well so forgive me if my reply ends up being a bit on the short side :)
I pretty much agree with everything you said; I actually enjoyed the “experience” (minus the motion-sickness), but the truth is, Virginia is so referential that it barely has its own identity and that makes it much less memorable in the end. I barely got any achievements, but from what you’re saying it looks like there’s a bunch just for doing random things and collecting stuff, which I hate– I hate having collectables in a game just for the sake of it. I was also hoping more from the relationship between the two main characters (like you would have in a more intimate X-Files episode about Mulder and Scully), but it never really got anywhere, aside from them drinking and dancing at the “Blue Velvet” bar. And I’m not even saying it needed to be a romance or anything, but they start and finish the game kind of completely neutral on one another (no real friendship or relationship developments in the end).
Regarding Life is Strange, I tried playing it for a bit a while back, but… it never clicked. I know it’s an incredibly beloved game, and I actually told Selby that I don’t know if it’s a generational gap thing or what it is, but all the characters and dialogue felt incredibly unrealistic to me– but maybe that’s how kids talk and behave these days, I honestly don’t know. So yeah, I never got very far :(
Yes, valid point! I also was sure that story will be about friendship thing, or even end with something romantic. Human relation between characters was seemingly the main plot, even as it turned to be (especially with the help of the last sequence) more of an inner dialogue. Yes, they meet in the end in the ‘breaking free’ episode, but it doesn’t even implicitly mean anything regarding their relation. They may have become great partners and maybe friends, or they may have never met and talked after that all the same. Game ending on this inner thing of protagonist even leaves a bitter aftertaste that whole narration is much more ‘egoistic’ than it could have been, as if they had a broad base of story and showed only ending of one of the lines.
About LiS, all character including adults were aliens to me but I just perceived this as difference to USA. At least this corresponds to other games and films, which while do not picture real daily life, still have a lot to real setting. This is also kind of a tourism :)
I guess this is gonna be completely off-topic from Virginia, but whatever :)
I never thought about it like that, regarding Life Is Strange; maybe it is just a USA thing! Because in movies the whole cheerleader, sports guys, geeks, etc, division never made any sense to me. Like for example back in the day I was part of my school’s football and basketball team, but was also a geek and a total punk, style wise :D I never understood why you can’t just be whatever you want to be in American movies– feels to me like you’re limiting yourself and your creativity by assigning yourself a label.
Anyway, happy holidays! :D
This comment was deleted over 6 years ago.
I had the same problem with this game. I never felt motion sickness playing a game before this game. I tried both M/Kb and controller, but neither of them actually helped. The sudden jumps from on place to another, while you’re walking also doesn’t help at all.
I didn’t understand most of what happend at the end. The whole thing without words nor voices made it really hard to understand. For example, what were those aliens doing at the end?! I was so confused. o.0
Hey, sorry I’m only just now replying. My take on the entire ending sequence is that it’s a drug-ridden trip with a mix of all the characters thoughts in it, like what would happen if she were to rat out her partner, would she just keep doing the same and climbing the FBI ranks until she was at the helm? Is there a cult behind the whole thing? Did aliens abduct the kid?, etc. Ultimately, she decides not to rat out her partner and because the police doesn’t really have any grounds to hold them in prison, they’re released and leave the town, then seeing that the kid actually just ran away from a broken home That is, in a nutshell, my very quick reasoning behind the whole ending, but I was feeling so motion-sick and it’s so open to interpretation anyway, that the chances of me being right are probably not great ^^
That’s like, the best explanation I’ve got so far. At least, yours make some sense. xD