izigame.me

The Future is Here, But I Don't Know If I Like It

Objective interpretation, hardware report, and total game progress
Senua's Saga: Hellblade II is a linear 3rd person adventure game. The game was ran on an Intel 13900k/Nvidia 4090. No system crashes occurred and zero crashes to desktop noted. One playthrough was completed at 4k resolution, max graphical settings, DLSS enabled, and steam achievement perfection was attained.

Subjective interpretation

Introduction
I've never had my visual cortex overload until I played Seua's Saga: Hellblade II. I can thank Nvidia for this as the implementation of DLSS in this game is fantastic. On average I got a 200% FPS increase, which is massive, as my frames rate ran without upscaling at 30-50, but with DLSS enabled I ran at 100-150. I was not ready for this increase in visual data, and as a result my brain needed a break after two hours of gameplay. However, this was not the only thing amiss in my body as I played this game. As I reached the half way mark of this title I could feel my heart being torn asunder by the sheer amount of disappointment that was being created by this long awaited squeal. Let me share with the reader as to why this disappointment was generated with an explorative dive into the aspects of this game.

Software Stability
This game ran extremely well with only two visual blemish bugs being observed. These bugs were inconsequential in regards to detrimental impact, thus this game had nearly perfect Stability.
Graphics
The game was beautiful to say the least, and as I touch upon in the introduction there is a magnificent DLSS 3.5 implementation, ergo this game would be an excellent test for a 40 series Nvidia GPU. I was able to play this game at a stable high FPS with out any detriment to graphical quality. This was a first for me in my gaming experience, as DLSS generally reduces quality, but not for this title. This brought to mind if this is the future for games. Massive FPS increases from software, and the associated hardware. Although, I enjoyed this enhanced visual fidelity I did not like everything I was seeing. The sheer amount of detail on environmental textures of this game was astounding, but the particle effect quality was inconsistent with fire looking amazing in one part of the game while looking atrocious in other parts. There is also no ray tracing in this game. As a result, this game looks inferior in regards to the lighting to Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice. Honestly, any lighting in this game feels disingenuous compared to the first game in the series. There was no cool rays of light emanating from your sword or mirror like in the first game. Of course this game is graphically superior in other aspects, but I would sacrifice extreme texture detail/animation quality for ray tracing. I felt that there was more shock in awe graphically in the first game.
Audio
When I played the first game I got pumped at multiple moments in the game when certain tracks started playing. My favorite was "David Garcia - Gramr" as this was the song that played when you got your awesome ray traced sword named Gramr. Imagine that a perfect track for a perfect sword in a game called HELLBLADE! I digress though and I just want to say that the music in Hellblade II is decent, but lacks the impact of the first game. It's ambient music that fits the setting that its. Also, I didn't get pumped for the action music, but the voice acting is good, and that's a nice plus. The magic is absent from the OST in this title as is any sort of awesome magical Hellblade :(.
Gameplay
The gameplay of this title is more simplistic compared to the first game. There is no charge attack or shield mechanics to overcome. In fact the bosses of the game play just like the regular combat encounters, while in the first game the bosses were distinctive encounters. There's less puzzles as well, and these are extremely easy compared to the first game. This game is also somehow more linear then the first, and if you have claustrophobia I don't recommend this game to you as you will feel very confined to a single path. I was very disappointed in these changes, as gameplay in Hellblade 1 was already super simple.
Narrative
Nothing matters in this game from the first game, yet you get a recap of what happens in the first game, but they also don't reveal that all of these supernatural events from the first game were the machinations of a psychotic mind. They present them as real. The story from the first game was amazing, yet they threw it under the bus for some stupid generic supernatural reality integrated adventure. The distinctive element of being trapped in a psychotic state is absolutely discarded in this game. What you get instead is a quest to free the land from supernatural giants. This doesn't make any sense though because the supernatural elements from the first game were a delusion, yet in the second game all this Norse mythology stuff is real. Very inconsistent story telling, and this switch is extremely detrimental to the quality of the narrative in my opinion. This is by far the worst aspect of this game.
Conclusion and Purchase recommendation
I'm very salty that Hellblade II didn't have an awesome magical sword in it. You would think it would, but it doesn't. I really hope that visual fidelity is not detracting focus from the other aspects of the game. There's not much point in playing a game running at 120+ FPS if the game is mediocre in quality. I hope this is not what the future entails.
6/10 Score
I do not recommend buying this game at its current price of 50$. I would only recommend buying it at full price if you really want to see DLSS 3.5 in action. My take is that the vast majority of people will not enjoy their experience for the price point. Maybe if the game was 95% off I could recommend it, but that won't happen for a couple years.

---{ Graphics }---
☐ You forget what reality is
☑ Beautiful
☐ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS
---{ Gameplay }---
☐ Very good
☐ Good
☐ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☑ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't
---{ Audio }---
☐ Eargasm
☐ Very good
☑ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ I'm now deaf
---{ Audience }---
☐ Kids
☐ Teens
☑ Adults
☐ Grandma
---{ PC Requirements }---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☐ Potato
☐ Decent
☐ Fast
☑ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer
---{ Game Size }---
☐ Floppy Disk
☐ Old Fashioned
☐ Workable
☑ Big
☐ Will eat 10% of your 1TB hard drive
☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it
☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data
---{ Difficulty }---
☑ Just press 'W'
☐ Easy
☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Significant brain usage
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls
---{ Grind }---
☑ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☐ Isn't necessary to progress
☐ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ You'll need a second life for grinding
---{ Story }---
☐ No Story
☑ Some lore
☐ Average
☐ Good
☐ Lovely
☐ It'll replace your life
---{ Game Time }---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☑ Short
☐ Average
☐ Long
☐ To infinity and beyond
---{ Price }---
☐ It's free!
☐ Worth the price
☐ If it's on sale
☑ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money
---{ Bugs }---
☑ Never heard of
☐ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs
---{ 6 / 10 }---
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☑ 6
☐ 7
☐ 8
☐ 9
☐ 10