Ninja Theory’s new title, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, has just been released and it appears that it features an interesting – and perhaps irritating for some people – permadeath mechanic. Via this mechanic, the game will delete your save file if you die too many times in the game. As such, players will have to start their adventure from the beginning.
It’s a pretty cool feature, that is tied into the theme of mental health (which is the main theme of the game as Senua suffers from psychosis). And while there will be some players that will find it cool, we are almost certain that it will frustrate some other players.
Thankfully, the game is really responsive and quite forgiving when it comes to the fights (in other words this isn’t Dark Souls) so most players won’t encounter many difficulties finishing it.
Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is powered by Unreal Engine 4, so stay tuned for our PC Performance Analysis (that will hopefully go live this weekend)!
UPDATE:
Apparently the game does not feature a permadeath!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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So we must use an infinite health trainer in order to complete the game ?
Considering how easy this game is, if you need to rely on a Trainer oh Lord…
I haven’t the game yet in order to try it.
People are saying it’s half a movie, quarter puzzles, quarter fights. The ‘game’ basically plays itself. What a shocker.
You are shocked ? excuse me if i make you feel so bad, really sorry.
Eh… ok.
Would you even need a trainer?
What would stop you from copying your save game folder after each session and replacing it if the game wiped your save game files?
How annoying this will be.
Open explorer, navigate to the directory containing the save file, right click on said save file, press Ctrl-C then Ctrl-P. Not very annoying.
Also, making a shortcut to that folder would be a good idea, especially given the fact that nowadays save game folders are located in peculiar and convoluted paths.
By the way, the shortcut used for pasting is Ctrl-V.
Perhaps he wants us to print a good screenshot from our PCs desktops wallpapers (Ctrl + P)
No better than making all enemies bullet sponges. Terrible game design. You’re basically admitting that your enemies aren’t challenging enough and you don’t know how to fix it.
Bullet sponge enemies annoy me in games, unless they are appropriately big, so that their tenacity is justified.
How does them being big visually fix the boring fights?
It won’t fix boredom per se, the idea is to spawn fewer of those big enemies.
But wouldn’t it be cooler if instead of more health they were smarter and could defend themselves better, rather than just surviving more damage?
if its a huge robot or monster then it kind of makes sense its a “bullet sponge”
I don’t care if it “makes sense”, I only care if it’s fun to play. If there are fun game mechanics that benefit from higher health pools / weaker weapons then fine. But in most games that is not the case. In most games fighting the spongy enemies is a more tedious version of fighting a regular enemy.
I really dislike low level game design in AA/AAA games, where you’re basically facing off against bullet sponges or permadeath or basically being punished simply for dying. I’ve had to deal with this in Moba titles, punishing those who get ganked all the more isn’t fun and it doesn’t teach me to “git gud”, it just becomes a pointless unneeded volume of frustration and that doesn’t objectively make for good game design.
I also really wish that many a dev out there were to stop taking too many notes and ripping pages straight from Dark Souls, we do not need an over saturation of that one game into every other facet of other games and their own designs. Those same people who whined about how FPS games have saturated the market, well Souls clones and Souls ripped ideas are reaching a level of saturation that’s becoming more noticeable by each year.
Yeah I agree, I think I am going to skip this one I was really looking forward to it but the combat and constant spawning of the same enemy looks off. I thought the combat would be cooler and more like their DMC game.
The devs made DmC: Devil May Cry which is an awesome game but this looks no where near as fun gameplay wise.
Anyone that has Hellblade and played it know other wise? It sort of looks like a walking around game and take in the view with cool audio and bad combat + perma death which I dislike in any game 🙁
“The devs made DmC: Devil May Cry which is an awesome game”
Uh?
Ehm…. I just have to ask; have you ever played DMC3 or 4? Because…… yeah, no comparison, mate.
I have played all the DMC games, DMC4 is my favorite.
You are right you can’t really compare them they are different games. Still I personally enjoyed Ninja Theory version it was good. I know it got slammed by a lot of people but I still appreciated what they made.
“I thought the combat would be cooler and more like their DMC game.”
This was never advertised as a DMC-like game. Did you even watch any of the developer diaries?
I know that they never said that. I suppose I should of said I had hoped the combat would be better and more like Dark Souls crossed with their DmC. And no I have not watched all of the dev videos only the cool sound stuff and some story stuff. From what I watched they never focused or showed the combat. So I guess that was a hint it was not the focus.
Not hating on it, it’s just not for me. The videos I saw last night of the combat just seems off and repetitive(spawn the same mob and rinse and repeat). I get the games focus is not combat but I guess I thought it be different.
Might pick it up on a Steam sale down the road.
I think they just wanted to make a psychological thriller type game, but ended up trying to hard to emulate dark souls while trying to tell you what psychological trauma is like, it honestly doesn’t mix very well because one system is working against you already and another flat out makes things worse over time.
Looks like I’ll be skipping both this and SoW (thanks to WB being greedy with MT’s). I don’t think I’ve bought into a AAA game this year so far, which is sad because I used to love them so much, if it wasn’t for them being gimped one way or the other.
My only problem with the game is its combat, I mean when are we going to get games in which when I strike an enemy it actually feels like that its connecting, all that happens when you hit an enemy they just jerk a little and in the final blow they fall down like a rag doll, when is this going to change? This game coming from the team behind DMC it really isnt that impressive when it comes to combat it is going to be repetitive other than that the game looks exceptional.
This game keeps toying with me, IT’S going to suffer permadeath.
But using cheats in Banjo Kazooie will delete your save.
It seems the game actually features a permadeath mechanic, although triggering it is a bit harder than dying multiple times in one location. I heard one had to die across multiple levels to have their progress wiped.
Nice trolling Ninja Theory.