Video Gamers Podcast - [Deep Dive] Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: June 3, 2024

Gaming Hosts Paul, Ryan and Josh are back with another incredible episode. Join us as we dive deep into Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II, break down the gameplay, some of the most insane gaming moments we’ve seen in a long time, chat about the story, rave about the technical aspects like the graphics and sound and give our thoughts on this recent video game release. It’s another awesome deep dive from your favorite gaming podcast!  Thanks to our LEGENDARY Supporters: Disratory, Ole Jake and JigglePuff Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/videogamerspod Join our Gaming Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/videogamerspod/  Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/VideoGamersPod  Subscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q   Visit us on the web: https://videogamerspod.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, fellow gamers! Welcome to 9th century Iceland, where an Orcadian warrior with psychosis has allowed herself to be taken by slave traders to find and save her people. We are the Video Gamers Podcast, hosted by three gamer dads. Today, we are talking about Senua's Saga Hellblade 2. Make sure to stick around. We're going to give our thoughts about the game and then place it on our individual leaderboards. I am your host, Paul. And joining me, he's trying to cross a dark pool of water filled with the spirits he couldn't save that are trying to drown him. It's Josh. Okay, number one, I'm scared of the dark. And number two, that was kind of freaky, man.

That's a really freaky sequence. Josh, no, don't do that. Josh, he's not going to do it. He's not going to do it. He did it. What a dummy. He couldn't save us. Something touched my leg.

Was that you, Ryan? And then joining Josh and me, he killed a god but cannot light a torch. It's Ryan. I can't get it to do right. For a game that did not have an awful lot of comedy, that line did catch me off guard, and I thought it was very funny. I immediately had to jot it down. Oh, yeah.

All right. So, guys, here we are. We're doing a deep dive we're not hijacked today we've had so many of those lately we finally have a game that released that all three of us wanted to play we have all picked up and played through hellblade 2 i know that we've all also played hellblade 1 and uh let's just start off right off the bat here guys you know we always start these deep dives by reading a description of the game. And here is how Steam describes Hellblade 2. The sequel to the award winning Hellblade Senua's Sacrifice, Senua returns in a brutal journey of survival through the myth

and torment of Viking Iceland. Intent on saving those who have fallen victim to the horrors of tyranny, Senua faces a battle of overcoming the darkness within and without. All right. So whenever we cover a sequel, we got to go back and talk a little bit about the first, right? So I wanted to ask you guys, because I know we all played at very different times under very different circumstances. So Josh, I think you're the one who played through it first. Why don't you tell us, like, when did you play and what did you think about it at the time? I don't remember how I found out about that game, honestly. Like, I think the name is what drew me in at first

because it was, ooh, Hellblade. That sounds cool, man. Like, who doesn't love a cool sword, right? And then so, and I love Norse mythology. So I picked up Hellblade. I had zero idea what to expect. I remember the intro with the voices spinning around your head. I remember Paul relentlessly mocking me because I was like, the audio in this game is amazing. And Paul was like, I've never heard those words in

my life. I was like, dude, I need a little more than just the audio is good. Like you got to tell me something. But yeah, I mean, I really enjoyed the first Hellblade. I am not shouting it to the world saying, oh my goodness, everybody in the world needs to play Hellblade. But it's nice when a game is a different type of experience. And for all of the kind of boasting I do about how much I love chaos and games and a thousand things going on at once and tons of action and stuff, I do also really enjoy games that are vastly different, like Firewatch. Paul, I know that wasn't your favorite game, but I really enjoyed Firewatch. So I like these games that kind of take a step back and tell a story,

even if the gameplay elements are very light. And that's kind of what I felt with Hellblade. Really cool story, cool graphics, really neat atmosphere, very light on the gameplay, quite possibly one of the trippiest boss fights at the end of the game ever. But yeah, I think I've always held that game in high regard. So what's funny is you talked so highly about this game. And in our Discord, there were a couple of people that were very vocal. I did not know anything about it when it first released. I don't even remember the year,

like 2018 or something, but you just talked so glowingly about it, but you never talked about the gameplay, like specifically, like you would talk about how great the story was. Why do you think that is? He sounds like the developer. Right, was right right right like just show us gameplay right so like at some point we got our quest to during covid and one of the first games

that i played on vr was hellblade one and i played it in vr mode and i remember hopping into the game and it being totally different than I thought. I don't know why in my head I had this idea that it was more hack and slash. I thought it was very action forward. And the game opens with what? That canoe ride is like eight minutes, right? And the whole time I'm like, dude, when is this game going to start? And then I'm like walking around looking at these little symbols to match a puzzle.

And after like three hours, I was like, dude, I don't know why people love this game so much. Josh smoking. And it's not the game's fault. It was my expectations. Like I was expecting a lot of action. I didn't know what I was really signing up for. At the moment, I felt like four hours into the game, I felt like I had played 90 minutes of content that were just

stretched apart by walking. And I made jokes that it's really a walking simulator. And I didn't finish it. I quit about 75% of the way through that game. And I just gave up. I was like, Josh is crazy. And at the time I was feeling weird because I was under the impression that this was up there with like RimWorld and Terraria, these like 98% games on Steam. And then later I find out Hellblade one is like an 81 on Metacritic. So it's a little divisive. Not everyone loves it. And, and it's a little divisive. Not everyone loves it. And it's a 90%

on Steam, which is good. Not amazingly high. So I felt like I just went into it with the complete wrong expectations. To me, it really fell flat. I did not enjoy the experience very much. Ryan, you just recently picked up Hellblade. So I'm very curious because we have not yet talked about what it was like for you, but I got the sense that you probably enjoyed it. I did. I had kind of a lot of the same opinions as both of you guys. I was kind of mid on it overall.

Same thing. I was like, this is a lot of walking, but luckily, I mean, I played it just like a week ago. So I was prepared for what to expect, you know, with how the game was going to play or the lack of gameplay in it. I thought it was beautiful.

I thought it was for the psychosis nature and all the whispering voices and the fire and this kind of the dirty, grimy characters. It was surprisingly relaxing and just chill like it was is it was surprisingly a cozy game to just kick back and i played a controller and you just kind of hang out and just solve these puzzles i thought it was neat how they did that so yeah overall it was it was pretty mid i actually uh, also maybe did about 80% of it. And then I just ran out of time. And I'm like, I'm close enough. I was trying to get it done before Hellblade 2 came out.

I just watched some reviews, which only probably took away five minutes of gameplay, actual gameplay anyways. So I think I got the same experience. But yeah, overall, I was pretty mid on it. But absolutely beautiful game. And the sound was just unreal. I do love how every time this game gets brought up in our discord now, Josh always goes really out of his way to be like, oh yeah, Hellblade's amazing. FYI, there's not a whole lot of combat. So you just have to have

the right expectations. And I'm like, that is my voice in the back. It is absolutely. Because I was like, how can you hate this game, man? And then it was like, okay, that makes total sense. When you were like, it's not the game, it was just what I thought I was getting into, and then I got into something different. I think that's important, because you're going to see, I mean, anybody that's listening right now that has been on the internet has seen people talking about Hellblade 2 and how it is very divisive as well. There's people that are slamming it saying, oh, super short game, walking simulator, most boring thing ever. How can anybody like this? And then there's other people that are like, yo, this experience was one of the top experiences

I've had in a video game and I can't remember how long. So I do think for this type of game, knowing what you are going into is paramount so that you're not just kind of waiting. You know, like, Paul, you just kept waiting for action to happen, right? Like, when's the game gonna open up? And it's like, well, this is the game.

It's like that scene in The Office when Pam says that she was watching 28 Days thinking it was 28 Days later and kept waiting for the zombies to come out but it's just about like alcoholism with sandra bullock and that's like that's kind of how i was so you know how it is you watch a movie on a day when you're not in the mood and then you try it again and you're in the right mood and it's amazing i think we've all experienced that i actually did reinstall hellblade one i was hoping to dabble back into it, but I ended up not having any time.

You guys got to check out the last boss fight in that game. It is legitimately like the game. It's a very slow burn. And then it's just this like crazy explosion for like the last 40 minutes of the game. And I've always said like, it's people that have played it. No, you guys, if you never made it to the very end,

you know, number one, shame on you. I would never not complete a video game oh sure yeah this is like one out of like five games that i've ever in my life i know right oh man and it's such a short game all right so like despite my complicated feelings on the first one our listeners might think that that must mean that I was not excited for Hellblade 2, but I really was. We covered the development here on this show. We knew because of the success of the first that they had a lot more money involved, and we saw a lot of trailers that were a little bit more combat forward. And so I was like, if this game is even more advanced with better motion capture, and the acting is amazing, and if it's going to continue the story, I'm all about it. I think

all of us were. For listeners who don't know, at the beginning of the year, we did an auction draft where we all had $200, and we drafted the games that we were most anticipated for this year. And we thought it would be fun, right? Let's see how much we buy these games for. And then at the end of the year, let's go back and see who overpaid for what. What was a bargain? Hellblade 2 went for $50, which only put it behind three games. That tells you how excited we were.

It went behind Dragon's Dogma 2 black myth wukong and shadow of the erd tree so i think it's fair to say hype was pretty high i think all of us were kind of expecting like maybe game of the year contention right is that kind of where we all were oh yeah i think so yeah with with uh all the the hype around it and then i mean it brought a lot of people back into the first one and the steps they've taken, you know, or at least they,

they portrayed that they were taking, you know, to add more combat and do the other things. And then just the graphics and the audio, you know, it had all those parameters set up for some, one of those types of games that just kind of flies off that everybody loves.

Yeah. I mean, we knew the production value for Hellblade 2 was going to be through the roof. I mean, we saw all the videos, the hype, that kind of thing. So I don't think any of us doubted that this was going to be an amazingly made game. I think the question was, they talked about the combat, they talked about the kind of lack of gameplay elements. Are they going to be able to step that up? Are they going to be able to add some more gameplay elements to a game that was very much story

and character driven? And I think going into it, that's what we were curious about. I don't think any of us questioned, this game's going to look amazing. It's going to sound amazing. This is going to be a top-notch production. Yeah. And they clearly took their time. So with the time and the expertise and all the new stuff that Ninja Theory built with all of their technology, you know, we figured they would have a big step up. All right. So I think that kind of sets the stage kind of, you know, a little bit of our experience with Hellblade 1.

So before we start talking about Hellblade 2, I would like to ask our listeners to consider supporting us on Patreon. We are funded by our listeners, just like all of you guys out there right now. You can sign up with different tiers. They all have some amazing perks like bonus episodes. It all starts at just $5 a month. Go take a look at MultiplayerSquad.com. All right. So spoilers. I mean, this game is about six hours long. There's no way to talk about it without getting into some spoilers. The mechanics are also relatively simple. So we are going to have to talk about story as well. So I think what we're going to do, like we generally do with a game like this, we're going to kind of just cover it chronologically. We'll talk a little

bit about like how the game opens and then we'll talk in general about combat and graphics and some of that stuff. And then later in the episode, we'll give you guys progressive spoiler warnings. Like now we're going to talk about the middle hours of the game. Okay. Now we're going to talk about the actual end game and what does the game actually mean? And we'll kind of dive into it that way. I think that's probably the best way to do it. Now, I will give a little bit of a spoiler warning here for Hellblade 1, because I think for a lot of our listeners, they kind of need to know what's going on and what happened in the first one. So just to kind of catch you guys up, or if it's been a long time since you

played. In the first entry, we learn that Senua hears voices in her head. She calls them the Furies, and she considers the condition a curse, something she wants to get rid of. When you play the game, you hear all these voices in her head. They are very discouraging at times. They are encouraging at others. You kind of hear a lot of this conflict going on in her mind. We learn that her mother had the exact same condition as well, and we learn that her father

was a very ruthless and evil leader. He actually has Senua's mother burned because of her condition. Senua witnesses this at five years old, sees her mother's death, which makes her psychosis even worse. And then later she ends up meeting a man named Dillion that she falls in love with, and they end up getting married. Or I don't know if they actually got married, but they were together. And then she puts herself into exile, thinking that she is a curse to the village. Death is always brought with her. And so she leaves the village into self-imposed exile, comes back later, finds out that Dillion has been sacrificed by the Norsemen raiders to their gods,

and a lot of the people have been taken captive. And so she sets off to Helheim in order to get Dillion's soul back, I guess with the hope that she can somehow bring him back to life. And there's a lot of metaphorical battles. There's a lot of question as to what's real and what's a hallucination. These boss battles are highly metaphorical for the things going on in her head. And really, all you kind of need to know is that at the end of the game, she comes to the conclusion that she needs to accept Dillion's death. There's nothing she can do about it. And to accept the fact that the Furies are a part of who she is. So that's kind of like what happens in Hellblade 1.

Hellblade 2 pretty much picks up right after that. So Ryan, why don't you kind of set the stage? What happens in the opening moments of Hellblade 2? What's going on story-wise, and what are you doing for the first 20 to 30 minutes? For sure. Are you ready for the most action-packed opening in a game ever?

I know, Paul, you love it. Wait, how does it compare to Red Dead 2? It's so much worse than Red Dead 2's opening. It's so much worse. That's why I'm super like, wait a minute, Red Dead 2's opening's boring. What do you mean, guys? That's the one that came to mind. So you start off, Senua, she gets taken by these slave traders that are capturing her people. She's on a boat with them, and she's going to find out, hey, what the heck's going on? Why are they taking all of my people?

And a storm hits. A storm wrecks the boat. Chaos ensues. Senua washes up onto the beach. And from there, you kind of spend a little bit getting kind of your bearings and you're climbing up you're trying to figure out where you are um as you move around this area and then you start walking and you start walking some more and it's the one way path don't forget that one ledge that you climb up right that's true the one ledge you start walking just a little hill you might

walk around it was funny too because when it first started i was like this is pretty cool i don't know what paul was complaining about and then after about 15 more minutes i'm like okay all right i i get it i get it this is a lot the slow crawling up the rocks i was like why are we doing this again why is it such a slow opening it's a fun story like we can jump right in it but it's so slow to move through the world i will say too also a quick nod to the graphics and how well they transition seamlessly through the cinematics to the actual gameplay is that as you go up to that cliff to start climbing sometimes you know you just leave your stick forward or you you know the key forward and you don't pay attention and you just go and it's actually cinematic i there's a few times where

i thought it was cinematics, and then I stopped, and then she stopped climbing. I'm like, oh, this is actual gameplay. I'm like, oh, that's pretty cool. Sorry, Josh, what were you going to say? I was just going to say, I almost think they did this on purpose, like as goofy as that sounds, because this game is beautiful, man. I mean, beautiful.

But the first 20 minutes, it is just gray rock and stormy gray ocean. Yeah. And it's like, guys, what are you doing to me here, man? Like, give me the goods, you know, like show me the pretty graphics. And then it's like, why is everything just gray and drab and boring? And I think, in hindsight, I think they did that on purpose. Because it kind of gives you, like, when things do open up, you kind of almost, like, breathe a little bit at that point. You know what I mean? Like, this game does a really good job of setting, like, tone and tension and kind of a feeling. And I think that was intentional to say, hey, let's have things be kind of slow,

kind of boring, kind of drab, so that when you do kind of get past this shipwreck part, now you kind of start to feel like alive again, if that makes sense. Well, it does too right away as you're kind of, like I said, getting your bearings and figuring out what world you're in. Right away, the voices start right back up you're you're having hallucinations immediately of of all the the you know people dead people coming out of the ocean that drown and stuff like that so

you're kind of right back into that mode of just the chaos in her mind um and then you you'll get a couple quick little battles throughout there real quick as you're kind of progressing and then you'll get a couple quick little battles throughout there real quick as you're kind of progressing and then you meet this character who's the slave trader, the slave master and what's his name? Thorgister? Thorgister. Thorgister.

Thorgister. Hello, I'm Thorgister. And you have a quick battle with him. You best him in combat and then you're going to make him take you to where your people are you know being brought to as slaves dude you take an axe to his leg yeah and he's like he's like i can't walk and i love when you hear inside senua make him walk yeah and she's like get up and and and he walked exactly

like i did for the two days after fan fusion with my plantar fasciitis in my left heel. And he took that ax to his left leg. And I'm like, yep, that's exactly how I'm walking these days. I got to ask you guys real quick. When you heard the voices, when she climbs up the rock, she's shipwrecked, and those voices kick in. Was it not a little bit like hearing old friends? Because it's the same voices from the first game. The same actors.

Right. The same voice actors. And the second they kick in, I was kind of like, ah, there they are. Oh, for sure. And it was a weird thing for me because I'm like, number one, people shouldn't be hearing these voices. But when they kicked in, it was almost like weird like comforting thing where it's like i got my companions back oh yeah oh i'm crazy i they would say stuff you know when they challenge you're like she can't do that i'd audibly be like shoo yes i can yeah i like when they comment like on what you're doing so there's like a part in the very beginning where she has to crawl underneath a boat and they're like, it's a trap, you fool, you know, and stuff like that. It just

shows like all of her self-doubt. But you do notice that the voices do change a bit over the course of the game where they don't end quite as negatively as in the beginning. You really see a lot of that doubt as she's just shipwrecked and by herself and we don't know where she's going to go because she doesn't know where she's going to go. She just wants to find her people. And so Thorgister is like the person who's going to take you to go find your people. All right, well, let's go ahead and take just a short break and then we will be right back. All right, guys, now that we're back. So in the opening minutes, they do teach you about the combat. It is relatively light. You've got a couple buttons. You can parry, you can dodge,

and then you've got your slow attack and your heavy attack. And you do also get an ability that lets you slow down time. So you get to like activate your mirror and then it kind of lets you go ham on an enemy. What did you guys think about the combat? How did it look? Did it look cinematic? How did it feel? What worked? What didn't? I thought the combat was super cinematic. That was the thing that really stood apart to me, was it wasn't about the button. There's no combos. This is not Dark Souls where you're... I mean, yes, you can dodge and you can parry,

but I mean, this is all very simple in that regard. But with the camera angle and the way that they show you and your kind of opponent in this perspective, it's like angled, you know? Yeah. And then you can kind of see the area that you're fighting, but everything within a certain perimeter is like shrouded. So it creates this really neat looking arena almost. But dude, just like everything else in this game, the motion capture, the audio, the visuals in this

are incredible. So it really felt like you were truly facing off against somebody and i was pretty impressed i mean again this is not god of war this is not anything that's gonna like blow your mind as far as like oh this is the most in-depth combat ever but i really liked how they approached the feeling of combat and like the visuals of the combat in this game yeah Yeah, for sure. That's the thing that comes to mind for me too is the feeling. You felt it. It had, I know I use this word a lot, but it had weight to it. When you're holding a controller, you're on a keyboard, and you still feel like the weapons have power.

If they use a heavy attack and you try to block it or parry it and it's just too much and it knocks you down. You feel it. And that's such a cool feature and so hard to do in a video game, in this virtual world, to translate to the gamer. So I thought that was good. I also love, just again, to harp on the graphics, when you slash those dudes

and they just put a big gash in their arm or across their chest, you're like, ooh, that's a good one as you're attacking them. I love that. I love the little kind of features that they had throughout the battle. And then the mirror, kind of the slow time thing was kind of OP, but it was really cool to use.

If you were like a little tight on a guy and you're like, uh-oh, you can just pop that, and it was usually not too bad to beat him from there. Yeah. The first word that came to mind for me was cinematic. I'm not sure combat has ever been more fun to look at. Yes. It really does look incredible. And they add little flourishes that really help.

So having that gray mist around you where you can't see the background, it forces you to focus on the combat. You're facing against them, you know, mano y mano. And then what happens is sometimes they will hit you in the head, like either with the hilt of their sword or with their fist. And every time they do that, your character sees double, which is like a really neat little effect as well. So it's almost like you feel the effects of being struck in combat i thought all that stuff was very neat i will say the bread and butter of hellblade is story it's not the combat i mean this combat is so minimalistic and it's so easy. I would say the mirror ability to slow down time actually renders the combat

to be, it's almost like useless, to be honest. I found myself trying to intentionally not use it. Did you guys ever die in this game during combat? So just like I normally do, I bumped the difficulty because you can change the combat difficulty. So I put it to the highest setting, which means that you would die if you got hit like two or maybe three times. And the enemies had a lot more health as well. So I found that to actually be a decent challenge. I think I probably only died three times throughout the entire game, even on the hardest setting. But it did force me to pay attention. It forced me to really time my parries or my dodge rolls because I knew, hey, I can't take more than two, three

hits at most. And so for me, that really gave it that much more dangerous feel because the game defaults to this weird dynamic mode, which I don't even understand what that is. But I was just wailing through people at that point. And I mean, I like combat. So I was like, well, let me amp this up as much as I can. So if you're like me and you do want the combat to be somewhat of a challenge, then I would highly recommend bumping it up to the highest difficulty.

But even then, it still wasn't really that bad. No, it's not much to it. The whole point of dynamic is supposed to be well if you're not getting hit we're gonna raise the difficulty of the combat so at the highest i don't know if dynamic catches up to that highest difficulty or not but i would say overall how many enemy types do you think are in this game maybe like five to ten enemies somewhere around there yeah because you have the draugrs then you have the humans then yeah probably about eight ish somewhere around there yeah you definitely start to memorize the enemy types it's like okay this is the guy who's gonna chuck a

hatchet and then if i'm too far away he's gonna come charge me and i'll just sidestep and then hit him in the back so you do kind of quickly learn the enemy types i i only died once and it was the very first time you fight the fire guys who charge you with the explosives yeah so the very first time that got me and at first i thought i was watching a cinematic because a lot of times like you might get knocked to the ground but it's just like part of the cut scene and uh that guy set off the fire explosive and that killed me. But that, that was the only time that I died. Yeah. I died to a fire guy too. He exploded.

And then, then he kept rolling into his like fire breath. And I'm like, what the heck? Fire breath got me so many times. I didn't know how to dodge it. Cause I'm like, if I dodge roll,

I'm rolling into the fire. That's what I kept doing. And I'm like, Oh, you're dead. It was a little hard to, to get away from. It should be said, too, that the combat is all 100% timing.

Time your dodge, time your attacks, time your parries. I will say the one thing that I did enjoy, too, is that if you parry, you do have this very small window of a perfect parry where it will kind of like shut off like a blue spark instead of like a yellow one. And if you do that, you almost always instantly kill your opponent in some spectacular fashion too. So, I mean, that's one of the things about combat. We talk about the motion capture. This is fully motion captured,

but there's a lot of different like fatalities that she does. And I mean, she's not ripping their heads off or anything, but from a sword combat stance, there's probably six or seven different ways that she dispatches people as well. So again, all very cinematic combat, but it's just 100% timing based. Yeah. Sometimes you get like that move where she'll take the sword and kind of like start down by their leg and kind of just like drag and pull it up across their chest and then they die so you get like some very cinematic moves that are really fun to watch all right so i know that we kind of already talked a little bit about the graphics we've mentioned how good

they look but maybe to get a little bit more specific like are there any elements of the graphics that really stuck out to you guys like for me one of the things that really stuck out to you guys. Like for me, one of the things that really stuck out is that this game has no UI whatsoever. I loved it. There is no health bar, no mini-map. The whole time you just see everything. And I really love that because when the graphics look good, let's highlight it. Let's not go full Ubisoft and cover the whole screen with all of your quests and your markers and a compass and a mini map. It's just very simplistic. For the most part, I enjoyed that. There were a couple times when I was like, am I supposed to be mashing a button in this cut scene? Or am I just supposed to watch? Like you don't always know because the game will never tell you press X or anything like

that. But there are times where your character will stop and you have to press and hold a button. But I loved having no mini map. My one complaint, and I don't know if you guys felt the same way, water movement was the one real thing that stuck out to me as looking awful. The water hitting the shores where you would see the ocean spray looked so bad that the rest of the game looks so good i was like what went wrong with that one thing uh but other than that the game's gorgeous i thought it looks really really good i'm sure water's got to be so hard to get to look right in there but one thing that uh i mean obviously it was absolutely breathtaking There were so many scenes that in a moment or for just a few split seconds, my brain couldn't tell if something switched to real view of a real person or if it was still the game.

It was tricking my mind. Especially when they zoom in. Yeah. If they zoom in on a character face, it looks real. If they zoom in on her face and she's struggling or something, that's when it looked so realistic. It was just – it's awesome to see what they can do with Unreal Engine 5. It's just – I can't wait to see more of this, hopefully.

The one thing I didn't like, though, is such a vast world that was so beautiful and so large and amazing. It felt so small. I felt so guided down these little paths and through these areas to where I couldn't really explore this beautiful place that was all around me, which was kind of a bummer. But I mean, I sent in some screenshots. I was always like, come check this out, guys. Look how cool this looks to the family. Look at these rocks. Yeah, look at these rocks. Look at the tree over there look at those rocks over there there's more rocks yeah i mean i'm gonna gush for a minute because for me this game i'm gonna lump the graphics and the audio

together and i'm gonna say that i don't know that i've played a game in my entire life that has better presentation than this game does. I mean, the graphics visually are second to none. I mean, I said this in our Discord server. I'm going to say right now, I think it may be the most beautiful game that I have ever seen from a graphical fidelity standpoint. Now, there's going to be people that are like, oh, what about this game that's got all these really amazing colors? And it's like, I get it. You know what I mean? Yes, there are landscapes that are kind of barren and drab in this because it's like in Iceland. There are a lot of rocks in Iceland. So it's like, you can only make rocks look so good. But from a resolution and lighting standpoint and just visually, this game is an absolute feast for your eyes man i mean i was

lucky enough to be able to play it completely maxed out i made a post uh on social media because one of the things i hate especially with having a large monitor is i hate letterbox bars like i i paid a lot of money for this giant screen. Like, why are you taking the giant screen away from me, man? And I get that. It's like, oh, we want it to be widescreen and like cinematic and stuff. It's like, no. So the very first thing I did was go online and find a like a way that you could mod the I and I file to fix some of the complaints that people had about some of the graphical

settings. And when I did that, man, oh my goodness. I cannot describe to people how gorgeous this game is. And it's weird because I agree with you guys about the water, but then when you're walking and there's a stream running along a little valley or something, that stream is gorgeous, man. And so it's like, I don't know why they couldn't get water spray, but that coupled with the audio, like there are, there are many parts in this game, just like the first one where you're just walking. There's not, there's nothing going on, you know, other than you're walking through this beautiful landscape. But when you're just walking, the voices in your head are conversing and they're telling

you something or there's something going on there. So I personally absolutely loved the visual feast that I was getting. And then when there wasn't much going on, I was getting this audio feast with this inner dialogue between Senua and these voices in her head or like them trying to recount something or telling her this is a bad idea, you know, or all these things. So even in the slow moments, there was some kind of spectacle going on, whether it was in your ears or for your eyes that absolutely blew me away, dude. Like I honestly can't think of another game where I felt this way about just the way that the game looked and sounded. Yeah. There's always something going on to pay attention to. All right.

So for people who have not played the game, that's kind of, I would say, like the end of the spoiler-free content. That's kind of like some general overall thoughts. Now we're going to start getting into more moderate spoiler territory. I think we can kind of lump the whole meat of the game, kind of like hours two through five.

This is like, well, and I can kind of set the stage for what's going on. We can debate in a minute what's real and what's not as we get into endgame stuff. But story-wise, we kind of learn that things aren't so cut and dried as Senua thinks. She thinks there's just an evil man who's stealing her people, we got to kill them all. They're bad people. Well, we learn that there are actually giants on this island that kind of like hunt different tribes on Iceland. And her people have been taken because the Vikings have been offering her people as sacrifices to appease the giants. That way they can protect their own people. So it's not necessarily out of ruthless it's to protect that group of people and we also find out that the lands have

been infiltrated by draugr barbarians they are ruthless murderers they provide a lot of psychological horror to the game i kind of forgot that that's like a major element in Hellblade. We also get to see these giants over the course of the game. We also learn that there are legends of the so-called hidden folk that the giants are afraid of. And so Senua starts seeking them out because she thinks they may know a way to defeat the giants. And the hidden folk have left behind some first grade level puzzles for you to solve in order to prove your worth and to find the hidden folk um i would also say when you encounter the giants and in the the middle chunk of the game there's two of them you have the the sea giant and you have ingen i would say those are probably the peaks of the game for me, along with infiltrating the

Draugr village near the beginning. I almost feel like there's spikes of interest and enjoyment in this game, where there's a lot of walking. There's some pretty easy puzzles. You're not looking up any walkthroughs when you play Hellblade 2 uh but i was kind of curious to know like in this middle chunk of the game what stuck out to you guys what was most memorable can we touch on a couple of those moments in the game where my jaw just hit the floor and i just was like i literally was dumbfounded some of the coolest things i've ever seen in games are in hellblade 2 thank you like i mean legitimately and you got to experience these to appreciate it, but the part where she is very first coming up

to that like crazy ritual with the fire breathers and you're kind of sneaking around their camp and you have to crawl under the bridge and it's all blood and guts under there. It's nightmare fuel. It's so well done. That was one of the most intense, creepy like video game experiences ever.

If we do a most memorable moments for 2024, that is one of them, dude. I remember just being absolutely blown away by how freaky this whole thing was, dude. It's dark. There's chanting. There's all kinds of crazy sounds. The voices in your head are freaking you out. There's this weird guttural growling in the background. There's weird horror movie ticking sounds. There's giant drums going on. And then the whole screen would light up because fire

breathers are breathing fire in the air. And then it would just go black again right away. I literally just sat and watched that whole thing for probably five or 10 minutes and was just going like, Oh my goodness, this is one of the coolest things I've ever seen in my life, man. Yeah, it was,

that was fine. And then as you're crawling under that bridge part, you hear like the guy and I'm like, Oh no, he's going to fall. He's going to fall through here. And then you just see him splats in the blood, all pores.

So cool. Yeah. That, that part was was absolutely awesome uh can i talk about ingen yes okay so so this um i have a lot of issues up and down with this game overall but this was probably one of my favorite levels for sure this year, and it's in the top ever for me. Very memorable. Yeah, absolutely.

And it's hard to even describe and explain, and so all listeners out there, just for this level, if the game goes on sale or something, or if you just want to get it, just for this, it's worth it because this was the connection connection between the story the music and then well actually getting some good gameplay was was just absolutely amazing it was something that my jaw was just wide open and i could not get enough and i didn't want it to end as you're running through and and you step out at the wrong time that's enough that's what i didn't die in

combat i died with Ingen. Yeah. Because stepping out and you just get dusted like that. It was beyond anything I could have expected. And I was, it sold me on this game just for that. Tell the people what she looks like and her size. Like, give us like an idea. Because she kind of crawls around like a spider. Yeah.

Almost kind of like, what's that one? The ring or whatever, where that girl like crawls all crazy upside down and disjointed yeah and she like looks like she's got old pasty nasty skin and long black hair and and she's just giant scale so massive you know six eight stories tall or whatever um and you're in this giant cave with this crazy sound of drums and music and the stories. Lava everywhere. Lava everywhere. And you have these columns throughout. And as she's screaming and the drums hit, just pulses of energy fly out.

So you got to go in between each one as all of this chaos is happening. And stay in the shadows. To get her. And you go to these chains. And you cut them to set her free. And it's just. It's so powerful. And intense in the moment. And she's like. I'm going to free her.

Because I know her name. I know what happened. I know why all this is here. And I just want to set her free. And free these people as well. And so. It was just. It's hard to even explain how cool it is.

It's one of those things where you have to experience it. And I think everybody should. Yeah. Shockingly, it's already time for another break. And then let's come back and we'll share a few more moments. All right. So we've shared some of the coolest moments in the game.

Do you guys think it's fair that i described the puzzles as first grade level oh yeah dude if that dude it's almost like why is it there's so many that you yeah it would just it felt like i gotta do this that you could see it the second you looked you're like oh there's a bubble okay there's that that that and you knew the whole layout and you're like oh i'm gonna have to come back and open this one back up to get back through here you know when I'm coming back. So it's not even an easy transition all the way back. Go ahead, Paul.

I felt insulted. Honestly, it was so easy. I was like, at this point, are we just trying to make a six-hour game because we're hurting for game hours? It did kind of make me wonder. I thought the ideas were neat because you like you go find these little balls and you put them in an altar and you can activate these bubbles that flip like the room upside down. It's a really neat idea, but then they didn't do anything cool with it. Like you said, Ryan, you could immediately see, okay, well, that ball is up on the roof there and i see the bubble right next to it i activate

it and i grab it and i'm done like it's it's so incredibly easy i'm very sad they didn't beef it up more yeah i don't know why they didn't to be honest i mean it is a nice change of pace between the jaw-dropping moments and the story-driven stuff like i will say I'm glad that they had that third light puzzle element to it. It was so simple and basic that it was like, here's something that adds to the game, but it's not really adding very much because you're just going through the motions at this point. You're really not having to think.

It is a little bit of a distraction. They were annoying i'm glad they're i'm glad that they were there but by the time i did like my four the hidden folk one was the worst with the getting the balls because it's like okay i did three yeah and then now they're like oh here's another room we're getting closer and i was like oh come on yeah come on aren't we there yet a little waterfall with the torch like all right where's another spot for another fire oh there's one up there okay i just walked through the waterfall go get the fire over here you know i did think it was cool um when you had to light that other torch and you had to go through the water but you didn't have a torch anymore so you had to stay to the lit areas and that little in between was like

they were trying to get you that part was cool but yeah overall the puzzles were just more more of a nuisance and just kind of annoying which even feels worse and not to compare this game too much to god of war because they're they're completely different genres but god of war so perfectly throws in those bell puzzles to do or not do it It's optional. Here, they force you to do it in order to advance the story. But God of War figured out such a simple little puzzle mechanic that's fun and adds to the experience. It felt a little bit underbaked here. I would also say walking through the haunted forest really felt underwhelming to me because it kind of felt like um the game is telling you you know a lot of people go into these forests and they don't come back and senua makes

the decision well we're going through it toward the end of the game and then it's it's a one-way path yeah you just hold forward the whole time like you can't even get lost if you want it i mean senua gets lost because the game goes in a circle, but you're literally walking in a circle and then you get to the end and the characters are like, I thought I'd never get out. Thank you for helping me. And to me, I was like, really? Like, it's such a weird experience.

Ryan, I sense you might be like me, that I felt like this game had 90 minutes of the coolest stuff I've seen in gaming in the last five years, and everything else just felt really underwhelming. It was such a disjointed experience from that's the most incredible thing I've ever seen. Now here's an hour where almost nothing happens of any relevant note. And then as soon as I'm ready to give up on it, it hits me with another moment like that. Like it just felt very disjointed and it's not a pacing issue. It's just like a boring puzzle mechanic issue more than anything else.

So many missed opportunities is what came to mind. Yeah. Going through that forest, that would have been a perfect time to have some epic cool, yeah, freak people out. Yeah, yeah. You're in this crazy kind of like in The Hobbit with the forest

and the spiders come and then they're able to defeat them and get it today or save the day. And on this, you just like you said, you just walk through and then it's kind of done. There's so many chances where you get hit with those crazy good moments so then you expect them in other parts of the game that are tailored

perfect for it and they just don't happen yeah yeah i do feel like there was a couple missed opportunities in this game um the forest is one of them because when this game is at its best is when it's leaning into the psychological horror part of it 100 and i mean dude when they nail it they nail it dude i mean again there's not many games that have made me just feel like this game can make me feel with some of the scenes and the horror elements and stuff like that. I mean, when she's going through that cave with the hidden folk and you've got your torch and the voices in your head just start screaming at you going, what if the torch goes out? What if the torch... You're dead, dude. You're lost forever.

Like, you're a mile underground at that point. And if that light goes out, and I started getting, like, scared, man. You know what I mean? Is it too late to turn back? Yeah, exactly. Like, they literally keep saying that. But then it's like, I want to see the hidden folk, man. You know what I mean? Like,

and I felt like they just kind of, you know, like, they just kind of didn't really. I mean, I get it. They're called the hidden folk. But, you know, that part and the forest part, I think, were the two biggest parts where I kind of went, that's it? Yeah. But also the sea giant was such a thrilling adrenaline pumping section where you have this whole plan and you're going to get the attention of the giant and you throw some kind of like gasoline on it and you light it

on fire and then everyone's running and you're stopping to grab these lit spears to chuck at them while you're running. And all of those scenes, I felt like they played so incredibly well and they're very, very memorable. But we got to get to the end game content here. So final warning, we're going to share end game spoilers. Reveal type stuff. Yeah. Reveal.

Yeah. All right. So this is where the game honestly kind of lost me story-wise. It was a neat idea that I feel like they just didn't execute right. So the whole point of the game, you're going with Thorgaster, you're gonna go confront his dad, the goatee, and Thorgaster tells you when he finds out

that you have discovered a way to kill the giants by talking to the hidden folk, then he will stop slave trading and he'll fight the giants. And you're going to help us do that. So you get to the village and Senua very quickly realizes that Thorgaster's father is just like her dad. He's evil. He's not going to listen to reason. And she says that he's not going to change. man is like my dad and then we get a sequence where senua i don't even know what word to say because there are times when time seems to stop and she goes to a different dimension and the hidden folk talk to her and this is where they

tell you what really happened they tell you that there was a volcanic eruption that there was famine and starvation and people were turning on one another. And basically, the goatee is the one that they turned to for protection. And he ruled the people through fear. And then as soon as life started to return to normal, as food was growing, that he realized he was losing his power. And so, he was using the idea of the giants to manipulate the people to keep them fearful. That way he could stay in power, which my reading means that the giants didn't actually exist. They were myths. But then at the same time, the whole game, we have Thorgaster and Astrider and Fargrimer, I think is the other name. That was kind of hard to learn in the beginning.

They all keep saying things like, we've seen you defeat the giants. We are witnesses to this, which implies that they were real. But then even Senua at the end says that they weren't. Like, that's why there is no giant. You just fight the goatee. And she decides not to kill him,

but to expose him for his lies. Because if she just kills him, they're still going to believe all the false myths. So, did all these characters actually exist, or did she actually hallucinate a lot of it? It left, and I can appreciate vague endings, but this begs just a little bit more info. Like, what was actually being hallucinated and what wasn't? Because Hellblade 1 makes it very clear it's pretty much all a metaphor for her battling the demons in her head. This game seems to imply the whole time that these magical elements are real, but then they yank it away at the end,

and I'm just kind of left like, well, now I don't know what was actually real or what wasn't, which I get would be Senua's experience. But I'm playing a game and I'm learning a story. I needed to know a little bit more in the end. Did you guys have a similar take? It's funny because when I played the game, I played it at surface level. I get the deep story and all that stuff. But man, I'm just a sucker for mythology too. Yeah, I wanted it to be real. Right. And so when I played through it, I just went, oh, sweet, that's a freaking huge giant, dude. And then you kind of get to the end and she talks about why the giants are around and the evil that people are doing creates them. And there's a part

where I think it's with the very first giant where she says, I'm a monster, right? And it says, well, all monsters start off as men. And I thought like, ooh, that's super deep, right? Like this is kind of neat. So you can play it at the surface level and just kind of do this like, you know, Norse mythology type game with these amazing sequences and stuff like that. Then what I did is I went to the internet and I started doing like Hellblade 2 Explained or like fan theories and stuff like that. And there's people that are really getting into all of this stuff is happening in her mind. It's a battle with the voices in her head and the trauma that she's experienced in life. And so it's saying like Fargrimir is like represents like her struggle with her, you know, her mind because he's like a mystic kind of thing.

And like the voices. And then Astrid is like the part of her that's her strength and wants to battle and fight through things. And it gets all like philosophical and deep and it kind of makes sense. And I like when stuff like that happens because it's like, well, I mean, on surface level, dude, I fought giants, you know, but then it's like, but then you get into this really deep philosophical discussion about Senua is fighting psychosis. That's a huge part of these games in the first game and the second game. And so if you're telling me that all of this, this entire story you were telling me is her fighting through the psychosis and the demons in her head. Okay. Number one, that's freaking cool, man. Like I

didn't even look at it that way, but it does make sense. So I think it's just different levels. Like for me, I just want to fight giants and enjoy this game. I get Paul because you're, you know, you love like that deep story and the, and the greater meanings and things like that. So it's like, I kind of get that, like thinking through, did any of this stuff happen? But then there's things that point to, yes, it was all just in her head, but then there's things that point to like, well, if it was, then how did this happen? Or why did this person say this? And so on.

And it kind of gets confusing. Maybe it's like a, what is it? Shutter Island. They're all just playing along with her. Yeah. Great movie, by the way.

I love that movie. But yeah, I was, I, I guess I would say for me, I was more just wanting it to all be real because it's such a crazy, cool story. But we know it's not. Yeah.

That's like the only thing we know is that it's not. But then how does anything else make any sense? Exactly. Exactly. So that's the hard part is because, like I said, I wanted it to all be this cool, crazy, epic story and battle and journey and quest. But yeah, mind is a crazy thing so i guess we just shock it up to that like honestly if they just if they just left it where every time senua faced a giant she did it on her own and then came back and said hey i defeated

the giant and then they spend the night and they're like hey you're right she didn't come out then you would say like okay well now it kind of makes sense like they believe the people believe that the giant was real senua in her psychosis thought she defeated it but in reality it never existed then that's like an airtight story that would make more sense just now i'm sorry i gotta go i'm i'm just imagining like behind the scenes withua, and she's just in a cave by herself. Ha! Ha! Just nobody's there, and she's just fighting nothing.

No, the Draugr, she's probably just fighting people, right? Yeah. That's probably how she's perceiving them, but we don't have to get into those details. I suppose, because this is the thing, I'm trying to be generous to the game. So let's set aside any possible inconsistencies. Some people might even say it doesn't matter. What's the whole point of the game? The whole point of the game at the end is that Senua thought she had killed off the darkness that was her father at the end of Hellblade 1. We see here in this game, it's not. It's there. And at the end of

the game, she realizes, I can't get rid of it, but that's okay. And she says, I am my mother's child, but I'm also my father's. And she chooses to not let it control her. So she doesn't have to get rid of the darkness. It's still with her, but the voices in her head give her self-doubt, so she never grabs power. Like, to me, that's very cool. But then they throw in this whole temptation scene when she's like, or I do grab power and I rule through fear. And it's like, what are you talking about?

There is no setup in the entire first two games that I remembered that hinted maybe Senua is a little power hungry. Like to me, that kind of seemed to come up out of nowhere. And then it's almost a little bit like, you know, like in the Bible with Jesus being tempted in the desert where Satan's like, you know, bow to me and this can all be yours. And it felt a little bit like that, but it kind of came out of nowhere where I was like, well, obviously Senua is not going to give into that. She's just spent these whole two games trying to get rid of the darkness. So, you know, I think it narratively kind of falls apart at the end, but I guess you're just supposed to accept, all right, she has light and darkness.

She's not going to let the darkness control her. She'll instead control it. And now I guess we're going to go into Hellblade 3, and who knows where the story goes from here. I think the whole shebang for game one in game two is her understanding that she has this psychosis and how does she deal with it? And in the second one, in the first game, she is thinking that getting Dillion back, the love of her life will fix everything. And then she realizes, well, that's not going to fix everything. This is just part

of who I am. And in the second game, I think it's a lot more of her coming to terms with herself and her psychosis in these voices. And instead of fighting them all the time and saying, what's wrong with me? She's just saying, this is a part of who I am. I have to learn how to deal with who I am. I'm not going to get rid of these things. They're, they are me, you know? And so that's like the progression that I see through the story. You know, I like things that will let you dive deep and maybe you find a few inconsistencies here and there kind of thing. But I, anytime something, whether it's a movie or a game makes me go Google like fan theories or something like that, you know that there's something deep there. Like, go look up Inception, right? Where does the top topple at the end or not? And do people go into... They'll break scenes down, like scene by scene throughout the whole movie. And it's like, you can go down that rabbit hole, but if something at least gives you a rabbit hole to go down, you know it's doing something right. Whether it falls apart or not, you know, the deeper you go,

the fact that like there was enough there for there to even be a rabbit hole for you to go down, I think is a testament to a good story. Maybe it's not a flawless story, but it's still a good story. To me, this felt a lot like the show lost. It had some amazing moments. No, that's some great setups the end kind of falls apart but that doesn't take away from everything else like it's still it's still a very memorable experience you know maybe it's not the the perfect airtight show that you might get from something else but you know it is what it is all right so this game, I feel like it kind of begs the question, like, let's talk about possible awards for this game. Cause our, our hype was so high. We talked about how in the

auction, we, we put a lot of money into it. Like, do you see this game being nominated for game of the year? Do you see, and I'm going to get her name wrong. I don't know if it's a hard or a soft J, but Melina Juergens, like, do you see her being nominated again for best performance like how do you think this game will do with the game awards i i would be amazed if it doesn't win at least like a technical award you know um it is a little divisive you see the ratings on metacritic and stuff like that i have a hard time with that because anybody that can look at this game and play this game and not appreciate the technical aspects of it, you know what I mean? I can't even understand how somebody could make that argument. Whether the gameplay is for you or not, or maybe the story doesn't make sense to you

or something like that. I mean, this is like looking at a beautiful sunset and then being like, I don't see anything. You know, like nothing cool. What are you talking about? And it's like, dude, I mean, you got to at least admit, man. So I do think it will absolutely be nominated. Game of the Year? I'm going to say no.

I'm going to say. I don't think it will. I'm going to say I think it should, but I'm not convinced that it will. But then again, there's a lot of games left. What so far would you say this would knock Hellblade 2 out of the running that's released already? Helldivers 2 should. I don't know that it will.

Right. Dragon's Dogma 2, I think, could have a real argument. Yeah, that's kind of my... I mean, Helldivers 2 really does deserve Game of the Year, let's be honest. But again, I'm not sure it's going to get nominated for that. We've still got Avowed. We've got some heavy hitters still coming up. Black Myth, Wukong, Avowed.

There's some really hype games that are still to release. So right now, I would say I think it absolutely belongs in the Game of the year like nominations but i just don't know that it will with everything else that's coming out i feel like it's more likely animal well would get a nomination over this like i think something that's more fresh and different because hellblade 2 was i think it has all the same flaws from Hellblade 1, and it has the same

positives and the same negatives. I mean, speaking to this a little bit, so the reception of this game is so much worse than I thought. Because anytime we do a deep dive, I'm not on socials at all. I'm in our Discord, and that's it. So I might see little bits here and there. As soon as I finished the game, I started looking at the reviews and I looked up how many people are playing it on Steam. Now, right now, there's less than 600 people playing. The biggest peak was 4,000. I think this game is severely underselling what they thought it would. I know it's on Xbox Game Pass, so a lot of people are probably playing it there. but I did a search on YouTube for Hellblade 2 review, and these are some of the top results that I saw. I wrote them down. I saw this too. Hellblade 2 is a regressive disappointment.

That was from Reforge Gaming. Hellblade 2 is bafflingly disappointing from Luke Stevens, and maybe my favorite. I don't agree agree with it but it did make me laugh hellblade 2 is a pathetic excuse for a quote game from griffin gaming like josh that kind of speaks to where you felt like that's totally insane that people would have that kind of response that's not my response but i kind of can see how people would get there, even though I disagree with this. I was just going to say, for sure, I like to, when we deep dive games especially, I love to just go on and listen and watch some videos. Just see what other people have to say about it and their feelings. It was hard to filter through all of the hate videos at the top.

There's a lot. Yeah, to find something normal. So yeah, when you said that immediately, I knew what you were talking about. All the top ones are, you know know it's one to five maybe on positive versus the negative but go ahead josh i was just gonna say like this game is not without its flaws like i am not touting this is like the most perfect game ever i think that the main things were people complained about the length of the game. This is what I saw on social media anyway. The length of the game, Herder, it's a five-hour game. People are paying $50 or $60 for it. This game's bad. And it's like, okay. I mean, I don't really understand

that argument if you didn't even play the game, but fine, you want to slam it for something. The other would be lack of gameplay. This is a walking simulator. This is the most boring game I've ever played. What's the point of all this? And I think that is, again, just what type of game did you get yourself into? If you play Firewatch and you say, hey, Firewatch is boring, you know what I mean? It's different. I mean, I get it. I mean, Paul- I'm raising my hand. I'm in that group. We disagree on that, you know, but I think it is, it is a different kind of experience than a lot of people are used to. And I think when they

aren't aware of what they're going into, just like Paul did with Hellblade one, they're going to go, what the heck is this? You know? And I think that's why you joked at the beginning, because if you can set the right expectation for somebody i think it completely changes how they approach the game and the actual enjoyment that they can get out of it then at that point yeah i totally agree um so i think the last thing we have to do here is go to our leaderboard oh man so for listeners who don't know you can go to video gamers pod.com we've got uh some leaderboards on there we've got our top 10 games of all time we also anytime we do a deep dive like this we have to place it against every other game we've

done a deep dive on this one is is i feel like it's very hard to rate it's got high highs it's got low lows. I mean, Josh, let's start with you. I have a sense that you're the rosiest on it. And I think it's fair to say this game is not for everyone. I think we've all even said that in our Discord. If this game clicks for you, I think it'll click very well. And for other people, I think it'll be like my first time playing Hellblade 1, where it's like, this is barely even a game.

Like, what is the hype? So Josh, you've got the longest leaderboard. You're sitting now at 113 games. Dang. Where on earth are you putting Hellblade 2? I feel like you could tell me 10 or 50 and I wouldn't be shocked. Yeah, this game really landed with me.

I mean, again, I get that it has some flaws. In the slow parts, and I mentioned this earlier, in the slow parts where there's not a lot going on, there's still the audio. There's still that conversation. There's still something. I mean, it was very rare that I was playing this game and ever went, I'm bored. I mean, a couple times, I'm not saying it didn't have those moments, but again, if there wasn't a lot happening with action or a puzzle on screen, there was an audio thing going on or sounds in the background or just something like that. The first game resonated with me as well. And I think this absolutely builds on the first game in just about every way. I am putting this game at 25.

I freaking loved this experience, dude. And again, a lot of people that have been listening for a long time know I love action. I love combat. I'm a huge Dark Souls guy. Give me chaos, give me fast-paced stuff, and it's right in my wheelhouse. But this game is like the opposite of that. But I cannot think of another spectacle in gaming that has blown my mind more than this game has. That's not to say it's the next Witcher 3. That's not to say it's like... It's not meant to be those things. But my jaw was always open. There were so many of those, what the heck is going on moments that just absolutely blew my mind. This game, you know, like I said, parts of this game, four or five parts of this game would be in the front running for like gaming moment of the year for me. And so that experience, I mean, coupled with the

presentation and it being just a different kind of game really landed. I mean, I really landed with me. So I'm putting it at 25. Okay. Quick question. Do you think it's worth the $50 price tag? For me... Because I think that's what causes a lot of the heartburn for people. So here's the issue. For me to have that experience, but I also am aware that I experienced it at the absolute peak that it can be experienced with. I have an incredible monitor computer setup, you know what I mean, to really max out all of the graphics in all their glory. We have very good headsets that are very high quality and good audio. And those things coupled

together really put me at the, this is the best that this game can be experienced at. I personally think it's worth the 50 bucks, but you have to understand you're getting some really wow moments out of a game. You're not getting this incredible gameplay like you would with Red Dead or God of War or something along those lines. But this is like seeing a spectacle. It's like going to a laser light show in a way where it's like, you're just going to remember what you just experienced for a while. It's going to the Las Vegas Sphere. Yes.

Except it's a band that is like a one-hit wonder. Yeah, yeah. So you're going to be there for 90 minutes, but you're only going to hear one hit song. It's a little like that. I will say, I think Hellblade 2 does provide something no other game does. It's got its little corner of the market. They've stumbled onto something. It's not necessarily going to land for everyone. All right. So Josh, you've got it at 25, which means you're putting it above the likes

of Apex Legends, Call of Duty Warzone, No Man's's sky but you are putting it below some stuff like deep rock galactic risk of ring 2 and uh paul's beloved zelda tears of the kingdom i'm shocked you're putting this below zelda i thought about it to be honest with you but also i'm trying to be cognizant of this is a short crafted linear experience you know what i mean like they're there it it lives in a box for sure you know as far as that goes and zelda just is much more of a like a complete video game in a lot of sense and it's a real accomplishment for what they were able to do especially with switch technology and honestly hellblade 2 is an accomplishment for what they tried to do like i don't take that away from them at all. So yeah, I thought about putting it.

And they don't have the money of Nintendo. Yeah. No. All right. Ryan, since you joined us a little bit over a year ago, your deep dive list is 40 long. Where are we putting this? So like Josh said, there's a lot of high highs and low lows.

We talked about the puzzles. We talked's a lot of high highs and low lows. We talked about the puzzles. We talked about a lot of issues. This is definitely a game that maybe in a couple years you might play again, but you're a one and done. You hit that six hours, and you're not coming back to this thing. It's kind of an obscure movie that you watch and then check again five years later. Having said that, to get that for for 50 just seems so steep to me and i and i was some of the videos i was listening to they're talking about it's not even a full

price game of 70 and i'm like those shouldn't even be 70 this is crazy what is happening they're just jacking the prices up so they can be like oh see this one's only 50 but i think i would feel a lot better if this game was like $30 because the experience you get, just some of those standalone parts that are so amazing is worth that for sure. It just, once you get to that $50 range,

you're like, ooh, man, for six hours of gameplay. So I'm going to put it, because of that, kind of in the middle of the pack for me. So I'm going to throw it, uh, because of that kind of in the middle of the pack for me. So I'm going to throw it at 19, 19. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's fair to say that if budget is not a concern and you've got ample time, pick it up and play it.

It's got super memorable moments. If you're on a tighter budget, I think you should absolutely stay away. There are so many things you can buy for 50 bucks that are like on sale or just wait until this one's on sale. It'll go on Steam sale. Just be patient. You know, you're better off if you're on a tighter budget. I don't give into the FOMO or honestly, just watch a full walkthrough with the headphones on and you basically played the game. Pretty much. Yeah. So Ryan, you're putting this around the likes of Endless Dungeon, Fallout New Vegas, Fall Guys, Deep Rock Galactic, kind of in that range. I can see that. I think that's totally fair. Kind of like you, Ryan, my list is 110 long. I was kind of thinking it goes somewhere

near the middle. I am going to put this right at 51, which is really hard to rate like i said this is a game that's got if the whole game was the two giant fights oh yeah this would be top five like i'd be arguing like this is one of the best games ever made but you're talking about 10 minutes out of a six hour game so i'm gonna have to put it at 51 unlike josh I did find myself getting bored in long stretches, to be honest, at certain points, I'm going to put this below humanity, Ibn Ab and Terraria,

but I'm going to put it above dungeon defenders raft and among us. So I'm going to lock mine in there at 51. Any closing thoughts or comments before we close the show out? I think this game was so mind-blowing at times, man. At times, yes. That's the thing for me.

Maybe a month from now, I look back and I go, man, those boring parts, they stood out more than I remember or something like that. But fresh off of it, man, it is, like I said,

the, I can't think of another game. That's a spectacle like this. Oh, it's hard to, and I beat it just last night. Like I beat the game out. So it's real fresh for me.

And just that, that Ingan, uh, battle that with the name that they said that like the first time they were like, or something. I can't remember that. Oh,

the name for her. Iltaiga. Iltaiga. Iltaiga. But the way they were like in you or something i can't remember the oh the name for her ill tiger but the way they were saying i was like oh yeah the viking flair is very cool and how they speak i'll definitely give them that yeah well you know i think this was an interesting one it's it's not that i would give this game a negative review at all. It's just mixed. Yeah, it's got its ups and downs. I get that 100%. I can see why this game would be divisive for people. Yeah, totally agree.

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