The review embargo for Hellblade 2 appears to lift on the same date as the launch of the game, just an hour before it's available.
Ninja Theory outdid itself in Hellblade 2 with the photorealistic visuals and the unreal audio design, but why was the gameplay neglected?
Its a perfect game for Gamepass, i think this is what MS wanted from it to be. IMO spring 2025 PS5/Switch 2 release maybe sooner
I finished it and I'll start by saying the graphics are amazing!!!!! and I experienced and noticed absolutely zero bugs and ran into no issues with the game so it's highly polished.
In saying that, that's where my compliments end, I slugged my way through this game, thank god it was short.
The most on rails game I've ever played, didn't care for the story or the characters outside of the story for the first giant which I did like. For a game like this story and characters should've been everything and it just didn't hit, I didn't care at all just wanted to finish the game and experience the visuals, that's the only reason I persisted.
Puzzles were absolutely lame an amounted to either trying to find shapes or using land shifting bubbles, all of which were piss easy.
The fights are cool at first and look brutal but again very simple.
Basically no environment interaction besides lighting torches
Checking my last achievement only like 6% of players have finished the game which says a lot considering the length of it. I can't imagine a whole lot of people are playing this either.
Don't understand the higher reviews for this, outside of visuals the game isn't great if any anything it was a slog to get the 7 hrs it's took me.
Order 1886 had graphics that were way ahead of its time. Also had excellent gameplay. But it was absolutely ripped to shreds in reviews based on the shortness of the game and some repetitiveness of some fights. For some reason those things don't apply to HB.
I just played the first 3 hours.....the gameplay is extremely basic. Walk a path while you hear voices, then long cutscenes, a simple battle that is almost QTE....repeat.
Ninja Theory's latest is an impressive accomplishment in more ways than one, but it isn't the flag-in-the-ground moment many had hoped it would be.
Steam peak-player count is super low. Lower even than the original. In regards to selling copies/subs and making a profit in some way, I'd bet everything I own on it being a complete and utter failure. But I wouldn't shut them down. They need to expand and be more ambitious and ramp up production. Hope their next game is something special.
this l don't understand. This game is explorative, its not ever going to be a big hit but a very enjoyable short experience. Not every game has to be so many hours. The devs were happy with their end product.
Only certain obscure observers thought it would be. The rest of us could see it was never going to shift systems or be a massive hit.
Great graphics does not mean a great game… it peaks interest but at the end of the day we want both in one! Looking at you GTA VI. Rockstar, come show us how it’s done!
CG writes: We spend around 40 minutes playing the opening of Hellblade II on PC (Gamepass version), running max settings but with DLSS set to Quality. So, effectively playing the game at 1440p despite the render res being set to 4K. As you can see, the RTX 4090 GPU sits around the 70% usage mark using these settings which are capped at 60fps. Aside from the technical details though, we found the opening gameplay a little underwhelming. Sure, audio is top-quality sublime, and UE5 provides some fantastic visual nuances, yet the gameplay just felt sacrificed for cinematic posturing. We are going to assume the gameplay becomes more of a focus moving forwards as the opening here felt less interactive that its predecessor which also begins in/on the water.
I'll wait for someone to record the game and convert it to an FMV for the SEGA MEGA CD port.
Zero confidence
That's not a good sign.
Review codes have been sent out as of 8 hours ago (according to Tom Henderson on X) so at least they aren't withholding those... But you'd think with confidence they'd want positive reviews to get buzz going online the weekend before release.
... But if they're expecting mid reviews, yeah sure lift that embargo when most people are asleep.
Nice. I could speedrun it by midnight and go to sleep after.
Zero marketing and embargo lifts when the game launches?
No confidence from team Xbox.
Oh my!