• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Hellblade 2 | Review Thread

What Scores do you think Hellblade 2 will get?

  • 50-59%

    Votes: 2 0.9%
  • 60-69%

    Votes: 6 2.6%
  • 70-75%

    Votes: 23 9.9%
  • 76-79%

    Votes: 44 19.0%
  • 80-85%

    Votes: 90 38.8%
  • 86-90%

    Votes: 47 20.3%
  • 90-94%

    Votes: 10 4.3%
  • 95-100%

    Votes: 10 4.3%

  • Total voters
    232
  • Poll closed .

Ogbert

Member
So, sounds like it’s basically a movie.

This is not what MS need. It’s a niche title, at best, that you hope helps advance graphical fidelity for your actual games.

Problem is, MS has no games.
 
What happened mate?:

You know, it'd be pretty funny if it wasn't for the fact that some people are so transparent and predictable to the point of being actually sad.

Watch now how the same people that screamed "sad dad of war", "The Soony 3rd person template LOL", "Usual 3rd person movie-games", "TLOU is a brick throwing simulator" and how Death Stranding was a "boring walking sim slog" are going to sing a 5-6 hour "press Up on the analogue stick for awesome" praises and what a masterpiece it is...

I know that brand zealots are trying to hang on from whatever it's thrown at them and desperately needing a "win" against the bad evil Sony empire® but this is just sad, imagine giving this a 10/10, there's just no credibility leftwith most of these "journalists" anymore.

I'll also throw this in here : Ninja Theory has always been an absolutely mediocre company and the epitome of what's considered "movie games".
Heavenly sword was an uber-mediocre GOW wannabe riddled with terrible technical problems (tearing, aliasing and slowdowns ahoy) with barely any real gameplay, Enslaved was even worse gameplay-wise (but more technically competent), Hellblade...was what it was, a nice, 6-7 hours linear "experience" with barely any gameplay in it, Bleeding edge was super mediocre and flopped hard and DmC, while being their best game, it managed to do so under the guidance of Capcom and yet, it's still one of the weaker DMCs.
No need to mention games like Fightback and Kung Fu chaos...

I never understood the hype behind this company and how they managed to stay afloat all these years, it's the most mediocre company out of all mediocre companies out there - and this, has got nothing to do with MS or Xbox, they just don't have any real talent as devs and the only thing they can be praised of is that most of their "games" have some good tech behind them (motion capture/facial animations etc).

I'll be playing this but I'm not expecting absolutely anything besides being a nice-ish 6 hour distraction.
 
Last edited:

Hollowpoint5557

A Fucking Idiot
One reviewer said he beat it it under 6 hours.

1 YEAR development for each HOUR of gameplay and thats with the game being very heavy on cinematics. That is insane!

I can't wait to get home from work tonight to play it but what an absolute colossal waste of time that is. Who the hell wants to wait another 5 years for a 6 hour "part 3"?
 

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Nice overall score. I was expecting an 81 or so. Pretty excited to get started with this one tonight.

Yep, great scores. Based on estimates, an average run can take 8~ hours and a completion run around ~12 hours. Sounds about the same as the first one.


The time it'll take you to beat Hellblade 2 will vary based on your playstyle, so here are some estimated completion times for different players:

  • Quick: 5-6 hours
  • Average: 6-8 hours
  • 100% completionist: 8-12 hours
 
This can’t be serious. Is this Xbox’s new approach to reviews?
I have never seen Xbox give so many codes to their various influencers. Everyone under the sun got one. Should have tempered my expectations when I saw that. I swear Xbox stupidly believes influencers have a bigger marketing pull than an actual digital and television ad campaign
 
Last edited:

Assaulty

Member
Such a shame. I hoped for a more expansive experience with the ms money backing them now. What we got is more of the same.

I enjoyed the first one and will enjoy this one, but it's a shame they didn't really do anything to expand the game into something more
 

FewRope

Member
Not looking great on Steam as far as player count....

GOGdz-kWkAA0MRs
Not even 2k peak players, what the fuck
 

KaiserBecks

Member
I have never seen Xbox give so many codes to their various influencers. Everyone under the sun got one. Should have tempered my expectations when I saw that. I swear Xbox stupidly believes influencers have a bigger marketing pull than an actual digital and television ad campaign

It's a much cheaper approach though. I don't think they expect to sell many copies, people will play this on gamepass. Why pump additional money into a marketing campaign when the game is a "small" AA title?
 

Killjoy-NL

Member
Not after so many years of development. I refuse to believe such a game took so long, that or its budget was not 50 million dollars lmao and 90% of it was just money laundering.
It probably took so long because now we know the game didn't even exist yet when they announced it and the entire Xbox fanbase was claiming victory for this gen because of the visuals.

So they had to give it their all to get the visuals close to those of the announce trailer and then you get this.
 
Last edited:

Shrap

Member
It sounds like Ninja Theory took absolutely none of the criticisms of the first into account. Why? Why not make the gameplay actually compelling and give it some depth? Everything else was great about the first and now this one. I'll still play it eventually but it's a shame, especially for the amount of time it has been in development.
 
review aggregates in line with the predecessor are a bit of a shame, but it’s a wide swing.

Preloaded on my PC and happy to fire this up later today.
How did the developers take a wide swing? By reviews, HB2 seems like the safest possible sequel Ninja Theory could have possibly made. Outside of amazing graphics, what does it do differently than its predecessor? The combat is somehow even shallower than HB1, linear level design, and repetitive puzzles
 
Top Bottom