Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II review – nerve-shredding arthouse game is 2024’s most unlikely blockbuster

Xbox Series, PC; Ninja Theory/ Microsoft
Stunning Icelandic landscapes merge with nightmarish hallucinations in this big-budget battle sequel

As the stench of rotting corpses fills the air, I hear the screams of my butchered kinsmen, and my lips begin to tremble. You let them die," a voice in my head accuses, as I crawl hopelessly towards the lifeless bodies. Save them!" another thought pleads. But their killer has seen me. As he draws his bloodied blade, I shakily raise my sword. You?!" I chide myself inwardly. Fight them? You are weak! You will die here."

To say that Hellblade II is stressful would be an understatement. Part blood-soaked Norse epic, part harrowingly authentic depiction of living with psychosis, it blurs historical horrors with the snarling demons residing in our heads. Following Senua's nightmarish journey through Helheim, this unlikely sequel finds our unlucky heroine shackled to an Icelandic slave ship. Torn from her homeland of Orkney by Northmen raiders, she is washed ashore in a violent storm. As her captured kinsmen perish, she finds herself alone in a hostile 10th-century Iceland.