Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 is Ninja Theory's sequel to 2017's Hellblade, which focused on Senua, a ninth century Pict warrior on a quest to bring back her dead lover from the Norse underworld. In Hellblade 2, Senua is hellbent(!) on stopping the viking slavers that ransacked her village, and so she becomes enslaved and travels to Iceland. Her ship is destroyed, and soon she discovers that the reason the Vikings are enslaving people is to give them in sacrifice to giants that would otherwise eat them. Senua is a seer, one who can peer behind the veil, and her psychosis is represented by the Fates, voices that you constantly hear in her head, as well as the Darkness, an entity that's a shadow of her abusive father. It's all very well done, and the rocky desolation of Iceland is evocative of Dave Egger's The Norseman. This is a violent, horrific tale, but there's redemption in the end, and Senua is more than a sword-wielding heroine. In fact, Hellblade 2 is less of a game than an interactive movie. You'll engage in limited combat against only one enemy at a time, as well as solve puzzles that are usually just a symbol-hunt or a simple reorganization of the environment. However, the presentation is impressive, and Unreal Engine 5's full feature set is utilized, resulting in gorgeous environments that you'll be eager to explore, even in a limited fashion. It's only about an eight-hour trip through Hellblade 2, but if you're a subscriber to Game Pass, it's worth the journey. Just don't expect something like God of War.
Screenshots:
Starship Troopers is a 1997 sci-fi flick by Paul Verhoeven, director of Robocop and Total Recall. Technically a loose adaptation of Robert Heinlein's novel, the movie is a parody of fascist wartime propaganda. Although it flopped upon release, it holds up pretty well in 2024. Starship Troopers' chiseled heroes and heroines (Casper Van Dien and Denise Richards, mainly) aren't so much real people as they are props meant to represent Americans in their vapidity and uncritical consumption of propaganda. Soldiers are brutally maimed and ripped-apart, but Van Dein's Rico doesn't shed a tear or have a moment of self-doubt. He and his fellow Mobile Infantry soldiers are glad to give their lives away without any thought, and their general mood is a chummy frat-house comradery that's psychopathic in its stupidity. Verhoeven really didn't think much of America, and while the faux-patriotism of the Bush years is long gone, the fascist propaganda has only increased. Let's just hope we don't all get sacrificed in the coming years in some mindless conflict that could've been avoided, had Americans only possessed a shred of analytical ability. Critic out.
No comments:
Post a Comment