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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 .

James Sawyer Ford

Gold Member
Witless response from a halfwit, expected.

If I’m a halfwit that means I’m not witless

butterfly GIF
 

zapper

Member
Funnily enough, low 90s is what you get when you aggregate the 8 Xbox-specific outlet scores. Not that they're the only brand who do that, of course.
I don't know, from what I know it's others who do these internal reviews and not "the press". they should be ex-reviewers or people within the publisher. that's what they explained to me
 
Funnily enough, low 90s is what you get when you aggregate the 8 Xbox-specific outlet scores. Not that they're the only brand who do that, of course.
Why don't we ever see other publisher internal review scores? We only ever hear about the Xbox ones.
 

Arcane0ne

Member
I have poor performance and single digits sometimes with my humble pc with gtx 1660 Super and 16 gb of ram.Maybe i have bottleneck with Ryzen 1600X?
I will have to play in my Series S.
 

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
I have poor performance and single digits sometimes with my humble pc with gtx 1660 Super and 16 gb of ram.Maybe i have bottleneck with Ryzen 1600X?
I will have to play in my Series S.

I think your 1660 is also a bottleneck. The games minimum requirement is 1070 and based on rudimentary googling. a 1660S is worse than that in some ways.
 

Jaybe

Member
Why don't we ever see other publisher internal review scores? We only ever hear about the Xbox ones.

Because Phil Spencer, CEO of Microsoft Gaming, spends his time discussing the internal review process and scores with the gaming media.


“We do mock reviews for every game that we launch, and this is double digits lower than we thought we would be with this game,” Spencer explained. “That’s one of the disappointing things; we would never strive to launch a game that we thought was going to review in the low 60s — it’s not part of our goals. [Redfall] was significantly lower than our internal metrics in terms of where it actually reviewed. But that’s not on anybody but us. We have to own that.
 
I absolutely loved stuff like Scorn but that actually has Myst-like puzzles and some of them were kind of tough.

This is too on rails. It’s a shame since it looks very expensive. I’ll for sure try it if they release it on PS5 because it looks very dark and that’s a win in my book.
There's a disconnect for me with third person Cinematic Experience (tm) games somehow.

I'm a huge fan of Point & Clicks, Puzzle games, Adventure games and so forth. I do not need "shooty bang bang" for games to be engaging but there is some weird thing for me that makes things like slow walking sections even for a minute unbearable for me third person games like this. There just is never anything else engaging going on and the controls and visuals constantly tell you "theres about to be action" or some shit?
 
Because Phil Spencer, CEO of Microsoft Gaming, spends his time discussing the internal review process and scores with the gaming media.


“We do mock reviews for every game that we launch, and this is double digits lower than we thought we would be with this game,” Spencer explained. “That’s one of the disappointing things; we would never strive to launch a game that we thought was going to review in the low 60s — it’s not part of our goals. [Redfall] was significantly lower than our internal metrics in terms of where it actually reviewed. But that’s not on anybody but us. We have to own that.
That was one instance. I've heard of these "internal" review scores only for Xbox games. Maybe I'm wrong, but they're the only publisher that seems to have them leak.
 
Played around an hour, and there is barely any gameplay at all. Just push the analog stick forward, and press the right button if there is a fight. Doesn´t look interesting at all, but will keep playing to unlock the daily achievements for the rewards program.

Boring is the word that best describes the game for me
 

Karak

Member
Looks great but thats about it for me. Either you love these types of things or you don't. I'm in the latter camp. I think Karak Karak said something similar in his review, if your the type of person who is looking for the skip/fastforward button during dialogue and cut scenes in games then this is not the game for you.

Does look amazing mind you.
This is really it. As I said in the review, where some games offer something that may handhold you over the gulf between whatever genre you may like and a new genre that the title offers something intriguing in. Hellblade 2 doesn't do much of that and for better or worse it never even appears remotely like its attempting to. It is its own thing and pretty confident in that. For better or worse of course.
 

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
This is really it. As I said in the review, where some games offer something that may handhold you over the gulf between whatever genre you may like and a new genre that the title offers something intriguing in. Hellblade 2 doesn't do much of that and for better or worse it never even appears remotely like its attempting to. It is its own thing and pretty confident in that. For better or worse of course.


Sounds great. Starting the game now, will get back to this thread after a bit with impressions.
 
Last edited:

graywolf323

Member
How's possible that the head of marketing at Xbox behaves like this?

Isn't embarassing?
he’s been behaving like this for over a decade now, the fact Greenberg is still in charge of marketing (and has even been promoted) is one of the things I believe to be a knock against Phil Spencer’s tenure
 
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