Hellblade Senua's Sacrifice: Performance Analysis

[W1zzard]

Hellblade Senua's Sacrifice is one of the best-looking titles released in recent times. Its facial animations look stunning, and the game's visual fidelity is excellent, too, but comes at a performance cost. We tested this highly demanding game on a wide selection of graphics cards at full HD, 1440p, and 4K.

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[Xzibit]

Graphic/Art looks interesting but not my type of game


Small error: 580 and 1060 3GB should switch places.

 

[bug]

Yeah, I'm not sure what kind of game this is either, but I'll get it just because it seems to be something new and it's available on GOG. Too bad it fell under my radar, it had a preorder discount.

 

[kiddonie]

I am really excited about this game.Huge fan of ninja theory ,one of the main reasons for me for buying ps3 back in a day was Heavenly Sword and Enslaved Odyssey to the West.I can only hope for Heavenly Sword remake without motion controls. I will buy this cant wait it is nice to see it is getting nice reviews.

 

[rtwjunkie]

Thanks W1zzard! I've been playing, and not only is it fun and different, it also looks as good as you described. It was a pleasure to get my hands on this after a two year wait! The .ini hack for fov was much needed.

 

[brutlern]

I have an annoying issue with the games visual. When played at 1440P max settings, the game looks blurry. Most people won't notice it, but if you enable Ansel (by the way, first game in which Ansel works properly out of the box), the blur is removed and you can see clear sharp textures (especially on Senuas face) while in normal in game it's all washed out. I'm assuming there is some postprocessing effects causing the blur,on purpose or a bug, dont know, fiddled with settings, couldn't make it go away, kinda looks like FXAA blur, which is proly disabled in Ansel.

P.S: The screenshots in the article were not done using Ansel, trust me, I can tell (and it bugs the hell out of me, it just looks so crisp in Ansel, and I want that in game)

 

[Solaris17]

So happy you reviewed this thank you!!! I've only played about 2 hours but I am ASTONISHED by this game. Fantastic. The audio and facial animations literally blow me away. the eye movement is another aspect that leaves me baffled.

 

[Readlight]

Unreal always looks terrible no sharpness everything blurry, only good lighting and its requires expensive gtx 1060 not these better priced rx 460, 560. probably Life is strange 2 will work much better

 

[claylomax]

A single player game? I thought they were extinct.
And it's on GOG. I love it. Thanks.

 

[W1zzard]

were not done using Ansel

that's correct.

have you checked the ini fixes on page 3 to disable motion blur?

 

[brutlern]

that's correct.

have you checked the ini fixes on page 3 to disable motion blur?

I am going to check the ini (when I get home), I don't think it's motion blur, as the blur is always on, not just in motion. I am hoping to find something related to FXAA (or SMAA, though I dont remember SMAA to have ever been this blurry in any game that used it), as that seems to be my best guess of where the blur is coming from.

 

[bug]

I am really excited about this game.Huge fan of ninja theory ,one of the main reasons for me for buying ps3 back in a day was Heavenly Sword and Enslaved Odyssey to the West.I can only hope for Heavenly Sword remake without motion controls. I will buy this cant wait it is nice to see it is getting nice reviews.

The comments on Gog say not to expect an action hack'n slash, so there's that.

 

[erixx]

Unreal 4 Engine doesn't anymore have that all-time favorite settings editor that looked like Windows registry?

Very interesting all this, going to have a look at it.

 

[Lionheart]

Game looks interesting but has a very muddy blurry look to it.

 

[brutlern]

Game looks interesting but has a very muddy blurry look to it.

Yep, check my posts above.

 

[Liviu Cojocaru]

Thanks for the review, the game looks very good. I'll probably give this a try

 

[rtwjunkie]

The comments on Gog say not to expect an action hack'n slash, so there's that.

That's correct. Think of it as a story-driven actiony adventure game with some sword combat.

 

[Hiryougan]

What about cpu performance? How are Ryzens doing?

 

[johnnyfiive]

This game looks really interesting, thanks for the review.

 

[GreiverBlade]

for the animation quality for the scenery and also ultimately for the price (under 30chf for me ) it's a freaking masterpiece ... i can't wait to get it once i can

i followed the development and it was one of these games that make you "go back and forth on your chair, mumbling to yourself *do want... DO WANT!* while watching the tech demo/making-of videos and news about it"

 

[bug]

This game looks really interesting, thanks for the review.

What review?

 

[GreiverBlade]

What review?

performances analysis is technically a review

 

[WithoutWeakness]

There is definitely blurriness in the screenshots as others have noted. It looks like it is being caused by artificial chromatic aberration on the edges of models. It's fairly subtle in most screenshots but is very noticeable in the white objects on the left hand side of this screenshot:

Chromatic aberration is an undesirable visual artifact of real cameras that use poorly designed lenses where all of the colors of a part of the image are not focused to the same point on the sensor, usually noticeable most toward the outer edges of the lens. This is not an effect anyone actually enjoys seeing in real life and it makes absolutely no sense to me why a developer would want to emulate it in a video game. And don't be fooled: this is not a natural artifact of your graphics card or monitor, this is a visual effect the developers chose to create and implement that actively reduces picture quality.

Fortunately, some folks have already sorted out how to disable this in an .ini file. Here's a link to a Reddit thread with more info: https://www.reddit.com/r/hellblade/comments/6sjjfm/some_pc_graphics_setting_tweaks_for_hellblade/

 

[Pumper]

Not a single sharp screenshot. I guess blurry mess passes for good visuals these days, just like "cinematic" 30fps.

 

[Solaris17]

Not a single sharp screenshot. I guess blurry mess passes for good visuals these days, just like "cinematic" 30fps.

Unless its part of the game because the protagonist is nuts.