Traversing the nightmare realms of the human mind has always been central to horror. The stories we tell ourselves about what’s moving in the darkness, the creation of monsters out of unknown sounds — from this emerges our fascination with terror. In Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II, players navigate a cold, dark ninth-century Iceland in the often wet shoes of the Pictish warrior Senua on her second adventure in the third-person action-horror franchise. I was very fond of the first Hellblade, which saw Senua journey into Hel to save the soul of her lover. But the sequel pulled me in even further, with some of the most unforgettable and unsettling psychological horror I’ve ever experienced.
Senua, who lives with psychosis that causes her to...
