Finished Hellblade. I am normally fairly sceptical about storytelling in games, sometimes unfairly, but I thought as a conceptual and thematic package it was really good. Some of the gameplay was a little too repetitive and not especially exciting, but I know it had thematic reasons to explain, in part, that (e.g.spotting patterns repeatedly). Furthermore, whilst the combat was good but not amazing, what it did achieve was a great sense of embodying Senua's rage and fury at her situation and her struggle to overcome it, and I found myself cheering her on as i hacked down the Northmen. A really effective game, despite some rather basic gameplay at times, and one I am happy to say confounded my normal prejudices about story/gameplay balance.
Also, genuinely horrifying at times.
