Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 review – it’s the intrusive thought that counts

💥🔪️💣 Intrusive thoughts are impossible to live with 🔴. Cloying, claustrophobic, incessant, inescapable 🕰️. Radio chatter from a distant room you can’t turn off at best, some hot, odorous wet breath in your ear at worst 😷. They might have your voice, but they’re not your words, not really 💭. They’re unfiltered, almost primal, a communion with bits of yourself you might never know – or have wanted to know – existed 🔮. This is where Hellblade 2 gets it right, because the intrusive thoughts are agonizing 😔. But they’re supposed to be 🤯. That’s the point 💡. Xbox’s very adult and very serious series has, within two games, made itself totemic of two things