The grub I chose was a Seared Ahi Tuna Salad. The game I chose to get was Hades, which came out last year and won a ton of awards. There for a while I couldn't go a day without someone somewhere raving about the game, so it was kind of a no brainer that I try this one out. After all, I love isometric dungeon crawls! Honestly, I can't believe it took me this long to pick it up.
In this game, you die . . . a lot . . . and you're meant to die. It's ok, because you're an immortal prince of the underworld named Zagreus who just resurrects in a pool of blood after each defeat, and, well, Hades is your father, whom you dislike greatly. Greek mythology, so full of drama!
Oh, it's a twisted family drama all right.
As for game mechanics, the dungeon is really just a series of locked rooms connected together by doors. As you play you're powered up methodically (Archero style: where you choose one of three power-ups to give your character) and try to build synergies with your powers and weapon type. Each time you die, you spend currencies picked up from your previous run to gain permanent power and unlock more and more story.
Gathering Chthonic Keys is the key to your growth!
The resulting game is a dungeon crawler with a lot of replay-ability because you realize that each time you play through this maze of death, it'll be a slightly different experience while still being the same core game. It's quite ingenious while also being quite fun, and that's the magic formula for winning a ton of awards.
Dashing against death
After the weekend here, I've been able to make it to the second boss now and have beaten Megaerya (or one of her crazy fury sisters) with the shield, bow, fist weapon, and adamant rail gun . . . and that's also important! You're not just beating the boss once and done, but you're also beating the boss with each of the weapon types.
One of Meg's crazy fury sisters . . .
I'm having a lot of fun with the game so far and starting to gain a bit more strategy to my play aside from button mashing. I have to say that I wish I would have picked this game up on a console instead of the computer to be honest. This one feels like it'd play better with a controller. Hmm, speaking of which, maybe this is a good reason to finally hook up a controller to the PC. YEAH! I'll have to do that!
Happy Dueling
4 comments:
I can't imagine playing Hades without a controller. I bought an XBox controller for my PC a couple years ago (for Nier, I think) and it's been a surprisingly useful purchase. There are a lot of games which just play better with it, and those games usually have very good support for controllers.
After hooking up the PS4 controller and playing a couple times, yeah, it's infinitely easier than trying to mash together the Q, direction, and spacebar keys at the same time. It becomes a finger pretzel quickly. (btw, good to see you here, Rohan! Gonna get Blessing of Kings hooked up on my sidebar.)
Picked it up on the Switch, after some agonizing between that or Steam. No regrets.
Controller feels good with Hades-style action combat - though I sometimes do wonder if aiming with ranged weapons would be easier with mouse/keyboard. Guess I'll find out if Hades ever turns up in a PC bundle.
It's a marvelously addictive game, and fascinating to observe your own progress over time. In the early days, I was convinced I was never going to get past the third boss, let alone get to the final fight.
Then there was the middle period where I could consistently get to, but not defeat the final boss. It seemed impassable.
Then after putting it down and revisiting it again, it became a case of: "Let's crank out 9 more final boss kills so that I can officially finish the story!"
I paused after that, but there's still room for plenty of future gameplay at higher challenge levels if I ever got the urge to revisit. Lovely, solidly designed game.
Excellent insights, Jeromai! Got you added to the blogroll.
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