Sulphur on 20/9/2020 at 09:48
Hades has had what can only be described as the gold standard for Early Access launches. It came out of the gate a polished experience, and every successive content update enriched the base game while adding more to it.
Having said that, I had two problems with it: it was still Early Access, and it was a roguelikite (okay, let's add a third - the lite/like descriptors seriously annoy the fuck out of me).
The first problem, while offset by execution
par excellence, was still an issue for anyone having that niggling feeling of, 'but am I getting the whole experience?' while playing. It is now no longer an issue, since 1.0 has been released and the game is content- and feature-complete.
The second problem is, I will admit, a personal gripe. I'm going to rant about this at length, so feel free to skip the part between the asterisks.
*****
Rogue was designed as a game with limiters and information scarcity defining the experience. It tells you nothing at the outset - knowledge is a resource you need to earn, like enemy and item behaviour. You can only heal through finding items/rations within a level. Your lay of the land is non-existent: the map fills up each dungeon run as you explore it. Death means death.
And y'know, that stark design works. It communicates the stakes through a simplicity of design -- ASCII visuals!, simplicity of purpose -- find the Amulet of Yendor in the dungeon!, and the ever-present push-pull of resource management. When you die, it's usually not because something one-shot you, it's because you weren't sufficiently prepared. While you lose everything (though you can pick stuff up on a corpse run depending on the roguelike you're playing), the real currency you're amassing is knowledge - of systems, enemy behaviours, and tricks and traps.
Modern-day roguelikes have complicated this simplicity into a spaghetti-like muddle of interlocking busywork. Arguably the most successful of these is
Spelunky ADoM, which manages to be at once abstruse and unfairly punishing yet also beguiling in its own 'let's have another go' way. Part of this is the richness of its setting, where everything feels layered and the world is designed with vision and purpose; the other part is that, on every run, you are in fact still amassing knowledge. This extends to Diablo 1's drip-feed of enemies and lore; Diablo 2 complicated this a fair bit, but managed to keep its design on a semi-even footing while losing the stark atmosphere, which was a net setback to the experience as far as I'm concerned.
And then there's the rest of them. Somehow, modern video game design has decided that the key factor that makes a Roguelike is not how much like Rogue they are, but whether they involve permadeath and procedural levels. Games that do this are very much missing the point of the genre Rogue kicked off. As much as I can appreciate the crunchy combat of a Dead Cells or the way traits carry forward in Rogue Legacy, their metering and managing of the systems skews more towards 'hit this wall until you break through it, and then continue until you hit the next one'. Which is fine if you're looking for (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2qx5P0kQSM) infinite content and don't mind the frustration of starting over from scratch having learned not very much at all before you test that wall again.
So, as I platform my way through yet another identikit randomly generated level, the one thought ringing in my head is how profoundly empty the experience is. What am I doing this for in Dead Cells? Is there anything to learn about, or care about, beyond the brilliant animation? The answer is no. Its set of variables between each run is at once open, transparent, and limited. And the limited amount of attention I had to give is now spent. So, I die. And with that dies the hope I had, replaced by the sense of despair from having to start all over, having gained little to nothing from the previous exercise.
*****
Hades, as you may well have guessed, is a game about death. It's very much a reverse Diablo in an action/hack and slash mode; instead of delving deeper into a dungeon, you're working your way
out of one instead. Zagreus's plight is instantly relatable, with a simple and immediate overall goal: escape.
Supergiant hasn't always been great at crafting action in their games. Bastion was lovely, but had just enough stiffness in its design to not feel as good as it could have been; Transistor was, well, ineffable -- though in a good way, and Pyre was essentially fantasy basketball. All good efforts, but despite the combat, not because of it. Hades is the game where they took a step back, said, 'let's
do this', and then promptly raised the bar into the fucking stratosphere.
Because here is both simplicity
and depth. Zag has three basic attacks - normal, special, and cast - and six different weapons which function in unique ways that change how you approach encounters, and each approach is equally viable. In addition, at the start of each run you will get a boon from the Olympian gods which has major implications for how combat plays out per room. Also, each room will give you
something - an upgrade, or another boon, or currency, or an encounter, and each of these factor in to how the rest of your run will play out in immediately understandable terms. So if you want to tank up, prioritise heart upgrades; if you want to be a killing machine, prioritise boons from your god of choice. From a simple set of starting variables that the game lets you add on to and tweak as you progress, you get depth.
What also helps? The combat and animation is fluid, fast, responsive and utterly fucking brilliant. It
feels good. Zag's fire-stepping gait is smooth, his dodge move works as you intend it, and you're almost never caught out because you were waiting for some interminable animation to finish.
And then you die anyway.
So Hades is a roguelite in that you don't lose
everything. You lose any currency you've earned in the form of Charon's obols, but you keep the rest to upgrade abilities and weapons and upgrade various parts of Hades' court. Upgrades are permanent and persistent, and because of this, even when you die there is a sense of progress - your time has not been wasted, because your character's abilities have improved.
And that's fine, because it tempers the despair of losing. But as I mentioned some paragraphs and several years ago, Rogue and -likes work so well because of how they mete out information. So, in Hades, do you learn anything? Or is it as empty as <insert recent roguelike here>?
Well. Here is Supergiant's second masterstroke: not only do you earn things from each run, and learn about enemy behaviours, but when you die and return to your home in Hades, various snippets of character and story kick in from across the Greek pantheon and beyond. There's enough in there that in the past 6 hours I've played, not a single one repeated, and in fact, with a few characters there's an ongoing arc that continues when you emerge from death. Hypnos typically greets you first when you return, and since he records everyone's cause of death, he always has something funny to say about what killed you. And when you defeat a boss, chances are you'll find them back at home, and they'll have their own bits of story happening.
This reactivity also happens
during the escape runs. The Olympians will acknowledge when you've bested a foe you had problems with prior, or fire off a smug put down about one of their siblings whose boon you might have equipped. And if you die, friendly characters actually
offer you support, and say you'll get it next time. This is possibly the first time I've seen a game that turns what should be a detriment of the genre - being slapped back to the beginning - a core, enjoyable part of the journey. It's genius. And it's voice acted with all the superb character and quality you'd expect from Supergiant. All of these interlocking parts work together to ensure one thing, and one thing alone: they fuel me to keep going instead of giving up.
So, here it is. An exemplar in game design, in a genre I usually cannot stand. I can't think of a single major flaw in it, except that after a while, the comic-book styled art seems a bit samey from dungeon run to home and back, and Transistor's aesthetic had a touch more character to it.
But then, it lets you pet Cerberus.
Game of the Year 2020.
