The underworld. A concept existing long before the dawn of our history. The domain of the dead, and others.

This realm has been viewed in many ways. For some it is nothing but the domain of demons to torture the wicked. But in the tales of Greece it was much more. What do we do with such a realm, and what of those who would wish to escape this eternal place?

I have been meaning to play Hades for years. The true winner of Game of the Year given to it by all but one group. Developed by independent studio Supergiant Games. Hades is a rogue-like that sees you play as Zagreus son of the Greek god of the underworld Hades in his attempts to escape the underworld. When you start the game, you’re thrown into this right away, no lead in, right into your first attempt. You’re probably going to die… in fact it took a few screens for me to figure out how to attack as I was stuck with my cast as the only one I had been using (you can attack I just didn’t know what button). Chances are you will fail your first attempt. Some people have succeeded but it’s not something you’re expected to do.

This is the good cycle of Hades. When you die you start out back in the house of Hades, a hub location. Here you can chat to some characters, interact with them and as you get deeper in you will get items to give them to further relationships with the characters. These often give you an item that you can equip, giving you a buff for the run with it equipped, such as Chance to get healing items from breaking pots. A different currency allows you to give yourself more permanent buffs through the use of the mirror in Zagreus’s room. Other things you can get are new weapons, while you start out using a sword, there’s a bow, a spear, even a gun.

All this is so that, as not only your skill and memory improve with each run, but Zagreus will get stronger too. But it’s not just this that helps you get through the Underworld! As you progress room by room some of the rewards you get from completing a room are a boon from one of the Greek pantheons, these provide improvements and abilities for that run. These can be things like your weapon emitting lightning from Zeus or increasing the crit rates from Artemis. By the end of some runs you have a combo of boons that can make things go absolutely crazy.

Anyway to escape the Underworld you go through a series of rooms followed by a boss. That boss when beaten will drop a special item such as Titan blood that can permanently power up a weapon Diamonds that can be used to make improvements to the house of Hades, important for story progression. You go through 4 layers of the Underworld each with a boss at the end.

But what happens after you beat the last boss? Well the beauty of the game hits. The game heavily incentivises you to do lots and lots of runs. Each boss clear with each weapon drops one of the special rewards but only the first time you beat that boss with that weapon, on that difficulty. Yep once you get your first clear you get the option to increase the difficulty of your next run in a number of different ways, maybe more enemies, maybe bosses get a new ability. But why do this over and over? Well as said there’s story, and by interacting with characters after each run you progress the story with those characters, it’s not just the main goal of getting to the surface, perhaps you want to get Nyx and Chaos to meet back up? Maybe pursue a romance with one of the Furies? Or get all the Greek gods back together again. Took me over 50 runs but I did all these… I say 50 but it was a lot more than that, just one point Hypnos told me I died over 50 times.

As I got into the groove of the game, I found I could do a run in a bit under an hour. So I would see, “hmm I have an hour to burn, lets do another run” . Work on it on a higher difficulty for that weapon I’d use see if I beat the final boss and get use more resources to advance more stories.

It says a lot about a game that I’m willing to die well over 50 times to complete it and still have lots of fun.

Those of you who know about a bunch of Greek Mythology should also get a wee bit of a chuckle about recognizing certain figures around. There’s more than Just the Greek gods here, and unlike Disney’s Hercules they are a fair bit more accurately depicted. Which as someone who gives a damn about mythology finds a much better experience. Not saying they are perfect, but they don’t fall into the trap of making Hades Satan, or that the Underworld is Hell. I really get annoyed by that.

I highly recommend this game, I can see why it won all those Game of the Year awards and the sequel just came out. Not planning on playing that yet, Did just get through all this. Maybe next year.

Rating: 🎮🎮🎮🎮🎮

Well our journey past the souls of the dead has found us next week in a place I don’t think even Zagreus expected, for in Space no one can hear you scream.