How re -attituding works in Hades. When to die is not offensive
In the heading "Direct text" The authors express exclusively their own opinion, which may not coincide with the opinion of the editorial office (or may coincide). They are free to do it as they like and in any format convenient for themselves. Everything is possible here.
Over the past few years, the challenge games have gathered a huge fanbase. Take at least the genre of Souls-Like: people are ready to die for hours in the same place in an attempt to defeat the next boss in Dark Souls or Sekiro. I, no matter how much such projects began, never got to the end. And the reason is not only in the dead nerve cells. Constant deaths and kickbacks to the points of revival without progress, running through the same opponents with the same routes – this is what repels me the most. This phenomenon even has a special term: “repetitive gameplay” – from the English Repeat, that is, “repeat”.
I already began to think that I was not on the way with such games. But there was a project that turned all these annoying mechanics into his main weapon and was able to truly captivate me. Today we’ll talk about Hades.
What is repetitiveness
Developers often use repetition only to artificially stretch the gameplay. For this, the negativity grabbed her portion, for example, last year Spider-Man from Insomniac with your boring towers. There can also be the MMO-Grindyka, where the lion's fraction of time is knocked out of the same monsters.
The clock of the "fascinating" gameplay
But repetition is not always bad. In the pants like Dead Cells or Enter The Gungeon It is this mechanics that underlies gameplay and, conversely, makes them fascinating. From previous examples, the cuckolds are distinguished by the variety and unique experience of each new passage – and, as a rule, there are many. Yes, the bosses are found the same, but the path to them will always be different – all thanks to the procedural generation of levels, opponents and Luta. And death always returns the hero to the starting point, and everything that he earned in the previous race burns.
Ada has too many circles
Hades works according to a similar scheme: this is an action with Rogue-Lite elements. The main character named Vetrius is the son of Aida, who was fooled by living in the underground kingdom, so that the prince steals the legendary weapon from the collection of his father, jumps out the window and begins to wrap up to the surface through the endless hordes of enemies. By the way, weapons can be chosen to your taste: you love a near battle – grab the Stygian sword; If you want to stay at a distance – take the onions of the Coons or exogrophy. I liked the chaos and the eternal spear of Varat most of all: they can be used both at distance and in close skirmishes.
The legendary aida aida
In the arsenal we have four movements: a throw, a jerk, an attack and a special blow that are pumped through gifts from Olympus gods. Dionysus imposes the effect of poison on attacks, Zeus gives the main hero of lightning, and Athena – protection from enemy strikes. Later, we can also get a call of one of the Olympians-this is something like an ultimate that accumulates over time. Gifts go to Vrezus for successful stripping of the next level – either bought for fruitful gold in the Karona store.
But the levels are generated randomly, like a set of goods in the store, and therefore you can not predict what a set of effects you will get to the end of the next visit. Thanks to this, each passage becomes unique. For more than 30 races I have never happened two identical. And yes: although I seemed like I didn’t like this genre, I ran a gaming cycle of 30-50 minutes 30 times 30 times. This is despite the fact that I successfully filled the last boss already at the fifth or sixth entry.
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This is a sweet feeling
History in detail
So why do I continue to play it? Inventive gameplay, which changes with each new passage – this, of course, is cool. But the main reason to wrap all these 30 races was not he, but storitelling.
In Hades, from the very first minutes we are thrown into battle, but they hardly talk about the plot. Find out what happened at all and why we are doing what we are doing is already in the course of passage. Supergiant Games generally loves this technique: this was the same in Transistor, and in Pyre. And here it is immediately clear that the sobrius has some kind of conflict with his father, but no one has dedicated us to details yet. After several levels, we meet the first boss – Meger. During the short dialogue, you can guess that there was some kind of connection between Meger and the slatum. And judging by the precedence she scored the protagonist, the connection is far from friendly.
Good options, you can’t say anything
But this is the focus: in Hades, not only levels and skills, as in other Rogue-Lite, but also dialogs, change in every passage. Conversations Meg and Vrezus will be new every time. And I don't want to miss them, because they constantly add new pieces to the puzzle of the plot.
This is precisely for me the main advantage of Hades over other re-vested games: here death is not perceived as something negative, because it always leads to new information. In fact, Hades itself can go in a few hours – it is enough to study the main attacks of opponents, collect useful gifts of the gods and go to use them. But in order to learn more about the characters and their past, you need to run the plot again and again – with another weapon and a set of skill. If you take, for example, the chaos shield, Zeus will tell you how he loved to wield them at one time. And different combinations of skill can cause replicas of other Olympus gods, revealing their relationship.
The living kingdom of the dead
When the Vetrius for the first time dies and revives the “House”, the gods, the heroes of Greek mythology and dad-aid by his own person meet him. Having talked with each of them, he learns a little more about what is happening, and this allows him to be imbued with perfectly spelled out characters. Someone in love with the hero is in love, someone fell out of disgrace at the underground king for too bold songs, and someone is trying to agree with the gods of Olympus to help Votirius. At the same time, the inhabitants of the House of Aida have their own affairs. They are not always able to find them in the usual places, and this makes us appreciate every opportunity to talk: the more you talk to others, the more information appears in the code. And if you give someone nectar or ambrosia collected at levels, you can get useful artifacts in return and open new dialogs.
Souvenirs increase the likelihood of gifts from specific gods or give useful bonuses
Another feature of the dialogs is that the characters react to the progress of the player. If the hero died of an explosion, Hypnos will joke over him at the Point of the Podauna. And if he could not defeat the arrogant Theseus, Hades will certainly notice that it would be necessary to encourage the legendary king. Paradoxically, the kingdom of the dead turned out to be alive. Death is not just thrown by the player on an empty checkpoint – they are woven into the narrative and become an integral part of the plot. Moreover, the concept of rebirth fits perfectly into the setting. How can you die "finally" if you are already stuck in the Richy Leo Casino underworld?
Even in 40 hours in the game I could not disclose all stories. Some characters are hidden in special locations, access to which is not opened in every race. This is the main charm of a combination of rehearsal and storellaling in Hades: even if you have not fallen a special room, you are not upset, because by this moment you learned more about other characters and are still absorbed in the new gameplay.
And some heroes appear in the House of Aida far from immediately: in order to get to know them, you need to run the underground world several times – and the reward for your efforts will be another entertaining story. Supergiant Games managed to give each character the volume, despite the fact that in fact you communicate with 2D portraits. The gods of Olympus are talking about family affairs or about weapons that you took on a hike, but everyone does it in their own way. Aphrodite flirts, Ares preaches ultranasilia, and the rampant Dionysis will call you to overturn the bowl or two of the wine with him. All these developers diluted with good humor, and the voice acting deserves a separate praise: I directly fell in love with Meger's voice.
The new Supergiant Games game is a good example of how you can and should make repetitive games interesting even for those who hate to die and start new. The developers understood that in terms of gameplay they could no longer invent a bicycle, and instead focused on what they did best: they built a fascinating plot around the usual mechanic. This is this favorably distinguishes the game from the same Souls-Like, where rehearsal can quickly siege. In Hades, not only victories, but also lesions form the surrounding reality. And therefore, to die is not at all insulting: after all, every new race only promotes the story forward.
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