Hello and welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little about the games we’ve been playing. This week, Be…
Hello and welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little about the games we’ve been playing. This week, Bertie thinks about boxes of chocolate; Victoria eats mini-eggs; Connor skives off work; Marie calls for Walker but Bill keeps on answering; and Matt feels all warm and fuzzy inside.
And if you’re looking for something else to read, or a reminder of what you once wrote, there’s a whole What We’ve Been Playing archive to delve into.
Can I say Hades 2 is like a box of chocolates? I don’t mean it in the Forest Gump way, in that you’re never sure which chocolate you’re going to get, because that’s stupid – chocolate boxes have a big picture insert that tells you exactly what you’re going to get. Don’t go for the strawberry cream. What I mean is a chocolate box that’s full of hidden delights, things you don’t expect, because there’s so much in Hades 2 that’s held back or hidden away.
The cyclical nature of a roguelike, whereby you get one attempt to see how far you can get and then try again, means you tend to see a lot of the game upfront, and this can lead to a feeling of ‘I’ve seen most of it now’. But in Hades 2 you haven’t, because the real magic comes later on. It’s on your umpteenth time cycling around that you’re delivered a significant dose of story development, or when you unlock a jacuzzi-like hot spring to bathe in, with your mentor. It’s in the layers of this game – this pass the parcel sort of game – that the treats and genius lie.
It’s when I’m served these kinds of things that I can only sit back and admire what I’m experiencing here, a game dense and layered that even on my 20th attempt at unwrapping it, I’m still having gawp-worthy treats fall out.
