The Critically-Acclaimed Hades Is Now Available With Xbox Game Pass

@BBB
Stick with it mate. The more runs and rooms you clear the more items you earn to make you more powerful and you’ll soon be clearing the early rooms with ease.
I bought this on switch 6 months ago. Gameplay is excellent and I’ve now had 58 escape attempts and made it to the final boss 5 times but haven’t quite gotten past that point yet as it blooming tough for me a bang average gamer! Lol
Great game and like you said very addictive…just want more attempt!

Great game, but I played it to death (no pun intended!) on my Switch. Don’t think I can be bothered to start from scratch. Shame there’s no cross-save.

@Nightcrawler71 I'm in the same boat, played it to death on switch AND bought it on steam for cross save between two platforms. I probably won't even install it on Xbox, but I envy all the game pass subscribers who are going to be playing for the first time!

@SplooshDmg
Roguelikes can be very frustrating by their nature so I fully understand why you say what you do.
It’s all about making progress and ultimately escaping.
However if it’s not for you that’s fair enough.
Fair play for giving it a go

@SplooshDmg plenty of games, bruddah. No need to beat yourself over the head with a game OTHERS love. I'm having the same feeling with art of rally. I enjoy the concept, but the simplicity of the graphics hides a sim, and the driving does take some getting used to.

Great addition to gamepass, Game like Hades on gamepass is huge.

Pretty curious to try it. Nothing about anything I've seen of this game strikes me as particularly interesting, special, or desirable to me, and yet the internet hipsters have coronated it. Very curious if it's hype or not.

I listened to the hipsters with Undertale and Dead Cells and regretted it... I'd be surprised if this were different. #ThanksGamePass

@SplooshDmg I've learned not to let expectations get the best of me whenever Quake is mentioned. I've been waiting for the next entry since 1997.....

@SplooshDmg Quake 4 was a good game, through and through. Very very Raven Soft before they got turned into a CoD machine. And Raven made some of the best games in the Quake engines.

But. It wasn't really a proper Quake game, either. It was a 3rd party game that functioned more as a remake of Quake 2 than Quake 4, but the gameplay and level design were so different, it was more of a common-for-the-era linear narrative corridor shooter rather than the signature mazes, spawntraps, and shootathons of the series up to then. Played more like Republic Commandos but with the Doom engine. Of course quake 3 was just a tournament arena shooter I'm still not sure I classify as a game at all. The engine defined a decade, but the game itself was instantly forgettable, and made for the modders.

I'd love to see a Quake 1 reimagining. But the level design has to be labyrinthian mazes. That's the hallmark of what made Quake Quake. The multi-layered pretzel-tied maps where you cross your own path multiple times. They were both linear, with a beginning and end, and also non-linear where you end up roaming open areas and retracing paths, with pieces opening up as you advance that weren't there before. That level design is what made Quake campaign so exhilarating. It was at it's best when "forward" progression and the opening of maps was VERTICAL instead of horizontal.

@SplooshDmg Yeah, it was very much a game of it's time, moreso than the real Q1 and 2, which stand unique in design and pacing from almost any other shooter, Q4 felt like a linear narrative shooter from 2005. Like all the others. Call of Quakie.

LOL I still disdain Doom 3. Slow-paced atmospheric survival horror with a flashlight, jump scares, and empty corridors. If I were to make a game that's "definitely not Doom" that's the game I would make. 2016 is the Doom that Doom 3 should have been.

Eternal is interesting, because in a lot of ways, Doom Eternal feels like the Quake 1 reboot we wanted, just marketed as Doom. Earth is sufficiently "doomy" but once you start going to other places, it feels a lot more like Quake than Doom.

@SplooshDmg It's Resident Evil: Mars. Nothing more, nothing less.

It's kind of surreal that id has really done nothing with Quake since...what was Q3A, 1999? The beta was '99 I think. Though I did buy the steel box version eventually because it's a freaking full-sized-box metal tin, not just the little DVD covers but a full sized old skool PC game box with a hinged lid.

@SplooshDmg well the reason why many say it is roguelite for people that does no like roguelites is that the characters and story are interesting. My recomendation is to find the weapon that suits your playstyle the best (for me is the bow but it is not the most common) as the story and banter btw characters gets better and better as you go on just one more run

@SplooshDmg well there is no game for everyone but I have to say that it is not possible to button mash your way through Hades as it is allways a challenging game (actually when you learn all the patterns it gets fairly easy as long as you dodge at the right times)

@SplooshDmg like I said the reason people say that is because of the story itself as most roguelites don't have one. Gameplay wise it is one in its soul

@SplooshDmg The feeling of progress is definitely of character and not of place, but it’s requires a perspective change that might be too much to ask for some people. I think what Hades does brilliantly is progress the story alongside your attempts to escape that makes it easier to adjust. The story is basically everyone vicariously being stuck with you the player and, ultimately
vicariously persevering and overcoming.

I’m playing for the second time on a fresh file, and haven’t passed Meg yet to tell you whether or not there’s some moment after that would be some strong hook or revelation to push through to. The only thing I can say is if you think it’s button mashing and then die, don’t mash. Be precise. If you think your getting hit too much, play shield and get a feel for the movement and pace. If you think you’re being under-challenged, play spear and use all the crazy tech.

Every element expands out — even after your first successful run. Even Hades itself becomes more interesting a place through more attempts. But if you don’t see the potential places it can all go at this point, it might just be a miss for you.

That soundtrack though... I’d bang my head against the wall for that alone.

@JohnyHalo I’m really excited for new people to play it too. I thought I would install just to see how it ran and felt compared to Switch, but I forgot how good that soundtrack is and now I’m back in.

@SplooshDmg : “ really good entry for people that maybe didn't know they liked roguelikes...”

That’s the PERFECT way to put it. Saying it’s the RL for people that don’t like RLs — which I think I’m guilty of doing — is probably not true very often. I was hit and miss with the genre but Hades made me a fan, so much so I sought them out after I maxed out everything on my save file. I also bought Hades when my company laid us all off, so I had time to pay hours and hours a day. I wonder if I’d feel different now that I’m working full time.

It really is a different approach to gaming and, like you said, games like Bayonetta, or even the Souls games are really about character/player meta-progress and often softer with the narrative and diegetic sense of progress. Luckily with Gamepass you only have to risk spinning your hard drive platters to find out if it’s for you.

Although I have heard that playing roguelikes can make you young and skinny...

Never got around to it on the Switch so looking forward to trying it. I just can't keep up with all the games at the moment.

@NEStalgia
Think if you didn’t like Dead Cells your unlikely to like Hades tbh.
The good thing (stating the obvious) is now it’s on gamepass if your a subscriber you can try it for an hour and if you don’t like it just press the uninstall button. Nothing lost.

Yeah not a fan of this. I loved it at first. But after you get the first boss and get to the next area, then die, and you have to do it all over again, no checkpoint...eww.... It's like old arcade design except with continuous upgrades.