Hades (Switch) Review

 

Hades (Switch) Review

Release Date: 19 March 2021

Date Played: 24 April 2021

Well, what can I say about this game that hasn't been said already?  Hades is a rogue-lite hack and slash game from SuperGiant, the developers of Bastion and Transistor.  While Supergiant has made renowned games in the past and I have usually enjoyed them, there was always something about them that held me back from loving them deeply.  This isn't the case with Hades.  This game is a Masterpiece in virtually every possible sense.  It seemed to be every organization's game of the year for 2020 and would have been mine also had it not gone up against the Last of Us II, a game I had an extreme emotional experience with.   But even though it wasn't my top game of the year, that doesn't stop it from being one of the most engaging, addictive, beautiful, and downright best games I've ever played.  

For the last several years there have been a glut of rogue-lite games of every ilk.  They often share the same mechanics and a similar gameplay loop that can get stagnant.  Having to die over and over again in an attempt to unlock some small piece of content like a new item or character can become quite frustrating when you can't succeed.  You attempt the same thing over and over with no reward and no sense of advancement.  You've simply failed and wasted your run.   SuperGiant, in a stroke of genius, have eliminated this problem with the gameplay loop of Hades.

In this game, you play as Zagreus, the son of Hades.  You discover that the goddess who raised you, Nyx, isn't your birth mother.  You soon learn that your real mother, Persephone, has left Hades and is hiding on Earth.  You decide that you have to break out of the underworld and reunite with her.  Of course, your father forbids this and does everything in his power to stop you.   Fortunately for you, the Gods of Olympus have heard of your plight to escape and want you to come join you on mount Olympus.  They offer you boons to aid in your journey through the 4 levels of the underworld.  These boons act as the powerups and upgrade items in the game.  All of the gods have different aspects to their boons.  Zeus has lightning, Demeter has ice, Athena has shields, Dionysus uses poison (termed hangover), Poseidon is water, etc.  Choosing the best boons for your current build is paramount to your success in the game. The boons are also graded and have different rarities that determine their power levels.  An epic form of a boon will be much stronger than the common form. While it can be difficult to make the exact build you want because of the rogue-liteness of the game, there are lots of synergies available between the gods.  If you're lucky enough to get enough boons from the same god, they will offer you a legendary boon if you're lucky.  Sometimes the gods will pair up and offer you a unique duo boon that combines their powers. These can cause Zagreus to become extremely powerful, and it’s fun watching him dash around the screen causing all sorts of havoc.  In addition to this, you have 6 weapons to choose from that are unlocked over time.  These range from a sword, spear, shield, bow, gauntlets, and even a grenade shooting assault rifle. Combining these with the boons can really change up the playstyle of the game.  Also, each of the 6 weapons has 4 unlockable forms that completely change how they work.  Obviously, all of these options open the game up to countless possibilities of playstyles that keep the game from getting boring.  

In addition to this, there are other collectables to gather on your runs.  There's the usual assortment of healing items and health upgrades, money, weapon modifications (changes the playstyle even more), gemstones, and darkness (more on these later),   As you battle your way up through the underworld the 4 areas get progressively more difficult.   Each of these areas looks, feels, and plays totally different from the others.  Some are lava pits where you have to pay attention to your footing, Elysium forces you to fight fallen soldiers that regenerate if you don't kill them fast enough, there are enemies that constantly poison you and require you to kill them with a real sense of urgency..   All in all these areas are fun... but I do wish there was a little more variation than playing the exact same 4 levels over and over. The game is so fantastic, I want more content… I want more levels.   

Zagreus has his attack, a special attack, a cast, and a dash.   All of these can be modified and changed with the aforementioned upgrades.  The controls are simple, but work perfectly and it's a real testament to SuperGiant to know not to overwhelm you with too many controls in such a hectic game.  

I also encountered no technical issues whatsoever in my 80+ hours of playtime.  I never had a framerate drop, crash, bug, or anything at all. 

  

So, that's the gameplay.  It's pretty stellar and a lot of fun.  It by itself would make for a remarkable game.  However, remember when I mentioned how Supergiant fixed the problem with the rogue-like gameplay loop?   Well, that solution is what ascends this game to its masterpiece classification.  In between your runs, you get to wander the halls of your father's house in Hades.  You speak to NPCs and advance your relationship with them.  As you get to know more about their lives and how they came to be in Hades, you actually begin to care for these characters.  You WANT to know more about them.  Soon you'll be exchanging gifts to show your affection for them. Eventually, they will confide in you and  ask you to help them with their plights.  It's all very interesting and adds some worthwhile additional content to the game.  In addition to all of this, you can use the resources you gather during your runs to permanently upgrade Zagreus.  You can level up his weapons, give him new skills, add health, give the ability to reroll items, unlock decorations for the house, gain trinkets that change the gameplay, find companions to help you out on your journey.  Truthfully, there's so much to do and to unlock it can be overwhelming... but, gathering these resources means you'll be just a little bit stronger on that next run.  Did you die on the last boss? No worries, it isn't a wasted run.  You gathered resources and can upgrade your weapon to make it 5% stronger.  So, you'll have a better chance next time.   This constant stream of progression and the elimination of wasted runs is what knocked this game out of the park.  

Even after I "beat the game" I kept wanting to go longer to unlock everything.  After I got the "true ending" I still wanted to keep unlocking the game’s massive amount of content.   As if this weren't enough to keep you busy for the next 300 hours, there's a Pact of Punishment that allows you to increase the difficulty of certain aspects of the game.  Increasing these raises your heat gauge and allows you the chance to get even more collectables to unlock items or level up.  This Pact of Punishment serves to alter the game to an entirely new level and acts as the end game portion. The amount of content in this game is, honestly, unbelievable.  SuperGiant put so much love and care into crafting this game that I'm in awe. 

 After writing all of this, I realized I hadn't even mentioned the aesthetics of the game.  The graphics are beautiful and have that sharp contrast look of the other SuperGiant games.  It's very colorful with dark grays and greens with blood red mixed in.   The soundtrack is very nice (although not as good as their other games, in my opinion) and is performed extremely well.  Finally, I have to give a huge nod to the dialog, voice acting, and characters in this game.   Everything is written perfectly and performed expertly.  Every character in the game is unique, likable, and memorable.  The time I spent with them was memorable and most of the interactions Zagreus had with them often ranged from making me laugh and grin ear to ear, to actually tugging on my heart strings.  I also  loved the world and its charming character. Hades, despite it being the underworld, was truly a beautiful and amazing place.  

 In the end, I unlocked everything in the game and only needed to level up all of the items to their max levels.  I decided to call it here... for now.   I'm not even sure if you can ever truthfully finish the game.  There may be unlockables that go on forever.  You can always bump up the Pact of Punishment another level, or upgrade a chair in the reception hall, or level up your renown in the underworld.  Since I unlocked all of the usable items, and saw all of the possible story, did all the meaningful side missions, I didn't want to burn out on upgrading everything to its maximum level by having to grind runs over and over.   My time with this game was fantastic.  I never got bored playing it and could have kept playing for another 80 hours or more with relative ease.  But, as with all things in life, there's never enough time.  I'm not sure where this game falls in my list of my all-time favorites, but it's certainly high up there.   I have... and will continue recommending this game to anyone who will listen.  

Final Status: Completed

Final Score: 10/10 (Masterpiece)

Wings of Wor (Genesis) Review

 

Wings of Wor (Genesis) Review

Date Released: 8 September 1991

Date Played: 11 November 2021

Wings of Wor is a horizontal shmup created by the developer Masaya.  You may know them for their homoerotic themed shmups in the Cho Aniki series.  This game predates them by a couple of years, and although it isn't as off-the-wall insane as those games, there is still a very bizarre, unique, and compelling experience to be had with Wings of Wor.  

You play as a super fit and jacked angel (foreshadowing of things to come in Cho Aniki) who has to fend off an invasion of Heaven by all sorts of insane creatures and bosses.  While the cover art of the game is magnificent and is apparently a commissioned piece by Boris Vallejo (way to go Sega!), the character sprite in game is very flat and not very interesting to look at.  The same can't be said of the game's enemies.  There are dozens of different enemy sprites that range from fish, zombie heads, vampires, spiders, snail men, demons, robots, severed hands, and a ton more that I can't even remember.  It's truly impressive and fits the game's art style perfectly.  The game's aesthetic is such a strange mashup that I wasn't even able to describe it with my own words.  So, I'll use Hardcore Gaming 101's description, "It's a mixture of ancient Greek, gothic horror, steampunk, mixed with bio-horror (like H.R. Giger)."   Wow, that's some variety... and is especially impressive for a 16-bit game.  This mish-mash of different elements helps the game to stand out and is certainly the main contributing element in the game's reputation.

You're greeted on the title screen by our hero posed in magnificent fashion while some awesome fanfare music plays.  As you start the game (easy mode is default... and still brings quite the challenge) you enter the first stage which is a flooded underground cavern.  You'll notice right away several layers of parallax scrolling and detailed scenery.  You'll also notice that the graphics are kind of dark, dingy, and muddy.  I'm not sure if this was intentional on behalf of the developers, but I think it's a bit of a turn off.  Everything is so muted in its colors and brightness, that it's difficult for things to pop out at you and catch your attention.  As you progress through this level, you'll soon encounter an earthquake that causes a nice screen rotation/wobble effect in the game.  It's pretty striking and helps the stage stand out and is a testament to the skills of the developers. They wanted to flex their knowledge of the hardware (flexing will be another feature in their future games) as well as their creative prowess and it shows.  The music for this stage starts off pretty upbeat with lots of horns and fanfare that I think suits the game well. I found myself humming along to this track after my first few times through the game.  After the mid-boss, this music takes dark turn and becomes quite sinister that serves to foreshadow the stage boss which is some sort of steampunk tank with a human face. He's taken down easily and is a good icebreaker to the rest of the game.

The next stage begins with you flying over the surface of the water for a bit before finally submerging yourself into the depths for the rest of the underwater stage.  You'll soon realize that a big graphical feature of this game is scenery in the foreground.  There are large columns of algae that obstruct your view and you'll soon notice that bullets and enemies tend to get lost in the scenery.  You'll also notice that the stage tends to drag on and on with large sections of popcorn enemies where nothing really happens.  Fortunately, the stage ends with my favorite boss of the game.  A ship sails into the screen and you have to attack the figurehead on the front of it to bring it down.  After that, the whole ship rises to reveal that it's actually the hat of a giant pirate that was waiting below the water.  Blast him in the face until he's no more and celebrate a victory well earned.  Super cool.

Stage 3 has you entering a gothic castle with gargoyles, vampires, statuettes, ghost knights, and all other manner of spooky foes.  The music that accompanies this stage is baroque through and through and is by far the best music in the game. I would love to whistle along to this, but that can be quite the challenge.  It's not so easy to bring out the elegance of contrapuntal organ, harpsichord, and strings by blowing air across your lips. I really do love how this track changes  the atmosphere of the game and brings it around to the gothic horror style. Hopefully the music will keep you entertained while you once again notice that the stage goes on for far too long and you'll keep heading down several long corridors that look exactly the same as you ascend to the top of the stage. You'll finally meet the steampunk boss who is another giant head (I'm noticing a theme) and you'll have to dispatch him while avoiding a barrage of bullets and puffs of almost impossible to see smoke.  He feels a lot like the stage 2 boss, but less interesting and more annoying.

Stage 4 takes place in a steampunk factory and begins with a fast paced section where you have to maneuver down tight corridors (much like the similar stages in Gradius).  The music here is upbeat and has some really fun clapping sections that I enjoyed.  After this speedy section, you'll come to almost a crawl as you shoot your way through wave after wave of fast moving enemies and ground units.  Once again, there are pipes and structures in the foreground that obscure a lot of enemies and shots and resulted in quite a few deaths on my part.  The boss of this stage is the most frustrating in the game and is a dismembered body that sprays a large amount of red blood cells into the air for you to dodge.  His heart is his only weak point and it floats behind him and is impervious to damage until it decides to dart out.  After you finish him off, it's time to move on.

Stage 5 takes place in some sort of giant body.  The entire stage has a wavy background that is a cool effect.  The ceiling and floor also bring back the effect from the earthquake of the first level and makes the whole screen look like it's undulating and pulsing.  It's pretty cool, but can get distracting before too long.   There are also once again obstructions in the foreground (red blood vessels this time) that really obscure a lot of bullets (mostly red to blend in with the surroundings...) and fast moving enemies that appear from behind, above, below, and sometimes from nowhere.  The music in this level is nothing to write home about, and the stage goes on forever.  I timed it, and it was around 9 minutes... which is way, way too long.  It's either very boring, or overly intense and could have used some more balance. The boss of this stage is... um.... notorious for being a giant bald man with a huge, mutated, and monstrous...umm  genitalia... that covers the entire bottom portion of the screen.  It's once again a fitting precursor to the Cho Aniki series and I have no earthly idea how this got by the censors at Sega during the early 90s.  Blast him in the face until he's no more.  I got to this stage without ever getting hit many times, only to die 9 times on this stage alone... and then used 5 continues and still couldn't beat it.  After a few rounds of practice, I was able to clear it regularly with only a couple of deaths.  It's an annoying stage and is my least favorite in the game.

Moving on to the final stage, you'll find yourself flying through the clouds with gorgeous rays of light beaming down in the background.  You'll also note that there is a pretty large blanket of clouds on both the top and the bottom in the foreground that obscure about a third of the screen... sigh.   This whole stage is a boss rush of the game's mid-bosses.  I actually really like this with the exception of one thing.  They bring back the final boss of stage 4 and when he lobs up his bunch of red blood cells, they are obscured terribly by the clouds in the foreground and you can't see where they are coming from.  I was never able to get passed this boss without dying several times and it was extremely frustrating to not be able to see what you're doing. It got on my nerves pretty badly and made me want to quit the game. After this, you meet the final boss who is a giant embryo... and a giant disappointment.  He really only does one thing; spewing out orbs that randomly float around the screen.  You have to maneuver between around 12-20 of them at any given point while keeping constant damage on the boss who can only be hit about once every 8-10 seconds.  The boss never changes up his patterns and it's just a long battle of attrition until he falls. Like most of the stages, it takes far too long and you'll be begging for it to be over. Then, the credits roll and it's time to play through the game again on a second and harder loop.

As for the gameplay, it's normal for a horizontal shmup.  You collect blue orbs which increase your shot spread and red orbs which increase your firepower.  You can also collect feathers that increase your speed but be careful not to get too many of them, or it's too difficult to dodge accurately and will lead to you crashing accidentally into a wall, enemy, or stray bullet. There are also orbs that can change your forward shot from a spread to a focused attack with some upward and lower defense and even a rare forward and backward facing shot.  Having the correct type of shot is essential to your survival and luckily the game seems to provide the correct type of shot when you need it. You're given no bombs in this game and instead are able to collect different magic scrolls to aide you.  You can collect up to 3 scrolls at any time and you activate them by pressing the A button.  These range from lightning bolts, guardian angels, homing attacks, ground attacks, and more.  They all have limited ammunition and if you happen to collect more than 1 of the same scroll at the same time, it will increase its ammunition and effectiveness.  These magic attacks are sometimes essential to finishing a level unscathed, but more often than not are pretty much useless and you end up ignoring them.  Also to help you on your way are extends every 200k points and secret 1Ups hidden around some of the levels.  I was able to find one of these in stage one right before the mid-boss, and 2 of them in stage 4 during the speedy section.  They were essential to my success and I wonder if there are more hidden around the rest of the game to help you out.  There is some slight Gradius syndrome to the game where when you die and power down, it can be quite difficult to overcome the strength of the enemies.  But, it isn't nearly as bad as a lot of shmups out there and with enough practice you should be able to succeed even after dying a few times.  There are an abundance of powerups in the game and recovery is usually pretty painless.  Scoring is pretty straight forward and basically hinges on just grabbing as many powerups as possible. 

So, there's an overview of the game.  How do I feel about it?  Well, it has some awesome style and is super unique in its design.  This is especially true of the huge amounts of enemy models and various bosses. The graphics are pretty outstanding if a little muddy and muted and really have that "Genesis" feel to them.  The music is frequently outstanding but can get a little unmemorable on some tracks.  It also has some scratchy sounding midi samples...but isn't that what you're supposed to expect from a Genesis game?  The powerup system is well thought out and fun and I enjoyed it immensely.   The game controls well and it a lot of fun to play.  If you left it at that, this would be one of the best shmups on the Genesis, honestly.  But, the game is brought down... way down by some glaring issues.  Firstly, the levels are way too long and drag on, and on, and on.  There are whole sections where not much happens and you can just sit in one spot and hold down the fire button and nothing will touch you.  Some of these stages are around 10 minutes long, which is insane.  The whole game clocks in at around 45-50 minutes and I fell like that should be shaved down to around 30 minutes or so.  Secondly, the scenery in the foreground constantly blocks your view of the enemy bullets and the enemies themselves.  I'm guessing 80% of my deaths came from not being able to see what was going on by these obstructions.  They appear in pretty much every stage and while they do add some nice atmosphere, they are a marked detriment to the gameplay.  The game is often  a test of attrition rather than skill.  Very rarely will the game actually force you to dodge difficult patterns and rather relies on throwing hidden stray enemies and bullets at you in the hope of "sucker punching" you.  Instead of routing and learning intricate patterns in the levels, the game just throws slightly annoying patterns at you until it gets lucky and brings you down.  With the extremely overlong lengths of the stages, the game has lots of chances to get lucky with these shots and will inevitably succeed.

These two problems bring down what is otherwise a really good, fun, zany, and unique experience with a great premise and awesome atmosphere to a frustrating and middling shmup that is still worth playing, but isn't worth putting in a lot of time to master.  I was close to being able to get a 1-credit clear on the default settings, but would always have my runs derailed by an obscured bullet.  In the end, I settled for simply beating the game and decided to move on to something new.  

Final Status: Beaten (very close to 1CC) around 1million high score.

Final Review: 7/10 (good... with 2 huge flaws)