Hades

Hades (2018) is a fighting game where you battle your way through dungeons to escape hell and the clutches of Hades. You play as Zagreus, the son of Hades and as you shoot your way through the game, you'll meet many recognisable Greek gods like Zeus, Athena and Poseidon who try to help you escape and give you new skills. It stands out for the combination of organic narrative and pixel-perfect shooting required to progress.

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The game is formatted as a rogue-like game, where you must move through a series of dungeons and where your progress is reset if you die. But, unlike other rogue-like games, when restarting the dungeon crawl, your character remains permanently upgraded and characters you meet remember you from your previous attempts. Each environment and character is hand-drawn in a cartoon style and is fully voiced.

This results in an action game where the narrative and evolving story also offer a strong reason to play. It combines fast-paced action, cyclical progress and an organic story. Each time you play, these elements come together in different ways to provide new opportunities for building your hero and new stories and characters to discover.

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Our examiner, Jonah Monaghan, first checked Hades 4 years ago. It was re-examined by Ollie Robertson and updated 4 weeks ago.