State of (my) Gaming

21 Nov 2021

I’ve been waiting for a PS5 for a while, but I think it is going to be a long while before I get one, so after talking it over with the family we agreed that it would be interesting to spend that money on an Xbox Series S. With Xbox Gold Pass Ultimate or whatever it is called there’s a massive collection of games, most of which I haven’t played yet.

I started the day intending to play Control, but with the giant pile of software I’d started downloading, it ended up still in the queue. The other game I’d decided to look at early was Hades. It’s received a ton of acclaim and I know a few folks who really had a great time with it. I’d planned on playing Control first because it would be over and done and I suspected - correctly - that Hades was going to be a long-time sort of thing.

Now that it is downloaded I’ll be prioritizing Control but I do think that a run or two of Hades in the small gaps when I have a smallish chunk of time to play and don’t want to get sunk into something. Roguelikes in general are good for that as there’s only so many runs I am willing to do in one sitting.

Control hadn’t downloaded yet though, so I played Hades. It is good.

I don’t right now recall the word for roguelites that have progression. Things like Rogue Legacy, etc. I tend to be less of a fan of them than the sorts of roguelike/lites where the baseline starting character is the baseline starting character. I’m certain there’s a Hades speedrun category from a fresh install and people are great at it, but there’s something about the need for progression being baked into this style of game that isn’t entirely my top preference.

That all being said, it is good! Really good, and I understand why it has seen such acclaim. I didn’t expect otherwise but I’m glad to start understanding it directly.

I did play through the first little bits of Control, just until Jessie becomes the Director. I played it through to the first major boss at some point last year but it is nice to go through these intro bits again with slightly more knowledge.