Drawing on divine favour and Godly boons, Ben and Tao are seduced by Aphrodite, hastened by Hermes and emboldened by Ares as they push the boundaries of daddy’s discipline in tongue-and-cheek roguelite, Hades. The two dissect the ‘roguelike’ genre, Tao finally finishes the game (not once, but twice!), and Ben reveals why his attitude towards this is the same as to shopping in Ikea. Plus, when is a spoiler not a spoiler?

Minor spoilers heavily forecast around half way.

Content Warning: PEGI 12. Flashing lights may trigger epilepsy, migraines and extreme pixel vision. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. (Maybe.)

Clarifications:

• Zagreus and Megaera are not brother and sister…


• Prometheus was bound to a rock, and an eagle--the emblem of Zeus--was sent to eat his liver (in ancient Greece, the liver was often thought to be the seat of human emotions). His liver would then grow back overnight, only to be eaten again the next day in an ongoing cycle.


• According to Wikipedia, “Roguelike (or rogue-like) is a subgenre of role-playing video games characterized by a dungeon crawl through procedurally generated levels, turn-based gameplay, tile-based graphics, and permanent death of the player character.”


• In ‘Patriot’, to prevent Iran from going nuclear, intelligence officer John Tavner must assume a non-official cover —that of a mid-level employee at a Milwaukee industrial piping firm.


• The HBO show ‘Beforeigners’ is set in Oslo, not Copenhagen/ Denmark.


• Ben is talking about Super Mario Land, the 1989 side-scrolling platformer developed and published by Nintendo as a launch title for their Game Boy handheld game console. (The first Mario platform game ever to be released for a handheld console.)


• The music for Hades included in the audio bed here was composed by Darren Korb.

Audio extracts:

• The Old Bachelor Z. 607, by Henry Purcell (for Harp)


• Borderlands - ‘Ain’t No Rest For The Wicked’


• Avengers: Age of Ultron


• Hollow Knight theme by Christopher Larkin


• The Champs - ‘Tequila’


• ‘In the Flame’ from the Pyre Original Soundtrack


• Kalandra - Skaldespille (from the HBO® Nordic series Beforeigners)


• Wayne’s World - “We are not worthy”


• It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Season 5, Episode 2: "The Gang Hits The Road"


• Planet Earth 2 OST - ‘Dancing Bears’


• Halo 2 Soundtrack - Halo Theme (Mjolnir Mix) by Martin O’Donnell


• Faster Than Light OST main theme


• ‘Nude’ by Radiohead


• Palm Springs (2020)


• ‘Patriot’ TV series


• Dragon Age 2


• Harry & Paul, Series 2, Episode 2 - ‘40...45 years’


• Futurama, S4E4, "Less Than Hero"

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