A Three Pack of Good Gaming News

I'm feeling excited over three items of gaming news (okay, one isn't news, but I'm counting it anyway) this week.  It's not often that we don't get bogged down in many of the negative details, so let's all just enjoy the good vibes!  Here are three items that made me feel happy--enjoy!

1.) Hades II looks fabulous!

Supergiant games did a three hour stream of a technical test of the sequel to the amazing Hades this week.  If you missed it, here's the video:

I haven't given much thought to Hades II, but this play test made me feel excited.  It doesn't look like much of the base gameplay is changing--you're still going to be fighting through procedurally generated levels of baddies--which is a good thing.  I'm intrigued by the story and characters though.  It looks like the protagonist is Melinoe who is possibly the sister of Zagreus (the protagonist and son of Hades and Persephone) and that there's some sort of rebellion going on in the underworld.  (Here's where I'll admit that I don't know exactly how Hades ended--I got far enough with it to have Persephone return to the underworld, but didn't start to unravel the larger plot about the Olympian gods and their banishment of Hades--it kind of makes me want to go back and keep playing through it)  If you know a little bit of Greek mythology, the presence of witches is noticeable when the video gets to the point where Melinoe returns to the central staging area.  Maybe the witches are tied to the rebellion plot?  The big baddie appears to be Chronos, a titan who is tied to time.  Sadly, the play test only features the introductory zones and no boss fights.

Overall, I like what I see so far.  The spirit of the gameplay and gradually unraveling storyline in Hades seems to have been kept intact.  The music and environments are both awesome!  I liked Melinoe's combat skills (with what appears to be a staff) and thought that the ability to freeze foes looks especially promising.

If you're also feeling pumped for Hades II, you can request to be included in the playtest on Steam.

2.) We're getting a SteamWorld Heist II!

Earlier this week Thunderful Games started dropping some hints about an upcoming title and it turned out to be the sequel to the highly enjoyable SteamWorld Heist. (If you're unfamiliar with the SteamWorld series or Heist itself, you can read my review of the first game here) Unlike the previous game which took place in space, this one looks like the Steambots will be battling foes in aquatic environments.  There's a whole new cast of bots to get to know and it looks like there will be plenty of hats to collect.  This unexpected announcement made me feel all kinds of happy because Heist is my favorite game in the genre-hopping SteamWorld series.  Here's the announcement trailer:

3.) The Fallout series is actually good!

Even though I went into it with very low expectations, Amazon Prime's Fallout show has been entertaining.  I've enjoyed the attention to detail--there are so many items and locations from the games that bring back many a fond memory of being randomly scared by an unseen feral ghoul or exploring a creepily empty vault to find out what horrible experiment occurred there.  The story hasn't really done anything too crazy and has stuck to a lot of the same major flashpoints as the games.  There are a few details that players of the game will probably question--for example, there's the addition of some sort of serum that keeps ghouls from turning feral and the weirdly connected vaults 31, 32, and 33.  I'm on the last episode and can say that I'm a bit sad that I've watched it all.  I would recommend giving it a watch.