If you ever need to feel humbled after an amazing Hades run, look no further than this speedrun.
It has been less than a month since the official release of Hades, Supergiant Games' most recent isometric indie title. The successful roguelike tasks players with escaping from the Greek underworld, a difficult task even for Hades' son, Zagreus. For a typical player, it can take around forty minutes to complete a single run. However, some players like Vorime have accomplished this feat in less than a quarter of that time.
Speedrunners have always been at the peak of skill within the gaming community, destroying games in a matter of minutes. Speedruns of notoriously difficult games, such as Hades, are always impressive as they take an incredible amount of skill and knowledge to pull off.
On October 6, a new world record for an unseeded speedrun of Hades was submitted to speedrun.com, clocking in at a low time of seven minutes and 16 seconds. Vorime, the current world record holder, established this record using the Adamant Rail, the closest weapon to a machine gun within the game.
Vorime also used the Aspect of Eris to modify the weapon, a passive ability that increases Zagreus' damage output after absorbing his special's blast. During the run, he also sought out Rocket Bomb, a Daedalus Hammer upgrade that change's the Rails special into a rocket.
Interestingly, Hades speedruns are measured based on the game's in-game timer, which only runs during actual gameplay. This means that while choosing Boons, purchasing items from the Well of Charon, or loading screens between rooms, the timer does not increase. Vorime's run lasted a total of 20 minutes, but only seven minutes of that time was spent controlling Zagreus.
Splitting the timers like this allows for players to spend more time making hard decisions without actually impacting their overall time. Knowing which Boons to choose can make or break a run, so when an obvious choice is not presented to a player they need to take their time to determine what the best option is.
The official leaderboard for Hades speedruns shows an incredible amount of variety among weapon and aspect choices, proving that all of the game's weapon options are viable for a good run. Considering how recent the game's full release is, it will be interesting to watch the speedrun community develop and improve their times.
Source: Eurogamer