Game Theory: You don't need to wait to play Hades II just because it's in "Early Access"

A.V. Club There are, at present, more than available on video game marketplace Steam carrying the label “Early Access.

” It’s an official designation at the digital retailer, indicating that the game in question is in some degree of unfinished state, and that developers are simply making what they have, at the moment, available to purchase—with all the caveats that buying an incomplete game obviously carries with it. It’s a bit of an designator, though, given that some of these games have been available in this state for more than a decade at this point (looking at you, ), often selling hundreds of thousands of copies in the process, and frequently offering much more expansive content than any number of “completed” games. And it occasionally has its pitfalls.

We got to thinking about Early Access recently thanks to something we kept running into any time we tried to talk to people about Supergiant Games’ , which released in Early Access back on May 6: “I’m waiting until it comes out of Early Access.” Makes a certain kind of sense: There’s something very dissatisfying about getting into the groove with a video game, only to smack straight into a big STOP sign because there’s no more road to drive. The thing is, though, despite a few instances of lingering placeholder art, and some obvious points where epilogue material could be added on, feels very much like a finished game in the hands—enough so that we’ve played more than 20 hours of it and are s.