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Coleman John
The core gameplay of Hades is one of the best examples of one more run" in modern times. It never gets old as you slowly progress through the levels, working your way further into the game, defeating new bosses, meeting more NPCs, getting permanent upgrades, and learning more about the world and narrative as you understand the ins and outs of survival in the dangerous levels.
When it comes to roguelikes, you can have the most varied enemies, bosses, and the best visuals, but what sets Hades apart from the rest of the genre even more, is its slick fast-paced gameplay while dungeon crawling. Weapons, upgrades, strategizing on the go for how to build your character for that run, and more all play a part in how far you will reach.
I have zero complaints with the actual game on PC and modern consoles, and basically consider it perfect. It even has an accessibility mode that gives you a slight health boost on each death to make your progression easier through multiple runs. But how does it feel and look on mobile? I know the team has mentioned things like 60fps gameplay, customizable controls, controller support, and an uncompromised experience, but I needed to see it for myself.
I knew Hades would be great with a controller, but I specifically focused on playing it with touch controls. As with many games I cover, I found myself enjoying it with touch on the iPhone, but preferring a physical controller wirelessly on iPad. I used my Xbox Series X wireless controller and the 8BitDo I use to test and both worked perfectly. The game displays Xbox button prompts for both. With touch controls, I was surprised at how good they felt on iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 14 Plus. I recommend resizing the interaction button though because the default is a bit too small.
Hades does have cloud saves on Netflix and I tested this over 12 times back and forth while playing Hades on my iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 14 Plus, and iPad Pro. I only had one issue where there was a save conflict popup that got resolved by selecting the correct data. The syncing worked flawlessly outside that. I am disappointed to not be able to bring my Steam and Switch saves over since I play with syncing on both of those. Hopefully this can be considered for the future.
When it comes to Hades on PS5 and Xbox Series X, it has 4K 60fps support and a decent DualSense implementation. On Xbox it supported Quick Resume and had save syncing with the Windows version (non Steam) making it a good option for those who use that store. I ended up playing a lot more Hades on Xbox Series X with Quick Resume support though. None of them having cross save with Switch or Steam was disappointing.
As with other Netflix or Apple Arcade game reviews, the big caveat to the recommendation is that you need an active subscription to play the game in question. Just like with the GTA Trilogy, Hades is a killer app for Netflix, and one that is likely going to push people to subscribe to the service.
The 2022 Netflix series entitled Ancient Apocalypse is a tour de force in presenting the core ideas of Graham Hancock. The photography, the detailed art of reconstructed ancient monuments and sites, and the integration of concepts and ideas are truly sublime. And Hancock not only presents himself as a wise and knowledgeable person, but as also an excellent and eloquent documentarian and writer. After my review of his book Magicians of the Gods in Skeptic1 and the debate Michael Shermer and I had with Hancock on the Joe Rogan Experience, I have come to respect his sincerity and gentle demeanor through our subsequent correspondence. I think of him as a friend, and I hope he feels the same way toward me.
Most notable about Easter Island are the spectacular huge stone carvings termed moai (Figure 4). Based on radiocarbon dates, we know they were constructed between 1100 and 1650 AD. All the moai were carved at Rano Raraku crater where the source-rock tuff is exposed. It is estimated that a team of five or six men could carve a moai in about a year. The largest moai weigh about 75 tons and stand over 30 feet high, not including the rock foundations on which they stand. The moai were moved from Rano Raraku crater to sites usually along the coast. The latest research suggests they were moved by means of a rocking motion using ropes made from hau tree rough bark. A team of 15 people could manage the movement.6 There are over 887 of the monolithic moai and 125 of them were placed on stone foundations called ahu.
Based on the comprehensive work of Van Tilburg and her colleagues we know that the moai were made from stone tools by a stone-age culture. Excavations in the crater produced numerous stone tools from the quarry, including stone picks, hand stone chisels, and stone hammers. Rapa Nui is proof that mixed agriculture-hunting societies can produce spectacular and massive stone monoliths with the simplest of tools. We also know that these same people were able to move the huge and heavy moai over distances approaching ten miles (some partial statues now lay broken where they fell during transportation). In addition, there are over 4,000 petroglyphs that not only adorn some of the moai but are carved on rock throughout the island. And the moai occur no place else in the world. They are not the inspiration of some ancient, advanced civilization. They are the creation of an indigenous people with a proud culture. Before the ecocide, there was enough bountiful food on the island to support a large enough population with a large enough agricultural surplus to have enough time on their hands and enough food available to produce these exceptional works of art.
Where is the evidence for an advanced civilization here? There is no indication of agriculture, domestication of animals (the fill refuse contains bones of wild animals and grains from indigenous species that fed the workers), trade, storage of food, social economic classes, science or technology, or metalworking or metallurgy. And although there are beautifully carved animals on the megaliths, there is no evidence of meaning in these petroglyphs, such as is evident in hieroglyphics many millennia later in the earliest known civilizations. Not a single inscription exists at Gbekli Tepe. Yet, Hancock contravenes the decades-long work of the archaeologists in stating:
At the very least it [Gbekli Tepe] would mean that some as yet unknown and unidentified people somewhere in the world had already mastered all the arts and attributes of a high civilization more than twelve thousand years ago in the depths of the last Ice Age and sent out emissaries around the world to spread the benefits of their knowledge.11
Randall Carlson appears briefly in the last episode of the Netflix series under the title of amateur geologist and author. He is a smart fellow and a very likable guy. However, he claims to refute the detailed work by professional geologists that demonstrates the cause and extent of the flooding that formed the Scablands found across Montana, Idaho, Washington, and parts of Oregon. The army of scientists that have studied the region note that huge floods over about 8,000 years scarped the Scablands. Geologists have carefully mapped the various deposits. Each individual flood left organic debris enabling radiocarbon dating (Figure 6). I have been involved in detailed stratigraphic mapping in several places in the world, and I can tell you that it is arduous work determining how and when the various deposits were formed. Fine stratigraphic mapping like this is the only way to start to determine the history of the past. Yet as far as I can tell, Carlson has not done any geologic mapping of the region.
Uniformitarianism was popular in the late 19th century, but today all geologists know there have been multiple catastrophes in geologic history. In fact, the multiple massive floods documented in the Scablands are cataclysms of epic proportions. Few, if any, geologists deny a meteorite hit the Earth and annihilated the dinosaurs. And now there is evidence that a comet struck Earth 12,800 years ago. Hancock is trying to undermine the results of geologists that have been working for decades in the area by pretending they claim there were no cataclysms. There was nothing gradual about the floods geologists have documented.
My friend Mary, who drove us to R-Place Restaurant, took her burger apart, eating meat, then toppings, then buns. The last bit of grease-soaked bread was too much for her, though. I ate mine the traditional way, and only made it through about a quarter.
Certainly, vegans can make a fair and compelling series about veganism. Starting in high school, I was trained as a journalist to believe in a neutral, objective approach to reporting, but have come to understand that is bullshit. It pretends journalists or documentarians alike do not have perspectives and are not making subjective decisions in their work, suggesting they are coming from literally nowhere, and is an idea that plagues journalism.
You Are What You Eat often uses appalling imagery, like chickens and pigs smashed together in cages, turtles caught in nets, large pools of blood, feces spraying in the air, salmon in farms with sores on their bodies.
I was annoyed by the lack of focus on the study. The subjects on the vegan diet losing muscle during the study was glossed over. How many calories were they consuming? What were the macros? How much were they exercising?
As a vegan of 5 years, speaking for myself I would have liked to see more scientific information myself, but as a tv viewer, I can attest that documentaries seldom offer Harvard references throughout to legitimise their claims, nor do other subjects often face the same scrutiny as veganism which triggers many omnivores.
There was elements in the documentary that did seem oversimplified and biased towards a plant based diet, but I would still argue that the environmental reasons outlined throughout are credible in their own right, and the fact that farmed animals outweigh natural wildlife 19x is astonishingly clear.
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