The New Olio

Doubt in the Time of Zombies

Posted by in Video Games, Writing

Two kinds of people walk free from the burden of doubt: Ryan Gosling and children. Gosling because, well, whatever, he’s Ryan Gosling. Children because they don’t think; they just believe. They are the perfect representation of life in an ideal world of black and white, right and wrong, life and death. If you give them a reason to believe, they surpass any level of faith and take to it as if it were simply knowledge, facts that anyone could look up and tell you that yes, you are right. It’s…read more

QuakeCon Dishonored Demo

Posted by in Video Games

If you aren’t familiar with Dishonored, that’s all right because I wasn’t either. All I knew heading into my QuakeCon demo was that it was a first-person shooter from Arkane Studios and there may or may not be rats. While both of those things are true, there is a whole lot more to Dishonored that just Schrödinger critters. Indeed, Dishonored is a game that takes place in the first-person perspective, but it is less of a shooter and more of a mixed action stealth game. You play as a “supernatural…read more

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QuakeCon RAGE Demo

Posted by in Video Games

Judging by everyone I talked to at QuakeCon, I was not alone in almost wholeheartedly writing off id Software‘s upcoming post-apocalyptic first-person shooter Rage. Also judging by everyone I talked to at QuakeCon, I am now not alone in feeling like a damn fool for having done so. Rage is very much an id game when you look at it in the grand scheme of things. It’s certainly hard to quantify why I say that (though it’s also a sentiment John Carmack shared in his keynote this year), but you…read more

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Infamous 2 Review

Posted by in Video Games

If you watch the Giant Bomb Quick Look of Infamous 2 or listen to their 6/14/2011 Bombcast, you’ll hear them talk about Infamous in comparison with other modern triple-A third-person action games. To make a two-hour story short, Uncharted and Assassin’s Creed both had moderate or tepid initial offerings in their franchises (though I still think fondly of them both), but their sophomoric attempts were universally praised not just as relative improvements but also as game of the year contenders/winners. So then what about Infamous? Well, it’s generally accepted that…read more

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Portal 2 Review

Posted by in Video Games

I think I was disappointed with Portal 2, but not in a bad way (nor am I entirely sure it’s 100% accurate to say “disappointed”). I know this doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but just go with it for a second. The first Portal was a wholly revelatory experience, a quality that can be at least partially attributed to the fact that not much was known about it when it came out. As far as anyone knew, it was just a puzzle game that happened to be in…read more

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