Tech Olive

We’ve been hearing reports of the Age of Empires Online closed beta finally being turned on and invites being sent out. In fact, Robot Entertainment apparently started rolling invites out as early as a week and half ago, according to the game’s Twitter page. It’s not too late to sign up for the closed beta, though. You can do so by visiting the game’s website and pray that you get an invite, but we’re not sure when they’ll be sending out the next batch of emails nor do we know when the public beta will launch. We do know, however, that the final game will be arriving sometime next year.

Anyone manage to get their invite yet?

While the first the installment of the Dead Rising series seemed to be an overall favorable game, it was only available on the Xbox 360. This time around, Dead Rising 2 has expanded to the PS3 and — most importantly — the PC. With the platform expansion and a new storyline, is the sequel better than the first?

From all of the reviews dripping in, it seems that while it’s real close to offering the same awesome experience as Dead Rising, the second installment still has a few minor issues.

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We said “the 4-hour campaign feels like its a mere fragment of a proper game. Despite this, it’s still a solid modern FPS experience that should not be missed.” We ended up giving Medal of Honor 7 Olives and it seems others agreed, while some were a tad more generous. See what the others had to say about the game after the break!

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An anonymous tipster recently sent a photo to gadget weblog Engadget that appears to be the new MacBook Air, which is rumored to be announced at the “Back to the Mac” event on October 20th. The photo reveals a couple of new features like a re-designed case, a crap-ton of battery packs, and no room for a hard drive, which can only mean this particular SKU uses some sort of flash-based storage.

Of course, this may not even be the new MacBook Air. We’re big skeptics here at the Olive as far as rumors are concerned. What do you think?

via [Engadget]

Always working forward and putting control of content into the hands of their customers, Valve has announced a new system that allows Steam users to recommend games to their friends, as well as see what your friends are playing and what they’ve been recommended to try. Sure, it’s not a huge change to the social project that is Steam’s community, but it’s nice progress to enrich the Steam users. Granted, this system seems to do the exact same thing as a simple, “hey, you should play this game.”

“Found a game you think your friends should really be playing? Now you can write a recommendation for your friends to share your excitement and start a conversation. Plus, see what games your friends are playing most and what they recommend.”

[Press Release]

When it comes to Machinima, true quality is few and far between. Granted, you’ll find a nice comedy series once in a while, but the amateur in-game filmmakers struggle very hard to manage even a single scrap of Hollywood-worthy content. However, it seems Ezequiel Guerisoli is an exception. His most recent Machinima project is that of Mastermind; a mysterious and fantastic project created using the GTA IV engine. It’s very difficult to describe Mastermind, so you’re best off hitting the break and watching the 14-minute first episode for yourself.

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Despite being a bit late in jumping on the whole modern-warfare-series-reboot bandwagon, Medal of Honor aims to make modern war as authentic and realistic as possible, but did EA pull it off? Or did they spend too much time trying to top the modern shooters already in the market and — in turn — fail to properly create a name for themselves? Let’s see!

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The titles says it all, folks. Gametrailers TV‘s newest episode features a tons of new footage from Call of Duty: Black Ops. During the episode, Treyarch’s head Mark Lamia details the motion-capture technology, as well as the Vietnam/Cold War settings along with tons of other information on the game’s singleplayer and multiplayer aspects. Now, enough talking. Head over to Gametrailers and watch the episode.

So, after a lengthy discussion and a good night’s sleep to ponder our thoughts, we’ve decided to include the Apple Mac family of computers into our awesome daily coverage of PC-only content. While many will argue that Macs are separate from PCs and that they shouldn’t even be considered PCs, the fact of the matter is, they are essentially just that. PCs. And since Apple is becoming ever more present in the PC industry, they are getting harder to ignore and it only makes sense for us to include Macs on our site.

Not only that, but ever since Steam expanded their market to include Macs, Apple’s PC platform is becoming more of a viable option for PC gaming.

With that said, we’re proud to say that we will be covering the upcoming “Back to the Mac” event occurring on October 20th, where it’s said that Apple will most likely discuss the next step in the OS X series.

We’d love to here your thoughts about this small change to our site. Please leave any feedback in the comments!