Tech Olive

The past week’s best news and featured content you might have missed, as well as a preview of the week ahead…

We Taste the Soup: Dinner Date Preview
- While gameplay experiences like „Dinner Date” will always struggle to appeal to the average gaming masses, we at Tech Olive just can’t get enough of all the risk-taking experimentation and the ingenuity that comes from indie game developers, and „Dinner Date” is no exception. We were fortunate enough to get a near-complete build of the game, so let’s quickly dive right in!

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Now that you’ve read our review of the newest installment in the Call of Duty franchise (you did, right?), let’s see what the rest of the panel has to say about the new shooter from Treyarch after the break!

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So, here we are. Another year, another Call of Duty title in the colossal franchise. This time around, we get an installment that sets itself apart from previous titles. Perhaps only by a small margin, but it’s enough to breathe fresh life into the long-running series. However, is it enough to rekindle the love we felt with the release of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare? World at War and MW2 couldn’t do it. What about Black Ops?

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It’s no secret that we were planning to get ourselves an official Tech Olive Call of Duty: Black Ops server for us and our loyal readers. Of course, the release of the game hasn’t been without a few big issues. Our 18-slot Ranked Black Ops server is 100% up and running, but the issue is that we’re running into a bug when trying to connect to the server through Treyarch’s official server Rcon tool. So, until this issue is fixed, our server will be somewhere in the server list, but we won’t be able to edit its name or any settings.

Until further notice, consider our server in limbo. Hopefully Treyarch will fix their Rcon tool in the next few days and we’ll have an update for you.

Facebook’s holding another event? They just had one not too long ago (yeah, the one where Zuckerberg called the iPad “a computer”). We can clearly see that the invite hints at something to do with messaging. TechCrunch thinks that Facebook is launching it’s own little email client that apparently has been in the works since February and is referred to as a “Gmail killer” internally.

We’d love to see them try.

via [TechCrunch]

The popular rope-wrapping relaxation game Zen Bound 2 is heading to PC and Mac on November 16th. The game is currently an iDevice exclusive, but developer Secret Exit announced that the game will come to gamers on higher-resolution screens via Steam. If you’ve never played the game or are not sure what exactly what the heck they mean by “rope wrapping,” then I suggest you watch the announcement trailer after the break.

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Steam is bringing forth yet another weekend deal on not one, but two games. Codemasters’ Formula One racing sim  F1 2010 will be 33-percent off, lowering the price to $26.79. Piranha’s fantasy RPG Risen is also on sale at an even lower price. You can get it for only $14.99, 50-percent off the original price.

[F1 2010, Risen]

If you’re wondering how well Treyarch‘s newest Call of Duty installment did on its first day, you’ll be pleased to know that 5.6 million copies of the game were sold in the US and UK. According to Activision, Call of Duty: Black Ops “has become the biggest entertainment launch ever with an estimated sell-through of approximately $360 million in North America and the United Kingdom alone in the first 24 hours of its release, as compared to last year’s estimated day-one sell-through of $310 million for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 in North America and the United Kingdom.”

We must say, we’re not too surprised by this and we have a feeling this trend will keep up with future installments in the series.

[Press Release via Big Download]

We already know that Crysis 2 is coming, but what about further installments of the sci-fi shooter? According to executive producer Nathan Camarillio, Crytek is planning on making Crysis a “long-running” franchise that will rank up there with Call of Duty.

“We say why not? … As the franchise grows down the line, there’s no reason it can’t be as big [as Call of Duty] … It’s in our best interest to grow Crysis into a very long-running franchise. Maybe that means Crysis 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9…Crysis Infinity.”

There you have it, folks. We now know that several more installments of Crysis are on the way. It’s only a matter of how they’ll be titled. Will they stick with the traditional way of simply numbering them? Or will they do what CoD is doing and name each game something unique?

via [EuroGamer]

Epic Vid of the Week is a weekly series that showcases an awesome video that we or our readers discover. Some you may have seen before and others you may have not. If you’ve discovered any videos that are worthy of an Epic Vid of the Week title, let us know!

Actor Tom Cruise was recently spotted jumping off the Burj Khalifa — the tallest building in the world — for his upcoming film Mission Impossible 4. Of course he was wearing a harness when he did it, but apparently these guys who were scouting out locations for the movie weren’t wearing harnesses when they were perched on the tippy top of the 2,717 foot-tall skyscraper. At least that’s what the description says, but I definitely noticed one of the guys wearing a harness system around his waist…