Ohmpage

We surf hard so you don’t have to. Ohmpage brings you content covering the intersection between technology and culture. Relax. It’s good for you.

Name
Raj Patel is a technology culture blogger and architecture professional in Toronto. Editor of Ohmpage.
Name
Sachin Hingoo lives in Toronto and is a dedicated follower of tech culture, video games, and film.
Hi. Welcome to Ohmpage. We try to deliver content we find interesting ourselves and encourage our readers to participate. We're undergoing some changes for 2010, expanding the site to include more voices and variety by adding new contributing authors. We've got a new site design and as always are encouraging reader participation. Don't hesitate to get in touch with us about our content. Ohmpage is fully independent and run on a volunteer basis. Much of our content is syndicated elsewhere on the web and we are lisenced under the Creative Commons. If you would like us to review your product or content or if you would like to advertise with Ohmpage please email us about it.

Review: Halo Legends

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Halo: Legends is one of those ‘is it an ad?’ compilation movies (see Batman: Gotham Knight or The Animatrix for other examples of this) which takes a popular character or mythology from one universe and hands it over to several artists to re-interpret.  Halo: Legends does at least as good a job as the aforementioned examples at extending the backstory of Master Chief and the Covenant, using some stellar animation and surprisingly mature storytelling (for the most part) to both excite existing fans and bring new ones into the fold (coincidentally right before the release of the upcoming story-driven installment of Halo called Halo: Reach). The film is split into six parts; each one a distinct short film with its own plot, while using Master Chief and the Halo universe as a common theme.

Boodbath & The great beyond

bloodbath_shower_600x600If you find that your clean white bathroom to be disappointingly free of suggestions of murder and not looking enough like a crime scene you can now lay your mind at ease. Why go through the trouble of seducing a house guest and brutally murdering them in the shower just to accomplish that certain rouge aesthetic? Now you can get this Blood Bath Shower Curtain and Bath mat to satisfy your most Hitchcockian urges without having to even pick up a kitchen knife. Talk about modern convenience! Our only suggestion would be to make it water reactive so that pigmentation only became visible when wet, for that added sense of surprise

[Bath Mat]
[Shower Curtain]

Review: Halo Wars

hw1We have finally had some respite after the holiday game release rush of 2008. There were just so many games to check out in such a little timeframe. It was quite an unfortunate situation for many publishers. There is only a finite amount of consumer attention to go around after all. We still don’t know too much about games slated for 2009 though there are a few slated for first quarter release that we had been looking forward to. Halo Wars is high up on that list and we’re quite pleased that the publishers decided to delay the release until after that rush so we could take the time to give it the attention it deserves.

Its a real-time strategy game (or RTS) set in the fiction of Bungie Studios’ Halo series. Executive Producer Steve Schreck has crafted this title specifically for the Xbox 360 at Ensemble Studios, allowing them to forgo concessions of multiplatform design and focus on what was best for that environment. The video game console is argued by many to be an atypical environment for an RTS game (these people favor the PC for such games) though it is easy to draw up a list of strategy games on platforms other than the PC comparable to any list of those on it, suggesting this argument is a fallacy and deserving of dismissal. continue…

Review: Gears of War 2

Gears of War 2 is set to be one of this year’s hottest game releases. Its namesake released two years ago to huge critical acclaim and remains one of the most visually impressive titles on the Xbox 360. With the sequel everything was promised to be improved in every aspect. With all the other impressive new games on the scene this month, Gears of War 2 doesn’t really need to bring its A-Game in order to get decent sales – It could have pulled that off on residual excitement alone. Luckily for us though, Epic Games did not rest on its laurels for the sequel and actually tried to push beyond the hype and existing loyal customers in an attempt to actually expand its fan-base.

As nice as Gears of War was when it originally made the scene, it is no secret that it had its share of problems. Multiplayer, for instance, was an undercooked afterthought. Most notably though, story was sorely missing in the original. With this franchise turning in to a signature series, a lot more effort was invested this time around in order to make it a deeper and richer experience. Though, of course, not perfect, this sequel just may have accomplished it’s much touted goal of being in improvement in all aspects over the original. continue…

Review: Fallout 3

If you couldn’t tell by the weather that it was autumn you can tell by the avalanche of new blockbuster games. Today marks the North American release of Fallout 3 – a highly anticipated game having already won numerous awards before it was even complete. We first got hands on this game at X08 in Toronto earlier this year and were excited by what we saw even in that early and limited demo build.

The original Fallout by Black Isle Studios won a lot of awards too and is still recognized amongst the best games. This sequel has seen the franchise switch developers to Bethesda Softworks – the same developers of the much celebrated Elder Scrolls series. With a pedigree like that this post-apocalyptic RPG certainly has a lot of expectations to live up to. continue…

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