Author: Will Partin

Will Partin is editor of The Meta.
Article

Apocalypse Now (& Again)

In English, the word “apocalypse”—ety. Greek, n. apo (un-) + kaluptein (-veil)—has three non-exclusive uses. The first and most common is simply the end of the world, whether by divine punishment or whatever transpires in movies directed by Roland Emmerich. The second is any form of calamity, representational or real, man-made or no, that resembles the end of the world, like the 2010 Haitian Earthquake, Chernobyl, or the movies directed by Roland Emmerich themselves. The third is what the Greeks intended apocalypse to mean: the revelation of knowledge through profound disruption, which is why the final book of the New…
Review

The gorgeous, empty dystopia of Anno 2205

Beginning with its first release, Anno 1602: Creation of a New World (1997), the Anno series has distinguished itself from a crowded field of strategy games by making economic competition, rather than military action, the focus of its simulation. Though Anno looked to the past for the first decade of its existence, the series turned towards the near-future with the excellent Anno: 2070 (2011), which tread new “historical” ground in familiar, materialist footwear. Anno 2205, the latest release in Ubisoft’s dependable series, picks up where 2070 left off; humanity is on the verge of interplanetary colonization and a rush for…