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Dubious Innovations of 2015 – still want a Segway?

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As we approach the end of 2015, it is with hindsight and sharpened critical claws that we look back at the most controversial and ultimately disappointing innovations that have been a feature of the year. Rewind your minds back to April the 24th, when the CEO of Apple, Tim Cook, stepped out of the tech giant’s Californian headquarters and announced that the divisive and potentially disruptive Apple Watch was now on sale. That moment saw plenty of debate over whether it was revolutionary or just gimmicky but, as usual for Apple, it proved to be a success. Here however, we look at inventions that, at least in our view, are more miss than hit.

The Segway

Given that when Segways were invented at the tail end of the 20th century it was predicted that we would all be buzzing about on them come the end of the following decade, we can only consider them a failure. Today the Segway’s most useful function seems to be that of a punchline to a passé joke. Envisioned as a way for people to get home after work in urban areas, it was then banned on the streets and then on the pavement in most places, causing its quick demise. Segway? No way. And, oh, what’s that ridiculously buzzing around the corner? Maybe the hoverboard will be more of a success?

Plastic Grocery Bags

Despite oil always having been a much sought after commodity, some supermarkets in the late ‘70s decided it would be a grand idea to utilize a new way of transporting groceries from till to cupboard – the plastic bag. 40 years on, and an ocean full of traumatized dolphins later, we are now in the process of encouraging retailers to opt for paper bags … sigh

Auto-Tune

Thrust upon the world like a knitted Christmas jumper from your aunt Donna, auto-tune was not requested nor desired by any music-loving human being with a set of functional ear drums. But we got it all the same. It aided the flourishing of appearance-oriented ‘artists’ and made it okay for musicians not to have any musical ability. The auto-tune gave birth to a tidal wave of dubious music.

These were our top three, but there’s plenty more where that came from. A few honorable mentions from the past 100 years are: subprime mortgages, spam email, CFCs and Mr. International, Pitbull.

Although George has many hobbies, he likes nothing more than to play around with cameras and other photography equipment.

Gaming

Ubisoft says that future Assassin’s Creed games will need more time to be made

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As Assassin’s Creed Shadows is about to sneak up on people in November, Ubisoft says that the time between developing games needs to be longer to find the “right balance.” Shadows has been in development for four years, longer than any other game in the series up to this point. That includes the huge open-world epics Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.

Shadows lead producer Karl Onnée (thanks, GamesIndustry.biz) says that the latest AC game took 25% longer to make than Valhalla. He says this is necessary to keep the quality of the series that it is known for: “It’s always a balance between time and costs, but the more time you have, the more you can iterate.” You can speed up a project by adding more people to it, but that doesn’t give you more time to make changes.

Onnée says this has as much to do with immersion and aesthetics as it does with fixing bugs and smoothing out pixels. This is because the development team needs time to learn about each new historical setting: “We are trying to make a game that is as real as possible.” We’re proud of it, and the process took a long time. In feudal Japan, building a house is very different from building a house in France or England in the Middle Ages. As an artist, you need to learn where to put things in a feudal Japanese home. For example, food might not belong there. Get all the information you need and learn it. That process takes a long time.”

You’ll have to wait a little longer for Ubisoft to work on each game. Are you okay with that? In what part of Shadows are you now? Is it interesting to you? Leave a comment below and let us know.

 

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You can now pre-order Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP on PS5

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You can now pre-order Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP, a remaster that Dragami Games and Capcom both created. You can now pre-order the PS5 game on the PS Store for $44.99 or £39.99. If you have PS Plus, you can get an extra 10% off the price.

The company put out a new trailer with about three minutes of gameplay to mark the start of the pre-order period. Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP is a remaster of Grasshopper Manufacture’s crazy action game from 2012. You play as Juliet, a high school student who fights off waves of zombies.

The remaster adds RePOP mode, an alternative mode that swaps out the blood and gore for fun visual effects. It also adds a bunch of other features and improvements that make the game better overall. You can expect the graphics and sound to be better as well.

The game will now come out on September 12, 2024, instead of September 12, 2024. Are you excited to get back to this? Please cheer us on in the section below.

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This Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 zombies trailer is way too expensive

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Is there really anyone who is following the story of Call of Duty’s zombie mode? We’ve known about the story in a vague way for a while, but we couldn’t tell you anything about it. It looks like the “Dark Aether” story will continue in Black Ops 6, but we don’t really know what that means.

For those of you who care, here is the official blurb with some background: “Requiem, led by the CIA, finally closed the last-dimensional portal, sending its inhabitants back to the nightmare world known as the Dark Aether, after two years of fighting zombie outbreaks around the world during the Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War timeline.”

Wait, there’s more! “Agent Samantha Maxis gave her life to seal this weird dimension from the inside out.” Even worse things were to come: senior staff members of Requiem were arrested without a reason by the Project Director, who turned out to be Edward Richtofen.

Black Ops 6 will take place about five years later, and it looks like it will show more about Richtofen’s goals and motivations. The most important thing is that you will probably be shooting an unimaginable number of zombies in the head. This week, on August 8, there will be a full reveal of the gameplay, so keep an eye out for that.

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