Jamie Rigg
Articles by Jamie Rigg
‘Sea of Thieves’ could learn a thing or two from ‘No Man’s Sky’
The second Sea of Thieves campaign-slash-major update hit Xboxes and PCs last week, and it is, in a word, dull. Cursed Sails isn't too dissimilar from the first campaign, The Hungering Deep, in that the main quest is basically just a case of sailing from island to island to find the next clue. The new equivalent of the boss battle is identical in many ways, too. It's not so much a challenge as it is simply showing up with enough resources to keep your shift afloat, crew alive and cannons firing until you inevitably win. Alongside the humdrum quest, though, are several meaningful updates to the core game. There's positive growth here, and as No Man Sky's NEXT update has shown, continually adding content and making serious changes to a game people were initially disappointed with can eventually pay off. But, five months on, Sea of Thieves still needs more.
‘Dota 2’ veterans steamrolled by AI team in exhibition match
Later this month, the best Dota 2 teams in the world will meet in Vancouver for the biggest tournament of the year, The International. The annual contest consistently boasts the highest prize pool in eSports (it's up to $23.5 million already this year), not to mention the glory that comes with winning the prestigious event. It may not be long, however, before a team of non-human players becomes worthy of such success. This weekend, the all-bot roster of OpenAI Five took on a team of Dota 2 casters and ex-pro players that individually rank amongst some of the best in the world. OpenAI Five won the best-of-three exhibition match convincingly, and the only reason the human team took a game was thanks to a little help from the audience.
The automated in-car navigator that predated satellites
Standalone navigation devices are a dying breed. These days vehicles tend to have navigators plumbed into their dashboards, and as long as there's a smartphone to hand... well, there's an app for that. Demand for the devices nosedived years ago, but the technology underpinning them is alive and well, floating out there in space. What we all know as GPS wasn't operational until the mid '90s, though this was predated by Transit, the first satellite-based geolocation network completed in the '60s. But the first automated in-car navigation system was developed long before we had the technology to put anything into space.
Ziplining and VR headsets make a weird couple
Hailed as the next big thing a few years ago, virtual reality has yet to truly make its mark. Perhaps there'll never be one killer use for VR, and it'll remain a minor player in many niches: gaming, entertainment, education, therapy, enterprise, art and others. Some of the more unusual experimentations mix the virtual world with the real. VR roller coasters, for instance, blend physical movement with elaborate virtual settings to create a unique experience. Zip Now in London is trying something similar: ziplining with a VR twist.
Sony can't stop making money from PlayStation
Sony's new CEO Kenichiro Yoshida has been at the company's helm for just a few short months now, but fortunately, former chief Kaz Hirai left him an already successful company to run. Yoshida has his own designs for Sony, with a three-year plan to focus primarily on the entertainment and imaging businesses. It's important not to take the favorable position the company is in for granted, though, so we imagine Yoshida is pleased with Sony's latest financial results released today. There's nothing too extraordinary about the numbers, but Sony did record $17.9 billion in revenue for the three months ending in June, from which it extracted nearly $1.8 billion in profit. And yes, no points for guessing PlayStation is responsible for the bulk of that.
Making a living scamming the scammers
"Well, my grandchildren were over and it's something about a pornography virus," says the soft voice of an elderly woman over the phone. "I unplugged my computer right away," she continues, and after she explains her worries in a little more detail, a female voice on the other end of the line replies, "That's all right. Don't worry, let me assist you with this. And may I know, is that a desktop or a laptop?" The PC has apparently been hacked, as confirmed by allowing the support team remote access, but resolving this comes at a cost. Nearly two hours and 20 minutes -- and several transfers between call center staff -- later, Kitboga drops the vulnerable-old-lady act.
Dr. Julius Neubronner's fantastic flying cameras
The first aerial photograph was taken in 1858 by Frenchman Gaspard-Félix Tournachon, also known by his alias Nadar, from a tethered gas balloon suspended over Paris. While the images captured on this flight have since been lost to time, there are plenty of surviving examples of aerial photographs shot during the latter half of the 19th century. In addition to balloons, kites and rudimentary rockets were used to send cameras skyward. Even Alfred Nobel was drawn to the practice, with one of his last patent applications being for a method for rocket photography. It's hard to grasp how challenging this was at the time. We need only load up Google Earth to see our house from space, or buy a hobbyist drone to capture our own aerial panoramas. Long before satellites and quadcopters, though, Dr. Julius Neubronner started strapping cameras to pigeons.
Watch the trailer for George R. R. Martin's new sci-fi horror show
Game of Thrones is one of the most beloved, watched and pirated TV shows in recent history, but it's not the only George R. R. Martin tale being adapted for the small screen. The author's sci-fi horror novella Nightflyers was first published in 1980 before being turned into a movie later that decade, and now a new TV adaptation airing this fall on Syfy in the US and Netflix in other regions. A brief teaser for the show's first, ten-episode season caught our attention a few months ago, and now we have a full trailer that debuted at this year's San Diego Comic-Con to sink our teeth into.
The latest ‘BlazBlue’ reminds me how impenetrable fighting games can be
Fighting games aren't for the faint-hearted. There's no relaxation or light entertainment in the breakneck world of kill-or-be-killed beat 'em ups. Long before home consoles and internet connections, these kind of games fostered serious competitive scenes around arcade cabinets. The term eSports is now common parlance, and yet the biggest fighting game franchises are struggling, only really appealing to their loyal fanbases. But for the developers behind these titles, it's a catch-22. It's after playing BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle -- which has only recently come to the PC, PS4 and Switch in Europe -- that I'm reminded why. Fighting games can be extremely rewarding, but only as a result of being fundamentally difficult and alienating to begin with.
We Happy Few's dystopia is held together by drugs and denial
We Happy Few has come to fruition in a unique way. Compulsion Games first captured attentions in 2015 with its creepy, atmospheric trailers, also launching a successful Kickstarter campaign to fund continued development of its dystopian title. The following year, the game launched on early access programs for both the PC and Xbox One. It was a procedurally generated, roguelike survival game, intended to be relatively short and replayable. Only, the world Compulsion had built was too alluring. The people wanted more, being particularly fond of the game's quirky characters and the player's interactions with them. And so We Happy Few has evolved over time to become a substantial story-driven adventure. At launch on August 10th, the game will follow three very different playable characters that, for one reason or another, don't fit in with their ever-jolly neighbors.
Parrot's Anafi 4K drone is much more than a flying toy
Drones come in many shapes and sizes. At their most affordable, drones are fun flying toys. And for industrial uses or professional filmmakers, you've got specialist machines that can run well into tens of thousands of dollars. Parrot's new $700 Anafi falls somewhere in between, balancing a decent camera and plenty of features with a price tag that isn't prohibitively expensive.
Fiske’s Reading Machine was a pre-silicon Kindle
E-readers have become one of the most pervasive pieces of tech for many reasons. They survive alongside tablets because they're accessible -- Amazon's entry-level Kindle is just $80 -- and don't require daily charging. E-ink displays don't strain your eyes nearly as much as backlit screens, nor do they keep you up at night. Above all else, though, they can hold the entire works of Shakespeare countless times over while being thinner and lighter than any paperback. But this idea of portability, of condensing the written word into a format only a device can understand, is older than The Great Gatsby. It can be traced back to the early 1920s, and the invention of the Fiske Reading Machine.
The app promising to make anyone an astronaut
Every kid dreams of becoming an astronaut, of exploring what lies beyond our planet out there in the unknown. It's a romantic notion, but something few ever achieve. The growth of the private space industry in recent times has made it seem all the more attainable, however. Under current projections, SpaceX, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic will start taking space tourists on trips next year, perhaps even earlier. Naturally, seats on these craft are reserved for the extremely wealthy right now, but there could be another way. Space Nation is a company that's promising anyone can become an astronaut, irrespective of how deep their pockets are. And all you need to do to become a viable candidate is to play a bunch of mobile minigames.
Two-tone smartphones are the new rose gold
It's been a relatively mundane first half of the year as far as smartphone launches go. If the infamous notch was the defining trend of 2017, then we haven't yet found what the 2018 equivalent might be. There's little separating recent flagships, as they all possess the latest components and comparable features. Those that do stand out are the ones that offer something different in the looks department. Translucent backs that show off internal hardware are back in fashion, and metallic multi-tone finishes (akin to flashy supercar paint jobs) are suddenly becoming de rigueur. So, is 2018 going to be a year where style is more distinguishing than substance?
The undersea electric railway built and abandoned within six years
The seaside town of Brighton sits on the south coast of England, roughly 50 miles from the center of London. Famed for its pebble beaches, piers and cool residents, Brighton remains a popular destination for Londoners wanting a quick fix of fresh air and sea views. The town has been a tourist hotspot for hundreds of years for this very reason. Throughout its lifetime countless attractions have come and gone, but none perhaps as elaborate and bizarre as the short-lived electric railway on stilts, known at the time as "Daddy Long Legs."
Google's Street View cars will monitor London's air quality
London Mayor Sadiq Khan has made it one of his missions to curb pollution and improve air quality in the capital. Data plays an important role, and as part of a new project, two Google Street View cars will begin pulling double duty as mobile air quality monitors next month. The vehicles have been fitted with sensors that will measure pollutant levels, as well as temperature, humidity and pressure, once every 30 meters as they wind their way around London. This data will be used to complement readings from another 100 static sensors dotted around the city. London has several veteran sensor networks and is no stranger to shorter-term monitoring projects, but this new initiative is said to be on a different scale, capable of painting a near real-time, "hyperlocal" picture of air quality across the capital.
Apple's AirPower wireless charger could launch around September
Apple's iPhone X, iPhone 8 and 8 Plus are the company's first devices to include wireless charging support. Back when they announced last September, Apple also said it would be releasing its own wireless charging mat, called AirPower. This wasn't like every other mat out there, though, in that it could charge multiple devices at once -- an iPhone X, Apple Watch Series 3 and a set of AirPods, for example. The AirPower was given a vague 2018 release date, but according to sources speaking to Bloomberg, development of the mat has been marred with issues. Apparently it was expected to be on sale by this month, but is now likely to hit shelves around September, probably with the AirPods wireless charging case in tow.
HTC U12+ review: Fundamentally flawed
Once a big player in smartphones, HTC is now better known for its Vive VR headsets than anything else. The firm offloaded the team responsible for the Pixel phones to Google earlier this year, shortly before the chief of its smartphone division resigned. Another round of layoffs later, as HTC merged its VR and phone arms together in North America, and you'd think it was kissing the industry goodbye. But according to the company, that's far from the case, though we imagine there'll be a keen eye on the success of the new U12+, the HTC flagship of this year. With plenty of top-tier competition recently unleashed on the public, though, can HTC still hold its own?
'Metro: Exodus' treads a fine line between strategy and busy work
This year's E3 has already given us a glimpse of a wide spectrum of games, from upcoming installments in classic multiplayer franchises to new and interesting, story-driven titles. Metro: Exodus, the third game in the post-apocalyptic Metro saga, falls very much into the latter camp. Studio 4A Games announced the title at E3 2017, but all we've really heard since is that the release window has been pushed from later this year to early next. With development nearing completion, though, 4A Games is today spilling the beans on what we can expect from Metro: Exodus, both in terms of storyline and the nitty gritty of gameplay mechanics.
Apple TV’s zero sign-on ends frustrating pay-TV logins
It was 18 months ago that Apple brought the single sign-on feature to the Apple TV, the idea being you only have to enter your info once, rather than logging into supported apps individually. Today at WWDC, Apple announced a feature that has you doing even less. With "zero sign-on," the apps of pay-TV providers will automatically log you in, as it were, if you happen to be one of their broadband customers, too. Zero sign-on will be switched on later this year with Charter Spectrum (and its Spectrum TV app) as the first supported network, but expect others to follow suit.