News Snatch: Diggs Nightcrawler, Black Flag And EyeWire

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=jZfxvGRQ-mI
Lots to get through today, so let’s jump right in. First up a trailer for Diggs Nightcrawler, a game for Sony’s so-far-rather under-utilised Wonderbook. This was the one that got a lot of attention from those who weren’t too enamoured with Harry Potter so perhaps we’ll see a little boost in enthusiasm for Wonderbook.

Crysis 3 on Wii U was a thing, a thing that was pretty much ready to go on the shelves but men with calculators and spreadsheets had the game canned.

Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli told Venturebeat “We did have Crysis 3 running on the Wii U. We were very close to launching it. But there was a lack of business support between Nintendo and EA on that. Since we as a company couldn’t launch on the Wii U ourselves — we don’t have a publishing license — Crysis 3 on Wii U had to die.”

Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag will not have multi player naval battles, quite where that rumour sprang from, I’m not sure. Nevertheless the Internet decided that the multi player would involve ships, something lead content manager Carsten Myhill has quickly denied, “Unfortunately we won’t be doing naval multi player for Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag.”

He also said “We’re going to be communicating big on multiplayer in the coming weeks.” We’ll look forward to learning a bit more about the game.

Rather a lot of videos today but I felt the new trailer for The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct needed to be seen. Check out the shadow of the van as it drives towards the Sun at 24 seconds in, if that really was the object at the centre of our solar system surely the shadow would not change length but you can see it reduces dramatically in size.

Back to Black Flag, PETA have been complaining about the whale hunting missions that can be found in the game.

“Whaling – that is, shooting whales with harpoons and leaving them to struggle for an hour or more before they die or are hacked apart while they are still alive-may seem like something out of the history books -”

– and let’s stop there. Yes, it is something out the history books, the Assassin’s Creed games always strive for historical accuracy. Go away PETA.

Did you pledge money to Godus? Then you might want to check out Curiosity (yes, it’s still going) as the faces and names of backers have started appearing on the cube which means you can draw cocks on real people rather than generic backgrounds!

It has also been revealed that due to the low number of players 22 Cans have started using child labour to help destroy the cube, see the video above for evidence.

“Lara Croft: The Reinvention of a Sex Symbol” shouts Hereisthecity.com, “Croft loses curves” is another headline along with “AMD and Crystal Dynamics Collaboration Thrusts Gamers In To Tomb Raider“. Thrusts eh! Nudge nudge! *sigh*

The sixth Resident Evil film has a rumoured release date of September 2014. The last film, Resident Evil: Retribution, grossed a very respectable $222 million with Sony executive Rory Bruer saying: “It ain’t ending here.”

Fans of the film franchise (like myself) will know that star Milla Jovovich and husband and writer/director of the film, Paul WS Anderson, have previously said they would like to work on a final sixth film to wrap up the series and the ending of Retribution certainly set up the final installment.

A new browser based game hopes to entertain and help scientists mapping the most complicated structure known to man, the human brain. It’s a slightly odd concept, use your brain to work out how you use your brain.

The game, EyeWire, presents players with a cube of coloured blobs, described by Sebastian Seung, a neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as “a three-dimensional coloring book.”

Apparently it’s quite a difficult game to learn but rewarding when mastered. Players will also be helping an artificial intelligence program learn how to decode the structures as they play.

“What will Dust 514 do about the PlayStation 4?” asks Eurogamer. Well Eurogamer, they revealed it will move on to Next Gen consoles back in October last year, try and keep up.

BioWare San Francisco, developer of mobile game Dragon Age: Legends has been closed with all staff laid off and another 25 staff have also been let go by Aliens: Colonial Marines developer, Timegate. Best of luck to all involved.

A prototype omnidirectional treadmill is being developed which can be used in games. Cunningly named Omni, the device maps your movements to those on screen, a video shows a gamer trudging their way across Skyrim. That seems like it would be exhausting.

EXCLUSIVE! Raven software, the chaps who help out on Call Of Duty, are looking for a Senior Lighting Artist to work on a “First Person Shooter.” What on earth could they be working on?

And Finally, yes I know you’re all sick to death reading about Journey but this is rather special. Composer Austin Wintory has uploaded the score to Youtube and added lots of artwork and notes, well worth a watch.