News Snatch: Day-Z, Angry Birds, PES 2015 & Lego Batman 3

Greetings dearest of Snatchlings, I have dragged myself away from the digital crack known as Destiny to bring you another round of all the bits of news that have fallen down the back of the TSA sofa during the past week. First up, Quan Chi returns in Mortal Kombat X and kicks ass, albeit in a slightly cheaty way, by using magic.

Movie news! You’ve probably already heard that a Tetris movie is in production and the word on the street is that the chief Moon Wizard identifier, Peter Dinklage, has signed up to play the legendary Mighty Eagle in the forthcoming Angry Birds movie. Jason Sudeikis (Horrible Bosses, We’re The Millers) will lead the cast as Red and will be joined by Bill Hader and Danny McBride.

Staying with those Angry Birds, specifically the Angry Birds: Transformers, the tie in toys have been released and, not content with mashing the birds with robots, they’ve added Jenga as well.

The Last Team Standing Update for Grand Theft Auto Online is now live on the PlayStation network and brings guns, bikes and Last Team Standing Creator Mode. For full details, click here.

I have no words.

Resolution News! PES 2015 runs at 720p on Xbox One, the same resolution at which the the nine year old Xbox 360 will run at. Yes, really. However, it does have support double the number of gamers for local multiplayer,with up to eight players compared to 4 players you can get together on the 1080P PS4 version.

Also dropping a few pixels, although not as many as PES 2015, forthcoming swords and sorcery game Lords of the Fallen will manage 900P on Xbox One and, of course, 1080P on PlayStation 4.

A launch trailer for Shadow Of Mordor, which one does not simply walk in to.

Project Widow appears to be an Assassin’s Creed: Unity marketing thing, but it’s rather nice and packed full of facts.

Launch Date News! The Xbox 360, PS3 and PS Vita versions of Jet Car Stunts will be hitting the stores next week, complete with a cross buy deal for those on PlayStation. It looks an awful lot like Stunt Car Racer, which is no bad thing in my book, and I look forward to everyone broadcasting their cunning stunts on Twitch.

Rollers of the Realm, a pinball RPG (whut?) lands on PlayStation 4 and PS Vita next month, also with cross buy.

Day-Z will be multi-platform, which will surprise the very small number of people who thought it was PS4 exclusive just because it was on the Sony stage at Gamescom.

Creator Dean Hall rolled out the usual I’ve-Signed-A-Timed-Exclusivity-Deal shtick of ‘We’re not talking about other formats just now’ and also revealed you’re going to have to wait for the game.

“A straight up retail release? It’s not going to be next year, because there’s just too much work remaining. It would be a very bizarre universe where there would be a 1.0 release of DayZ on consoles before PC,” he said.

However, there are rumblings of a Early Access program for PlayStation and there is a chance Day-Z would appear next year if that were the case. “[It] would depend very much on what Sony offers in terms of if it was going to do an Early Access program, what it looks like. Then also the state of DayZ – does it make sense to do it through that?” said Dan.

The Sims 4 is to get free DLC content, including Star Wars oufits, ghosts and the much missed swimming pools. For a complete list of when and what, click here.

Japan is getting a limited edition The Evil Within PlayStation 4. Look at it. Shiny.

Xbox One will be able to run Windows 10 applications with an update that will arrive “sometime in 2015”.

Today’s “You Really Couldn’t Make This Up” News: Call of Duty: Black Ops creator Dave Anthony has been hired by a former Pentagon official to help predict future wars.

‘The Art of Future War Project’ brings together writers and producers who have been selected “because national security decision makers cannot keep up with the frenetic pace of change in the world, and that ‘new voices’ are needed.”

Yes. This is true. Honest, it’s in the Daily Mail.

“Writers, directors and producers and other artists bring to bear observations derived from wholly different experiences in the creative world” the council said in a statement.

So what do we learn from this? Future battlefield decisions will be made by J.K. Rowling and Cliffy B? Well no, we learn that once again the Daily Mail writers are exceedingly clever at twisting facts.

You will note that I mentioned the Pentagon official, who is part of the Daily Mail headline, well read the whole article and it seems to imply this is official Pentagon business, although they never state that directly.

It’s not. The Art of Future War Project is run by the official sounding Atlantic Council who “promote constructive leadership and engagement in international affairs.” They are a think tank, an influential one, but still a think tank and in no way directly responsible for military policies of the United States or any other country. Unlike Daily Mail readers, you can sleep safe in the knowledge that George R.R. Martin is not directing the war against ISIS.

http://youtu.be/ihlaR7ubfOg

Real time combat footage from Final Fantasy XV.

And Finally, Kevin Smith has been announced as a character for Lego Batman 3. That’s Kevin Smith, director and writer of Clerks and a number of Batman comics.