Chris, Tom Senior, and Rich discuss the soon-on-PC Assassin's Creed 3, Football Manager 2013, Planetside 2, some game called Call of Duty, and much more - including plenty of Twitter questions and the first novelty physical challenge in the podcast's history.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here and download the MP3 directly from here.

Please excuse Chris' periodic background coughing, by the way. He's currently recovering from the plague but is trying to hold on to his cough because he feels that it lends him an air of tragic defiance. He is wrong. It's just gross.

Apologies if we didn't get around to your Twitter questions this week - we had a lot more than we had time for. Hopefully we'll fit a few into the next episode.

Show notes
Assassin's Creed 3 will have fewer bugs on PC, say Ubisoft.
Chris Schilling's Football Manager 2013 review.

Yesterday we reported that around 1,000 buyers of Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 had discovered their disc 2 contained not more military manshoot, but BioWare's space epic Mass Effect 2. Embarrassing for Activision, sure - supplying their customers with one of their rivals biggest franchises probably wasn't high on their key strategies - but it was always going to be EA's reaction that proved the most interesting.

Do they press the big red "deploy lawyers" button, or the smaller, dustier "have a bit of fun with it" button? Fortunately, for now, it appears to be the latter. Bioware have issued a blog post to the affected players, questioning whether it was a mistake or "an omen."

"If the universe thinks that you should be playing Mass Effect right now, who are we to argue?" In that spirit they've guaranteed to give the first 50 people to send them a picture of their swapped disc to community@bioware.com a free code for the entire Mass Effect trilogy.

Of course, as this video shows, the affected discs were still printed with a standard Black Ops 2 picture. But surely no-one would think to send a picture of a regular old disc in the knowledge that nobody could tell the difference. Right?

Behind every bullet-bordered brawl in Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 lies a rich mosaic of data, data that governs weapon behavior. Like an Oompa-Loompa sniper with Ghost Pro, the calculations putter quietly in the background unnoticed—until now. Strapping on their math goggles, brothers Pwnsweet and Corpsecreate (what strange nicknames siblings think up for each other these days) set out (via Reddit) to chart and break down gun performance based on frame counts, deductive reasoning, and presumably lots of airholed corpses.

The duo spent nearly a week "tirelessly counting frame values and testing with 99 percent accuracy in our results" to achieve the obsessive organizer's dream come true pictured above. The chart shows a rather balanced arsenal of SMGs, assault rifles, sniper rifles, and others often trading magazine size for power or reload speed for range amid similar quid-pro-quos.

"An interesting observation: Damage dropoff in this game isn't linear," Pwnsweet wrote on FPS mechanics forum Hey, A Message Board. "Rather, dropoffs occur at discrete intervals."

The Black Ops Bros—yes, that's what we're calling them now—also crafted a video demonstrating field-tested applications of their findings, revealing a surprising amount of accuracy retained while going rock 'n roll on the trigger. Take a look below.

Gamers on the Steam community forums, Reddit and the Call of Duty forums are reporting that when they try to install disc 2 of Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, they instead get Mass Effect 2. So that's what Treyarch meant when they said they were adding moral choices to the campaign.

Early reports were confirmed when PCGamesN discovered a video by zeroiez (embedded above) showing him inserting a CoDBlOps2 disc into his machine before getting a prompt to install BioWare's Mass Effect 2 instead.

Exactly how an EA game ended up in an Activision case is uncertain, but it's possible the two publishing giants contract the same company to produce discs, and there was a disc image mixup at the factory. We've reached out to Activision for comment.

So far the error seems to have affected a relatively small number of people, but if you're one of them your best bet is to use your CD key to download the game directly from Steam instead. I hope your internet is up to the task.

Meanwhile, we've got Martin hard at work playing the real Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 for our review. He's just gotten to the bit where you meet Garrus.

As is its wont, Nvidia have released a new set of beta graphics drivers, hot on the heels of the 310.33 release a couple of weeks back. This is being called an "essential upgrade for all GeForce GTX gamers". Compared with the current WHQL certified drivers the 310.54 release is boasting up to a 26% frame rate boost for anyone playing the just-released Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 or the still-waiting Assassin’s Creed 3.

Nvidia have also said the new drivers will enable a new implementation of their TXAA post-processing shenanigans for the two new titles, and have stuck an interactive backside of Commander Shepard on the website so you can see for yourself what the higher levels of SGSSAA (more high-end anti-aliasing) does.



Shepard's bum proves not quite as useful as simply looking at the benchmark numbers, however. The boost for CoD: BLOPS 2 is the biggest change (followed by Civ 5) going from around 84fps on a GTX 680 up to seemingly around 108fps. That’s quite a jump.





I spoke to an Nvidia chap earlier and they have put the increase in performance for BLOPS 2 largely down to general optimisation. “Of course we’re always optimizing drivers, our software team are always getting newer and newer game builds so they can ensure they give gamers the best experience the very day the game is bought,” said Ben Berraondo, Senior PR at Nvidia.

“We always aim to be there with great performance on Day 1 of any major PC game launch. In the end, I think gamers want to play games at their very best on day of launch, not months down the line.”

Still, not to be outdone, AMD have also announced that they are set to release new Catalyst beta drivers in the next couple days as resident overclocking guru and general GPU funster, Sami Makinen, dropped us a line. “The key update in this driver is CrossFire performance in the Call Of Duty: Black Ops 2 game title,” said Sami.

So we don’t expect any serious speed boost for single card gamers from AMD's efforts, but it's all to the good: whatever else you might think about Call of Duty you can't help but admire its high framerate. Any help we get making Blops 2 buttery smooth is welcome indeed.

Although we'll soon pepper each other with bullets and trade drone-guided explosions in Black Ops 2's multiplayer later this evening, Treyarch still wants the chaos guided by a set of rules keeping abuse in check and ensuring friendly times all around. Eurogamer scoped into Treyarch's weekend post of its stiff-sounding security and enforcement policy, and among standard ban pitfalls surrounding piracy and hacking, players using the in-game live-streaming service with "unlicensed content" such as music risk a ban as well.

Treyarch's policies also hound boosters—players "colluding with another user to exploit the game for the purpose of gaining XP, prestige, game score, weapon level, or in-game unlock"—with equal fervor as hackers and glitch exploiters. In most cases, culprits receive temporary bans with increasing severity per case until suffering the almighty permanent ban which locks out online play, permanently blocks leaderboard appearances, and resets stats & emblems. It's sort of akin to a drumming out ceremony, except with less ripped shirts.

Treyarch's post has more details on the no-nos, so head over to Black Ops 2's forums if you want a look.

If you thought the biggest thing you had to worry about in Modern Warfare 3 was a knife in the back while you were camped out sniping, you might have to think again. At the Power of Community security conference in Seoul, two researchers appear to have found "critical vulnerabilities" in the game - along with Crytek's CryEngine 3 - as reported by Computer World.

At the conference, ReVuln security consultants Luigi Auriemma and Donato Ferrante presented the results of their research. Along with a video showing how a denial-of-service attack could trouble Modern Warfare 3, they demonstrated how a server-level attack on CryEngine 3 (using the game Nexuiz) let them "create a remote shell on a game-player's computer", granting access to "all of the information on the players through the server". The pair plan to reveal "advisories" on the two vulnerabilities tomorrow, on the launch day of Black Ops II. They're also willing to offer their assistance to Activision, but as Computer World put it, they "aren't going to volunteer the information, since their research is part of their business."

As well as accessing players' information, Ferrante says that these vulnerabilities could be used by rival companies to shut down their competitors' games entirely. He blames the focus on game performance over security for these flaws. "In general, game companies don't seem to be very focused on security but rather on performance of the game itself, Ferrante said. Adding security checks can slow down games, and if the companies don't deem the problem a very critical issue, it will usually be ignored."

If you signed up for the 'Call of Duty Elite Premium' service on the launch day of Modern Warfare 3 last year - thus making you an 'early adopter' - you can look forward to an extra three-and-a-bit months of service. This is Activision's way of apologising for the outages that affected Elite at launch. As Joystiq report, when that extra time is up - on March 1st 2013 - Modern Warfare 3's Elite service is going to go completely free. Upon that date, your Premium service will continue as normal (with all the same features), but you won't have to pay a penny.

To make things extra confusing, when CoD Elite goes live for Black Ops II next week, it's also going to be free, as we mentioned a couple of weeks ago. However, Black Ops II players won't get Modern Warfare 3's Premium features by default - only MW3 Premium members will.

It's a frankly convoluted state of affairs, but at least it's one that isn't asking for any more of your money - whether you plan on migrating to Black Ops II, or carrying on with Modern Warfare 3, you won't have to shell out for CoD Elite.

Treyarch have tweeted that Black Ops 2 is going to have a maximum FOV of 80 - the same as the original CODBLOPS's multiplayer mode - on the grounds that anything higher will break things. That's an unfortunate number, with unusual fields of view being one of the leading causes of in-game motion sickness. It seems unlikely that Black Ops 2 will be doing more than other shooters to justify this claim, but this close to release, don't expect to see any last minute reprieve for higher numbers.

(via PCGamesN)

And don't ask me to raise the FOV cap. Max is 80. Thankyouverymuch. <3, -pcdev-— pcdev (@pcdev) November 4, 2012

@gnomecast It is the same cap as Blackops mp, but now you can adjust fov in sp and zm too. > 80 breaks too much stuff so we had to cap it.— pcdev (@pcdev) November 6, 2012

Forthcoming Black Ops 2 map Nuketown 2025 has been given its own trailer, and to rub salt into the oozing radioactive wound, the sequel to one of the most celebrated Call of Duty maps will be made exclusive to people who pre-order the game. They'll also accrue double XP during the launch weekend, while the rest of us will be forced to beg for scraps at the experience table, like little Oliver 'Snip3rDude69' Twist.

Dirty pre-order practices aside, Nuketown looks like fun, taking the original Black Ops' model town nuclear testing site and transforming it into a Fallout-style retro-futurist utopia. Presumably it will be made available in a map pack down the line, but until then you'll have to pre-order the game for the privilege of duking/nuking it out in Nuketown 2025. There's 48 seconds of that below.