http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1T77zNtCS8

Let's get this out of the way up front: yes, the Flash has a ridiculous contraption called the Cosmic Treadmill that he runs on to somehow transport people back in time. It's weird, it's goofy, and it's going to provide some of the coolest gameplay moments of any superhero game ever.

How can a treadmill of the cosmos possibly provide such mind-blowing gameplay experiences? Well, just think of the most memorable, awesome events in DC comic history. Now, imagine getting to play out all of those events and see them unfold first-hand. That's the power of the Cosmic Treadmill, my friend.

We sat down with DC Universe Online's Creative Director Jens Andersen, who walked us through all of the content in the big Flash-themed update releasing next Tuesday, and teased us about his big plans for the future, including revisiting the origin stories of DC's biggest villains and heroes.

The first origin story is coming in next week's big update and is, of course, centered around the Flash himself. In a new two-player Duo instance - balanced for players with top-end Tier 3 gear - you and a buddy will be transported back in time to stop meddlers from screwing with Barry Allen on the fateful night he gets struck by lightning and turned into the Flash.

The first portion of the Duo was my favorite: you're tossed in a long hellish hallway filled with crazy electric minions trying to sabotage your attempt to travel back in time. A whirling vortex of time is constantly moving up behind you, threatening to suck you in, and if you can't clear the baddies fast enough, you're going back to modern day and Barry Allen is doomed. I felt the same panicked sense of urgency I get on those Super Mario Bros. levels where the screen is constantly moving to the right. One slip-up and you're toast!



Once you break on through to the other side, you find yourself in a Central City police station from times-past, with all the colors bathed in a light sepia tone to complete the old-timey look and feel. I won't spoil the story of the encounter, but there were a few elements that I really enjoyed about it and want to point out. During the demo, Jens told me that one major thing they'd learned from player feedback on existing content is adding more interactive objects to Duos. So, Central City's police station is loaded with secret areas, computer terminals, and robots to interact with that can provide extra challenges or alter the way boss fights work.

For example, if you take your time and snoop around the office area, you can hack terminals to disable security robots that are protecting one of the bosses. In another room, prisoners are breaking out of their cells. Some of them start releasing their fellow prisoners, while others make a beeline for the wall of guns in the back of the room. Who you decide is the bigger threat and take out first will change how the fight in that area plays out. It's a lot of small twists that add up to a diverse set of possible outcomes that should make these repeatable instances more exciting for players tackling them frequently.

The other thing I love about the Duo is that it features The Pied Piper. I have to admit I'd never heard of this guy before, but he's a villain that plays a flute to mind control people (such as the well-armed cops surrounding him in the police station). It's a cool concept that allows for some very fun combat mechanics throughout the instance, and I'm really excited that the devs are using these lesser-known characters in DC history, who would never get a chance in the spotlight in a limited-world game like Arkham City, to create unique and interesting content.



Of course, the Duo is only one part of the content pack, which will be free for subscribers and 10 bucks to F2Pers--a tremendous value for all the content it opens up. The pack also gives you access to a huge zone loaded with new daily quests, collections, and gear sets; about 10 new bounties for both factions (villain players hunt the Teen Titans and hero players hunt the Rogues); and a brand new Electricty powerset that has DPS and healer roles.

The Electricity power set is a lot of fun to play as. A few of my favorite abilities were Lightning Arc, which shoots a bolt of electricity at an enemy that bounces between other people near him (the closer the enemies are together, the more times it will bounce between them) and Tesla Ball, which launches an orb of high-voltage pain in a straight line out from you, continuously zapping anyone too distracted to move out of the way. The overall flow of the power set was strong - the healing lands somewhere between Nature's high-burst reaction heals and Sorcery's slow-and-steady prediction heals, and DPS isn't quite as frantic as the other recently-added Light powerset, but has the same level of fun visual effects.



Central City, a modestly sized city plot instanced for 50 players at a time, is probably the closest thing we're going to get to a third large city for a good long while, now that DCUO is doing quarterly updates. (There's no current plans to build another city on the scale of Gotham or Metropolis, according to Andersen, but the team does want to start making origin stories a regular occurrence in DCUO.) The city offers some new areas to explore, but it's not the sort of place that you're going to be hanging out in during your downtime. Still, it's leaps and bounds more exciting to fly around a city with alleyways, shops, and little nooks and crannies than run around an island that you can see immediately see everything it has to offer, which is what so many other MMOs add in updates like this.

Andersen saved the best part of our demo for last, though. After we'd taken down the Pied Piper, he used cheat codes to summon all of the new characters being added as open-world bounty targets in Gotham and Metropolis to let them duke it out in front of us. With collective nerd-breaths held tight, we watched as the Teen Titans did battle against the Flash's Rogue gallery. Cyborg blasted Captain Boomerang with lasers, The Trickster chucked out toy helicopters and JLA action figures that came to life and harassed Donna Troy, and some weird "villain" named The Top twirled in circles semi-quickly to annoy everyone while Weather Wizard, Nightwing, and the rest duked it out. After the dust settled, Titan and Rogue lay side-by-side, and Cyborg emerged victorious. So there you have it, fellow geeks, we can all cross one "What if..." question off our comic book fight club lists. Cyborg wins.

Skyrim patch 1.2 landed recently, fixing a few niggling problems, like dead people turning up to weddings and dragons holding onto their souls after death. In a new post on the Bethblog, Bethesda say that there are plenty more updates incoming, and they'll be arriving on PC first.

Bethesda say we'll be getting more regular updates because patching the PC version is "a process we control." With no third party certification procedures to deal with, Skyrim will get fixed faster on our machines. Which is nice, because there are still plenty of problems.

"After the holidays, we’ll continue to release regular updates for the game — through full title updates, as well as incremental “gameplay updates” to fix whatever issues come up along with rebalancing portions of the game for difficulty or exploits," say Bethesda. "We plan on having a lot of these, not just a few."

Bethesda say there will be another "incremental update" next week to fix some of the problems caused by patch 1.2, like broken damage resistance stats and dragons flying backwards. In the same blog post, Bethesda also announced that Steam will host Skyrim mods through the Steam Workshop, adding that the Creation Kit is set to arrive in January. Modders, on your marks.

It must be so hard to make a million-dollar budget game these days. Activision’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 has had years of testing and investment, and yet, when it’s released on the PC it’s still not quite configured how we like it.

Fortunately, there’s a whole bunch of options to get it looking better or running more smoothly. The Infinity Ward engine that propels the game may have been heavily modified, but Activision helpfully includes a number of effects that can be turned on or off in-game.

If that’s not enough, you can also edit the config file and add command line integers to make it run just how you want it to. We’ve stuck to mere graphic tweaks and fixes, so they shouldn’t actually interfere with the game itself.

The in-game options menu is the first port of call if you're looking to gain a few frames. It's full of familiar options like anti-aliasing. Look out for the Image Quality setting, though. According to PC Games Hardware ‘Native’ runs the game with crisp default textures, but ‘Extra’ upscales the textures, making them look all blurry and horrible. Run in Native - if you can.

Conversely, the Extra mode for Texture Resolution doesn't upscale anything, it'll just make MW3's surfaces look better.

If you don’t mind your smoke looking a little harder (and who doesn’t?) you can turn Soften Smoke Edges off for a mild FPS boost.

Under the hood, buried in the config files, there are a few more values you might want to tweak to get Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 just the way you like it. You'll find the relevant files in C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\call of duty modern warfare 3\players2. config.cfg alters settings for singleplayer, and config_mp.cfg adjusts multiplayer. Open 'em up in notepad, and run a find (Ctrl+F) to go straight to the relevant entries.

Once you've tweaked it, save the file in its original location. If you screw things up you can just delete the config files and Steam will automatically regenerate them.

Weapon casings
seta cg_brass “1″
If you find the constant stream of ejected bullet casings flying out of your weapon distracting, change the '1' in this entry to '0'.

Depth of field
seta r_depthPrepass “0″
To use this setting, you’ll have to turn off depth of field in the main settings. This entry will let you tweak it more precisely that the in-game options menu. 0 is the default, ‘1’ sets it to ‘world’ meaning only objects in the background are blurred. ‘2’ will enable depth of field in the foreground and background.

Ragdoll settings
seta ragdoll_max_simulating “16″
Ragdoll physics mean that dead ‘uns fly around the screen and impact with buildings. Lower this to reduce the number of floppy limb simulations on screen at once.



Dead bodies (Multiplayer only)
seta ai_corpseCount “X”
Sets the number of corpses visible on screen at once. Unless you’re some kind of necrophile, you don’t really need your maps to be littered with bodies.

seta r_preloadShaders "0"
Setting this to ‘1’ preloads the shaders (surprisingly), resulting in smoother performance, but it may overload your memory a bit.

seta r_rendererPreference "Default"
Changing this to “Shader model 2.0” may benefit older cards.



seta sm_maxLights "4"
This sets the number of light flashes on screen at once. Reduce it if you’re prone to migraines, or to improve performance.

seta r_texFilterAnisoMax "4"/seta r_texFilterAnisoMin "1"
Maximum and minimum anisotropic settings - set the former to ‘8’ for maximum performance, but bear in mind that this may impact your frame rates.

seta snd_cinematicVolumeScale "0.5"
Reduce or increase this to set the volume level of the cinematic music.

seta sensitivity "4.0"
Sets your mouse’s sensitivity - great for twitchy gamers.

seta snd_enableEq "1"
Set this to zero to stop the game processing sound equalisation.

Other tips and tricks

Steam commands
To force DirectX 9 compatibility mode right-click on the game in Steam and choose ‘Properties’, ‘General’, ‘Set Launch Options’ and enter ‘-dx9’. Works a treat if you’re having problems with older graphics cards.

General problems
MapModNews has a whole load of more specific problems complete with fixes. It also highlights that there’s an issue with Modern Warfare 3 for certain Orange Broadband customers in the UK. Apparently it’s being looked into.

MW3 Configuration Utility
This handy little program lets you adjust config settings and more before running the game. It will even let you change the colour of your ping bar - if that floats your boat.



Widescreen Fixer
There are still issues with Modern Warfare 3 on certain monitors, but this widescreen fixer can adjust the game’s field of view. You’ll need to work out your monitor’s aspect ratio - find your resolution on this Wikipedia page, and match it up to the aspect ratio (for example, 1366 by 768 is 16:9). Then set the correct aspect ratio in the launcher. It’s a handy little tool, and it’ll also work with all other CoD games and some others, such as BioShock.

We think that’s covered pretty much everything there is to know about Modern Warfare 3. If you’ve got specific problems (other than annoying noobs) post ‘em in the comments. Likewise, if you’ve found a hack that makes the game run like a dream let us know.

http://youtu.be/3Or0fly8vA0

One and a half minutes into the latest episode of Bioware's regular web TV series, they give us a look at some of the improvements they're making to combat in Mass Effect 3. New powers are being introduced to try and make each combat class feel powerful and unique. For classes like the Vanguard, upgraded versions of the super-satisfying charge move do the trick, but it's support classes like Engineers that will benefit most from new toys, including deployable turrets and hacking tools that will let you turn enemy turrets against their owners.

That's not to say the Vanguard has been left out. He'll get a nova ground punch that will send enemies flying backwards. Bioware say that every class will get a different heavy melee move. The Adept can propel a single enemy across the room with a psychic attack, while the Engineer can set fire to foes, obliterating their armour. Mass Effect 2's combat was a big improvements on the original. What would you like to see Bioware change for Mass Effect 3?

How long do you reckon it’s going to be before Modern Warfare 3’s Vet and n00b trailers become their own cinematic franchise? They certainly seem to pack more ideas than your average creatively-bankrupt Hollywood mega-flick. The latest - highlighted by VG247 - sees the n00b (funny portly bloke Jonah Hill) blow up a building in Berlin, with the Vet (hunk du jour Sam Worthington) stoically looking on.

This one’s directed by Peter Berg, who’s best known for The Kingdom and the upcoming Battleship film (which has the single dumbest trailer we’ve ever seen). It’s a reasonably amusing episode on the Vet and n00b series, but it does seem to be lacking a punchline. Also, the textures look a bit good for something based on the CoD franchise.

EA are going to be in charge of your PopCap -related info from January 2, 2012. The Peggle/Plants Vs Zombies/Bejewelled-creating developers were recently bought by EA for $750 million.

You'll need to accept EA's terms and conditions by that date or you'll lose access to any PopCap currency you might have lingering in your account. That would be sad.

It's not my choice of image up there - that's how PopCap chose to illustrate the news. The entire PopCap family appear to be delighted with the changes. But they always look happy. Suspiciously happy.

Read on for the full terms and conditions.

IMPORTANT NOTICE REGARDING YOUR POPCAP INFORMATION

As you may have heard, PopCap is now a division of Electronic Arts Inc. (EA)! We are very excited about this change, which will help enhance our ability to deliver high-quality gaming services to our valued and loyal customers.

As is customary with transitions like this, no earlier than January 2, 2012, EA will be assuming responsibility for PopCap’s user information. Thereafter, because our friends at EA will be looking after PopCap’s user information, their terms will govern your use of PopCap products, services and the data we have collected and may collect in the future. Your use of PopCap products and services will not otherwise change.

Please carefully review EA’s Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. If you are unwilling to agree to these new terms, you will still be able to use PopCap’s services and spend any existing virtual currency for at least the next 30 days. At some time on or after January 2, 2012, you will be prompted to accept our new terms before you can access PopCap products and/or services. THEREAFTER, YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO ACCESS POPCAP’S PRODUCTS OR SERVICES UNLESS YOU AGREE TO EA’S TERMS OF SERVICE AND PRIVACY POLICY. If you do not want EA to have access to your data and would prefer to stop using PopCap as of December 31, 2011, you can request that we delete your personal information instead by submitting a request to PopCap’s support services team here.

It's just a man in a T-shirt of course, but there's a Half-Life 3 logo on the front of it and a Valve employee inside it.

Art director and executive producer at UberEnt (the team behind Super Monday Night Combat) posted the photo above on Twitter with the message "All I'm saying is I saw this at a local game developer event worn by a Valve employee," sensibly attaching a #ValveTrolling hashtag. He couldn't get any more info out of Valve's man but he confirms that "I did try to smother my face in his chest on the HL3 logo." This did not help.

A long time ago, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, Valve announced that they'd release three follow up episodes for Half-Life 2, allowing them to put out shorter stories at a faster clip. The episodes so far have taken longer and longer to develop, and Episode 2 ended up being longer than most modern shooter campaigns. Years on from Episode 2's release, it would make sense for the next game to ditch the episode format and become Half Life 3. Recently, the Cambridge Student asked Gabe Newell whether he considers releasing Half-Life 2 sequels in an episodic form a mistake. "Not yet," he said.

Valve have repeatedly said that they're still committed to the Half Life series. We'll surely see another one one day. WE JUST WANT TO KNOW HOW IT ENDS.

Well now, this is just delightful. Obsidian - fresh off the at times (read: Old World Blues) hysterical Fallout: New Vegas - is teaming up with Trey Parker and Matt Stone to create a "full-scale" South Park RPG. This is no quick social or mobile cash-in, either. It's a bonafide big-budget console/PC production backed by THQ.

On top of that, Parker and Stone are both writing and performing dialog, according to Game Informer. In other words, expect some of the most profane, probably amazing dialog options ever conceived. The game's set for release "sometime in 2012," but expect more info as soon as the new Game Informer issue hits.

Now then, precisely how many copies of this game will I need to buy to get a Team America FPS that relentlessly mocks the current glut of modern war shooters? Honestly, even all of them is an acceptable answer.

Four old-school Battlefield maps recreated in BF3's absurdly stunning Frostbite 2.0 engine. Where do I sign? Right below the line that reads "PS3 owners get it a week early on Dec 6," you say? Well now, that can't be right. Surely you jest, Battlefield Blog. No? Not even a little? OK, fine then, I'll accept your terms only if those who pre-ordered BF3 get the DLC free of charge, no strings attached. Huh, they do? Oh. Then I want a pony.

We don't know about you, but we're getting a little tired of constantly having to "stay frosty" and yell "frag out." If you've had your fun with the MW3s and BF3s, why not try something even more moderner and without a $60 entry fee? Thanks to Zombie Studios and Perfect World Entertainment, an answer has arrived...



Not only will you be able to hop into the futuristic, mech-infused Blacklight: Retribution early, you'll also get an exclusive PC Gamer in-game weapon tag that's yours to keep. To receive your key, you'll need to be logged into a GamesRadar account - you can sign up for one here if you don't already have one. After that, just head here to grab your beta key now (access is limited!). Also note that codes for this beta program are currently limited to North American audiences.