If you pre-ordered Battlefield 3, you'll already have the extra guns added by the Physical Warfare Pack. DICE announce on the Battlefield blog that have now unlocked them for all players. The flash suppressor for the SKS rifle isn't a huge addition, but Support players will jump at the Type 88 LMG. The pack also unlocks the great big semi-automatic DAO-12 shotgun early with some bonus flechette ammunition, which will deal increased damage and armour penetration at range. All we need now is an Emotional Warfare Pack to add loudspeakers to everyone's helmets for more devastating smack talk.

One of the most popular mods on The Skyrim Nexus is the Large Address Aware patch, which lets Skyrim use more than 2GB RAM. Last night a quick patch was applied through Steam, adding official "support for 4-Gigabyte Tuning."

"About time!" cry thousands of Skyrim fans. It's been a long time coming, but 64 bit system users can finally make use of their extra juice, so to speak. Skyrim became the best selling game this Christmas in the UK this week, and it's still the most played game on Steam. You can use the extra RAM to run some of the fancier post-processing overhauls in our round-up of the 20 best Skyrim mods, or to power the promising work-in-progress ENBSeries graphical mod. Bethesda are currently working on official mod tools for Skyrim, which should arrive early next year.

OK, this is just getting silly. As if Humble Indie Bundle 4 wasn't star-studded enough to begin with, it's now added another nearly nuclear helping of bang for your buck. Specifically, the pot's been sweetened with five games from Humble Indie Bundle 3: Crayon Physics Deluxe, Cogs, VVVVVVV, And Yet It Moves, and Hammerfight.

Those, of course, join Jamestown, Bit.Trip Runner, Super Meat Boy, Shank, NightSky, Cave Story+, and Gratuitous Space Battles in proving that there is still goodness in the world. Merely beat the current average price of $5.16, and they're all yours - along with each game's respective soundtrack. If I were starving to death and only had $5.17, I would still consider trading my wallet's smoking ruins for this bundle. Buy this. It's money incredibly well spent. President Lincoln and his army of tiny metallic other Presidents will be proud.

Compared to Dragon Age: Origins, DA II was a bit... constrained. Kirkwall was nice and all, but the game's wide-ranging adventure spanning a cave, a beach, and then the same cave again didn't exactly make Alistair, Morrigan, and friends go green with epicness envy. It wasn't terrible by any means, but it certainly left many fans clamoring for more. A lot more. And, happily, it sounds like BioWare listened.



“ is gonna have the best of features from the prior Dragon Age games, but it’s also gonna have a lot of things I think players are gonna find compelling from some of the games that are out now that are doing really well with more of an open world feel,” BioWare co-founder Ray Muzyka told Wired.

“We’re checking out aggressively. We like it. We’re big admirers of and the product,” he added. “We think we can do some wonderful things.”

Further, he hinted that DA III could apply DA II's multi-year storyline technique to a much wider range of locations. And, when asked if players would be able to choose what their party - as opposed to just their main character - would be wearing to the ol' Darkspawn murder prom, Muzyka noted that “We realize that’s important to the players.”

So then, it's no bullet-proof guarantee of a return to form, but he's definitely got my attention. That said, here's hoping BioWare really takes its time and gets things right this time around. DA II was rushed, and it showed. Besides, I'd rather not end up playing Backward Flying Dragon Age.

Don't get us wrong: SWTOR is most definitely a pretty game. But, unbeknownst to most players, you can make it even prettier by tweaking a few files with barely any hassle. Want to crank up the game's anti-aliasing to a whopping 12x, obliterating any jaggy edges and making full use of your graphics card? All you have to do is follow these absurdly-easy steps.

For Nvidia cards, the live version of TOR doesn't allow forced AA via the Nvidia control panel, so here's what you need to do. Locate the following file path:

(C) > Users > (user name) > AppData > Local > Swtor > swtor > Settings > client_settings

Make a copy of the "client_settings.ini" file, just in case, then open it up for editing. Find the line that says and add this line beneath it:

AntiAliasingLevel = x

Set X to be 2, 4, 8, or 12 to determine what level of AA you want to activate. Save the file, log in, then bask in the do-it-yourself glory of your TOR's shiny new graphics. Check out the screen below to get a sense of the stark before-and-after difference this small tweak will make.

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

Of the pile of custom L4D2 campaigns I've played, Questionable Ethics has stuck with me most. It's filled with surprise; a white-walled gauntlet of mystery and torture that you must, must, must download. I introduced Tyler and Chris to the four-stage campaign, then we sat down to talk about it.

It's Christmas soon, and everybody's getting into the spirit, some more than others. CoasterBP certainly took it to extremes when he covered his house with 7,000 computer controlled Christmas lights, but we're glad he did, because otherwise he wouldn't have spent his time carefully synchronising them to the Battlefield 3 theme song. Best BABA BA BABAABA ever.

Check inside for a festively lit selection of PC gaming news:


Reddit points us to a very cool shatter physics demo.
Steam tells us Rock of Ages has a Christmas update.
Eurogamer report that Battlefield 3's Physical Warfare pack pre-order bonus is now available to all players for free.
DSO Gaming say that that the Morrowind Overhaul 2.0 mod has been released.
Joystiq have the full version of that Left 4 Dead fan film we previously reported on.

 
Do you have any game based plans for Christmas readers? Do share.

This competition is now closed to new entries, check out today's Men of War giveaway instead.

Welcome to the PC Gamer Ultimate Christmas Giveaway! This is the biggest competition we've ever done: packed with peripherals, games, and exclusive items signed by some very important people. Why are we doing this? Because it's Christmas! And we love you.

The Ultimate Christmas giveaway will run until Christmas Eve. Every day we'll be posting about a new prize that's up for grabs, and you'll have 24 hours after the time of publishing to enter. Sadly, we're only able to open this competition to UK residents.

Look at your mouse, now look at yours. Does your mouse fully adjust to your hand size? Can your mouse add and remove weights till it feels just right? In today's Christmas competition, we're giving away two Cyborg R.A.T. 7 gaming mice, awarded 85% in PC Gamer UK 224, plus some Cyborg amBX gaming lights and a G.L.I.D.E. 7 mousemat to go with them, courtesy of Mad Katz.

Check inside for details of how to win this wondrous frankenmouse.

We're splitting this prize in two, because most people don't need more than one mouse, so the first prize winner will get:


Cyborg R.A.T. 7 albino gaming mouse
Cyborg ambX gaming lights
G.L.I.D.E. 7 mousemat

 
The runner up will also net themselves a R.A.T. 7, but none of the other goodies. To win, just tell me:

The R.A.T. 7 lets you replace and attach various widgets and do-dahs to your mouse to make it more comfortable, what would you bolt onto your mouse if you could?

The craziest, silliest and funniest ideas will win. If you win, you'll get a private message via the forums. Let us know your address and we'll send you your prizes shortly after Christmas. Remember, this competition is open to UK readers only. Also, if you don't claim your prize within three weeks of being notified we'll offer it to someone else. Full terms and conditions can be found here.

Good luck everyone, and don't forget to check back tomorrow at 4.30 for the next big prize, which will bring great honour to your clan.

A sly Team Fortress 2 update yesterday added a secret wedding ring as a craftable item. It's called "Something Special for Someone Special" and is described as being a "level 100 ring." The item wasn't revealed in the patch notes. Players posted their discovery on the Team Fortress 2 wiki after digging through the file changes made by the update.

If you play Team Fortress 2 regularly with your loved one, prepare yourself for a sudden proposal. It could happen between control points, it could happen in the middle of a desperate Payload defence. But which map would be best? The spires of badlands have some pretty good views, The roof of the bridge on 2Fort would get everyone's attention. If you want somewhere really, really quiet, there's always Hydro.

It might not be for a real marriage proposal, of course. Perhaps one of the classes has finally plucked up the courage to propose to the Pyro. He/she/it has been waiting long enough. If an in-game marriage proposal does come out of this, Team Fortress 2 will join a unique collection of games, including World of Warcraft and Minecraft, that have been used to pop the question. It'll be hard to beat the Portal 2 proposal below, though. It featured unique dialogue from Glados' voice actor, Ellen McLain, and looked just like this:

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away (Canada), Bioware announced that they were working on Star Wars: The Old Republic. It's been years in the making. Millions of dollars have been spent on its production. Millions of hours have been played by beta testers. Today, it's finally ready to launch.

Our review won't be up today, but it will be here soon. We want to see as much as we can of the hundreds and hundreds of hours The Old Republic has to offer before delivering a verdict. In the meantime, check out our Old Republic hands on for some early thoughts. You can hear Tyler, Chris, Lucas, and Greg's impressions on the latest PC Gamer US podcast. We'll be putting up our TOR guide soon as well, with lots of useful advice for anyone logging for the first time.

Those who pre-ordered will have likely used the early access period to sink plenty of hours in, and everyone else is set to jump in as the servers open up. We've been levelling furiously, fitting flashpoints into lunch times and building our guilds. If you're based in the US, you can join The Coconut Monkeys on The Crucible Pits server. Europeans can join The Mint Imperials on the Sith side, or the Revel Alliance, both based on the Nightmare Lands server.

Coconut Monkeys and Mint Imperials are brushing against the 500 member cap at the moment, but there should be lots of room in the Revel Alliance. If you're playing, be sure to swing by the TOR section of our forums and say hello. You can join the folks there in congratulating guild member Ezekiel, who hit the level 50 cap last night.

Now all that's left to do is jump in and play. We'd love to hear how your're getting on. Have you gone Republic or Empire? What class have you chosen? How you enjoying it so far? Let us know. For the sake of those of us who are still lingering at low levels, please avoid posting spoilers.