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.

Bill Cosby is hard to kill.

Completely unhinged indie RPG Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden is getting a sequel. We think. Given Tale of Game's Studio's (they put the apostrophe there to make games journalists cry) sense of humour, it's entirely possible the whole announcement could be a massive joke. Assuming they're actually telling the truth through, the preposterously named The Magical Realms of Tír na nÓg: Escape from Necron 7 – Revenge of Cuchulainn: The Official Game of the Movie – Chapter 2 of the Hoopz Barkley SaGa will be coming to Kickstarter soon.

Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden was, as Rich informs us a brilliant, free and completely insane indie RPG. To the extent that the plot can be explained by mere men, I will attempt to summarise: You played Charles Barkley, 90s NBA superstar, who accidentally killed a crowd of thousands by attempting the forbidden 'Chaos Dunk' and is now trapped in a dystopian future where basketball is expressly banned. Also, you fight Bill Cosby's head.

Barkley 2, as I'll be calling it for the sake of by own sanity, will cast you as "X114JAM9, an amnesiac baller with no recollection of his past and no concept of his incredible b-ball destiny". He'll be forced to team up with Barkley 1 character Cyberdwarf, a dwarf from space with skin made of basketballs, in order to regain his memories.

The result will almost certainly be insane and surreal, but probably hilarious too. If you want more, you can read why Rich thinks everyone should play Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden , or just download the whole game for free from the Tale of Game's Studios website.

UPDATE - Blizzard have now officially announced the release date on Battle.net and pre-purchases are open.

Eurogamer has reported that Heart of the Swarm well be released on March 12th, 2013. The information comes from Eurogamer's Spanish site, who spotted a listing on Battle.net. An official announcement is expected later today.

It's uncertain at this time if the March 12th date is for a worldwide release or merely North America. What is known is that Blizzard will be selling a Wings of Liberty and Heart of the Swarm double pack for £45. The new game alone is listed at €39.99 in Europe, meaning it will likely sell at £30-35 over here.

If you're looking for more information on the new Starcraft, check out our Heart of the Swarm preview, or read our analysis of the new Starcraft 2 units.

Excited by the prospect of multiple protagonists in Grand Theft Auto V? Or just confused as to how they're going to work? Either way, you're in luck. While we learned some of the details from Game Informer last week, another preview by Guardian brings new info on Rockstar's three leading men and how you'll be switching between them.

But nope, still no mention of a PC version.

Whichever character you aren't playing will be controlled by the AI and will have their own life elsewhere in the city. Each lives in a different part of San Andreas, meaning that yes, the entire map is finally open from the start of the game. You can even call up the other protagonists and invite them over for a friendly game of tennis, much like Roman used to do to Nico when you were in the middle of being shot by angry Russian gangsters.

The constant swapping between protaganists will extend to missions as well. The article describes a mission where the trio attack a building by air. Ex-military psychopath Trevor pilots them to the location in a helicopter while young up and coming gangster Franklin lurks atop a building across the street, using a sniper rifle to cover ageing retired crook Michael, who rappels down through the skylight to kidnap their target.

The game is structured around five or six 'mega-heists' like this, each with smaller missions leading up to it. The idea is to offer the same kind of spectacle as 'Three Leaf Clover', GTA 4's memorable Heat Homage bank robbery, but faster and more frequently.

For more details, check out the full preview at the Guardian.

With one week still remaining to gather funding, Chris Roberts' ambitious space sim Star Citizen has raised an astonishing $3,385,532, nudging it just ahead of Double Fine Adventure ($3,336,371) and putting it in sight of Project Eternity ($3,986,929). Roberts, best known for creating Wing Commander, has released a video exhorting his pilots to back him for the final push by defeating stretch goals in the quest to break the $4 million mark, all while awkwardly trying to avoid breaking the fourth wall. Bless him.

Hitting that $4 million target will unlock free mod tools, as well as expanding the Squadron 42 single player campaign to 45 missions and the Star Citizen free roaming universe to 50 systems. Roberts is also hoping to hit two separate goals solely for Kickstarter funding, which currently stands at $1,165,621. Bringing that total up to $1.25 million will add asteroid bases manned by smugglers, while reaching all the way up to $1.5 million will unlock two more ships, for a total of twelve.

Crowd-funded games generally receive a surge in payments at the last second, as those who've been sitting on the fence are finally forced to make a decision, so there's a good chance Roberts will hit that $4 million barrier. Sadly the final stretch goal of $5 million, which promised voice acting by a former Wing Commander star, is probably out of reach. Which can only be a bad thing, because there's no game on earth that can't be improved by the addition of Malcom McDowell.

There's also a new video showing dogfighting and pilot AI in action, embedded below:

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.

Can moral decisions be quantified? Telltale continues to put out these little statistical recaps preceding the release of new The Walking Dead episodes. This one, covering the major decisions made by players in Episode 4 (penned by former PC Gamer Editor-in-Chief Gary Whitta), paint a slightly-reassuring picture of gamers as a group that won't necessarily doom their common man at the first opportunity. Watch on, but only if you're comfortable having Episode 4 spoiled well and spoiled hard.

Episode 5: No Time Left should be out this month.

http://youtu.be/HbBOZrcNHXo

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.

Emerging from the flaming wreck of the Vortex Rikers and into the sweeping vista of a Na Pali evening set to the swelling ambiance of "Dusk Horizon" is my most firmly etched memory of Unreal. It's prime reinstall fodder—if not for the sheer scale of its levels, then for its challenging, squirrely AI enemies. Rock, Paper, Shotgun spotted a mod only sweetening the experience: OldUnreal 227, a fan-made overhaul carrying Epic's blessing that provides "a new, completely overworked, and fixed" Unreal.

Update 227 brings a small library's worth of technical improvements and tweaks, most notably the inclusion of DirectX 9 rendering support and a "heavily improved" OpenGL driver. The mod's overall intent, its wiki states, is fragging lingering bugs in the 14-year-old FPS: "The general gameplay and the game itself was not touched, and it should remain 100 percent compatible to old mods and maps."

The full mountain-sized update list contains more intricate details for the curious, and you can grab the actual patch as well. And remember: Nali don't respawn.

It looks like Ferocious Ness finally talked. ArenaNet updated its website for Guild Wars 2's impending Lost Shores update with a timing schedule for the mysterious one-time, log-on-or-you'll-miss-it event "changing Tyria forever." Did Rush finally consent to a concert at Divinity's Reach? Probably not, since we're fairly sure anything of importance involves the ghastly purple karka pictured above.

ArenaNet's continued pledge for regular content updates beyond mad, lion-ploding pumpkin kings powers Lost Shores' considerable additions for Tyrian heroes, including a new zone, dungeon, PVP map, gear, dynamic events, and crafting resources. The only missing element is a "Release the karka!" from a bearded Liam Neeson wearing a CGI coat of jewels. On his beard.

The event's first stage ascends from the briny depths at 12:00pm PST/3:00pm EST/20:00 GMT on November 16 and continues with the following milestones, which reads like a to-do list for Marlin Perkins:

November 16, 12:00pm PST/3:00pm EST/20:00 GMT: Defend Lion's Arch
November 17, 12:00pm PST/3:00pm EST/20:00 GMT: Retake Lion's Arch, discover new island zone Southsun Cove
November 18, 12:00pm PST/3:00pm EST/20:00 GMT: Defeat the Ancient Karka at Southsun Cove

Guild Wars 2's official wiki features a prep guide with more info leading up to Lost Shores' launch.