Having retired from world-saving heroics, Christopher Livingston is living the simple life in video games by playing a series of down-to-earth simulations. This week he squares off against his sworn enemy: trees, and their stubborn insistence on standing vertically.

Trees: they're nature's telephone poles! They're tall, proud, made of something (wood, is my guess) and have a rich history in video games of being things you accidentally crash into while driving. Woodcutter Simulator turns the tables on these traditionally unmovable video game sentinels, allowing you to cut them down and sell them off to be made into things like tables, doors, pencils, canoes, and, in some cases, telephone poles, thereby completing the beautiful, natural cycle of severe front-end automobile damage.

Woodcutter Simulator begins with four tutorials, demonstrating some of the woodcutting equipment in the game. First, perhaps predictably, is the Cutter, which is essentially a tractor with a giant buzz saw attached to the back. To cut a tree down simply back up to a tree marked with a red X, put on the brake, and start cutting, provided you're at the perfect distance and the precise angle. Otherwise, simply spend about four minutes carefully adjusting the Cutter. It's a pain, though with a little practice I can get properly lined up with just a couple tries.

I'm a tree hugger! Ha ha! No, seriously, this tree is about to die.

Next is the Feller, which seems like it'd be easier because you can just drive straight into the tree without having to turn around, but it's actually trickier, because you not only have to be positioned at the correct distance and angle, but you also need to set the correct rotation and height of your-- sorry to get technical here-- front-part Feller thingamawuzzit. Also tricky: recovering after a tree tries to murder you.



There's also the Lifter, a tractor with a big claw on the front for picking up logs and putting them into trucks. And finally, the Puller, which is used to drag fallen trees around. As a responsible games journalist, I'll do my utmost to describe the Puller fairly and dispassionately: The Puller was constructed by Satan in a cursed steel mill from the spare parts of the most evil machinery ever devised, including Cylons, Daleks, Megatron, Mechagodzilla, the evil version of K.I.T.T. from Knight Rider, and those shoddy can openers that really hurt your hand when you use them.

More on that in a bit!

Having completed the tutorial, I select the first mission: cut down six trees and put them in a truck for the customer. I drive my Cutter around (the Feller is unavailable in this mission for some reason), quickly and heartlessly executing the required number of trees, and then a dark, all-consuming dread sets in, because now I have to lug them back to Woodcutter HQ. As I mentioned before, the Puller is straight up evil, the most exasperating and frustrating vehicle in this game or any other, and here's why.

The Puller is a tractor with six wheels distributed over three segmented parts. The front two wheels are independent from the body of the vehicle, which has two fixed wheels. The back portion contains the claw to grab the end of the fallen tree, supported by the back two wheels, which are also independent of the vehicle.

Gaze, ye, upon the very face of evil

Driving the Puller forward in a straight line is tricky enough without swerving all over the place. Driving it backward, trying to push the rear two wheels neatly over the end of a fallen tree, is a teeth-gnashing exercise in futility. The slightest steering adjustment causes the end of the Puller to veer off course, and If the approach isn't perfect, which it never is, the log is nudged and slides or rolls away. The entire exercise is using one hand to push an irritated snake backwards into a cardboard tube: there's wriggling and twisting and shoving, the target keeps sliding out of place, and you wind up with venom coursing through your veins. Simply put, the Puller is the QWOP of woodcutting equipment.

There is a button for locking the rear joint in place, but it tends to only stay locked for a few seconds, just long enough for you to miss the end of the log you're aiming for, or worse, to nudge it out of place, forcing you to spend long minutes lining up a new approach. I genuinely wonder if the developers wanted to make a game about cutting down trees or a craft an impressively strong argument for leaving trees the hell alone.

Let the tire tracks tell my story of woe.

Fifteen minutes later, I've finally managed to get a single tree (of the six I owe) in the blasted Puller, and I drag it over to the truck. Now, apparently, I need to use a crane (which was not part of the tutorial) to get it onto the truck bed. First, I drop the tree too far from the crane to actually pick it up, so I'm forced to get back into the hated Puller, which I use to ram the tree a little closer. Another ten minutes pass as I wrestle with the crane controls. I'm finally ready to load the tree into the truck, when I notice that the tree is actually quite a bit longer than the truck itself. Er. Is this going to work?

Chief Brody from JAWS would probably have a nice one-liner about this.

I also notice I have an icon for my sawmill (again, not part of the tutorial). Maybe I need to cut up this tree before it goes onto the truck. Which means putting the tree back down, hooking it up to the Puller, dragging it to the sawmill, and using yet another crane to get the tree into the mill, then bringing it back and using the first crane again.

In the game, it starts raining. This feels entirely appropriate.

Get. In. My. Mill-hole.

After several tries, I get the Puller to grab the log, and drag it to the mill crane, and after much swinging and twisting about, I manage to get the log onto the conveyer belt. I hear satisfying buzzsaw sounds from the mill, and I hop back into the Puller to see what comes out the other end. Four trimmed-down logs appear, one by one, and roll off into a neat little pile.

I try to select the Lifter from the tutorial, seeing as how it's the piece of equipment designed for carrying logs around and loading them into trucks. Like my Feller, however, it doesn't appear to be available to me in this mission. Why? Whyyyyyy? With no Lifter, I'm going to have to somehow attach these small logs to my Puller. One by one. And drag them over to my crane, and lift them into the truck. One by one. And that'll be four logs. Just four. And honestly, I think the customer wants trees, not logs, so I don't even know if there's a point to any of this.

I consider my options. I could put my face in my hands and weep, which feels like an entirely reasonable plan. I could also quietly uninstall Woodcutter Simulator, retype my Airport Firefighter Simulator column, submit it to PC Gamer, and hope nobody notices.

No. I'm no quitter. Well, technically, I am, because I am about to quit Woodcutter Simulator. But first, I am going to get one damn piece of wood onto that truck. Just one. I don't even care if it's what the customer wants. This is just a grudge match at this point.

Night has fallen. In the gathering darkness, I ram the logs with the Puller, trying to dislodge them from the mill so I can separate one and drag it off. I wiggle and adjust my Puller for long minutes (that sounds gross, sorry), finally getting a small log hooked, though it drops off in transit and I have to do it again. Finally, I get back to the crane, load the truck, and send the truck off to the customer, who will no doubt be a little confused at seeing his truck drive up bearing not the six mighty trees he requested, but instead a single little log, wet with tears.

Conclusion: I was going to write something about how I really wanted to enjoy this sim, that the concept of running a woodcutting business was genuinely appealing, that I'd have been perfectly happy cutting down trees with giant spinning sawblades and building a little woodcutting empire, but I think I'll just say this instead: ARGGGHH PULLER

If you thought - or perhaps hoped - that Slender was the pinnacle of low-budget gaming horror, then think again. Discovered by the wonderful Free Indie Games, Imscared is a similarly first-person psychological horror experience with a handful of devious tricks up its sleeve.

Saying much more would spoil it, but I will offer some advice in case you get stuck (which I did): look around. Look behind and under things, but don't give up, because Ivan Zanotti's unsettling masterpiece is definitely worth it. We expect - nay, demand - to see a swarm of YouTube 'reaction' videos shortly.

Turn the lights and TV off, and wait until midnight like I stupidly did, to get the full experience.

We recently gave you our selection of the best Portal 2 single player maps and campaigns available on the Steam Workshop. There's some great feats of level design in that list, but if you really want to see mapmakers skills stretched to the limit, you have to turn to co-op.

With two brains and four portals available, the levels must be exponentially more complicated. They need to emphasise teamwork, provide an inventive challenge and be tightly crafted so as to stop players exploiting their way through. With that in mind, I enlisted the help of my Perpetual Testing Partner to dig out the ten best co-operative maps around. As always, if you've a favourite that's not listed, let us know about it.


1. Six Extra Seconds of Trust



The title refers to this Cave Johnson sales pitch for co-operating robots. It's apt: Six Extra Seconds of Trust takes place in a room full of buttons and switches, with each player on either side of a glass wall, trying to figure out how to help the other. The work gone into creating such a labyrinthian series of connections is truly impressive. Download Six Extra Seconds of Trust here.

Notes from the Testing Partner: "I've got it! Just take that cube to... wait... no. That won't work for all sorts of reasons"


2. Buttons, Elevators and Goo



...And funnels, lasers, jumping puzzles, blind leaps of faith and those damn emancipation grids. B,E&G contains a large room full of corridors and side-chambers, each concealing a cube needed to complete a collection of buttons. Each area contains or requires a different puzzle element, and its the variety of challenges and their enjoyable solutions that make this a great map. Download Buttons, Elevators and Goo here.

Notes from the Testing Partner: "NOOoooooo..! *splash* Balls."


3. Camtasia



A clever little chamber comprised of two rooms, one on top of the other. While neither player can reach the other directly, laser guarded holes in the ground allow you to share the limited resources back and forth, and buttons allow you to deactivate obstacles in your partners way. There's not much portalling to be done, but co-ordination and teamwork are still key. Download Camtasia here.

Notes from the Testing Partner: "I'm stuck in this hole again. :("


4. Fortunate Buttons



A super-contained single room challenge with plenty of black walls blocking your progress. Fortunate Buttons is an order of sequence puzzle in which every step seemingly throws in more complications and leaps of logic as you move towards your solution. It always feels like you're on the edge between completion and completely messing it all up as you attempt to stretch a limited number of cubes further than seems possible. Download Fortunate Buttons here.

Notes from the Testing Partner: "Just go and- NO, NOT THE FAITH PLATE! Idiot."


5. There's No I in Team, 01



Part of a series of co-op maps made by mapmaker LPChip. Part one starts with a tricky excursion funnel challenge that requires you to really think through the positioning of each player before you make a move. But it's the finale, in which you share a sphere back and forth between each other, that really exemplifies the "accidental" comic slapstick at the heart of the the best Portal 2 co-op maps. Download There's No I in Team here.

Notes from the Testing Partner: "I know how to do this! I have to die!"

Hit the next page for more vents, ramps and tactical suicides.



6. Co-op Vents



It's pretty easy to complete, but there's a lot to like about Co-op Vents. You and your partner split off into two separate corridors (or vents, I guess), which intersect at rooms designed to put one player's life in the hands of the other. The difficulty lies less in the puzzles themselves and more in resisting the urge to blow up your friend. Download Co-op Vents here.

Notes from the Testing Partner: "What is it about lasers that turns you into a homicidal maniac?."


7. Rampage



Rampage heavily explores the possibilities of hard light bridge based puzzling. The three rooms use a mixture of ramps, bridges and emancipation grids to create interesting and unique challenges that require some seriously involved portal co-ordination. Also smart: It allows respawned players to easily make their way back to where they died. It's a problem in some maps, thanks to a level editor that doesn't allow checkpoint placement. Download Rampage here.

Notes from the Testing Partner: "Wait, STOP! Not yet! *splash* DAMN IT!"


8. Quest for the Edgeless Safety Cubes



In which you must find three spheres to unlock the exit, each hiding behind some difficult puzzles in sub-chambers that themselves can be hard to access. The main puzzle room is full of buttons and laser-activated switches, and just deciphering what controls what is a challenge. Despite that, the level has some well crafted puzzles that require inventive portal work to complete. Download Quest for the Edgeless Safety Cubes here.

Notes from the Testing Partner: "I meant to die there. It was tactical."


9. Mazed



Mazed casts you as lab rats, working through corridors looking out onto a large, unreachable cube. Each player must help the other to progress through their respective routes. What at first starts out as simple switch activation soon becomes an involved series of timing challenges and backtracking in order to make a small bit of progress. It's a strangely claustrophobic experience. Download Mazed here.

Notes from the Testing Partner: "I should have picked your route. There's less pissing about with turrets."


10. Super Happy Fun Time



Finally, a one room puzzle that features lots of thinking through the use of an excursion funnel as it pushes and pulls cubes and players through four portals and a variety of improbable obstacles. The division of labour is a bit off balance, with one player required to do little more than push buttons at the right time, but the central problem requires plenty of discussion to overcome. Download Super Happy Fun Time here.

Notes from the Testing Partner: "Sure, the bit with the funnel was fun. But super happy fun?"


Bonus: Geolocity Stage 2



As with the single player maps, some creators prefer to use Hammer, the Source engine's level editor, to create more detailed works. Hammer's co-op selection is less focused on custom campaigns than the solo stuff, but its use still enables handy additions like visual variation and player checkpointing.

It can also be used to reimagine Portal 2 as something else entirely. Something like a racing game. Geolocity Stage 2 abandons puzzles for a track covered in orange speed goo. You have to run, jump and portal your way through the course, avoiding plenty of obstacles and thinking on-the-fly to get through some tricky sections as quickly as possible. While the first Geolocity is also a lot of fun, Stage 2 adds in the ability to screw over your opponent with targets that, when activated by the ping tool, can reverse excursion funnels, create barriers or activate crushers. Download Geolocity Stage 2 here.

Details of Borderlands 2's second DLC have come to light - and when I say 'come to light', I mean 'exploded over the internet like a rocket hitting a skag's backside'. That's because Mr. Torgue's Campaign of Carnage revolves around the mysterious Mr. Torgue, who's so proud of his unfailingly explosive arsenal that he puts his name on every one. (His name being 'Torgue'.) Due next week - November 20th - the expansion adds new guns, characters, missions and even a brand new vault. Being a vault hunter myself, I can't be getting enough of those things.

Rumours about Mr. Torgue and his Carnagey Campaign have been doing the rounds for a while now, but Gearbox finally confirmed them via Twitter. Or rather, Mr. Torgue himself did, in all caps, on his own account. What an angry, angry man. Thankfully Gearbox were around later to elaborate further:

"This story-driven expansion challenges players to conquer all that the titular Mr. Torgue has waiting in his newly-constructed Badass Crater of Badassitude, complete with a new storyline, new areas and environments, new bosses, new guns, new character customizations and more. In addition, Mr. Torgue's Campaign of Carnage features appearances from fan-favorite characters like Tiny Tina and Mad Moxxi!"

There's an inevitable DLC trailer here, but it hardly seemed worth posting as it's only 35 seconds long. So here's a walkthrough video courtesy of Gamespot. Warning: contains spoilers. Further warning: it's sixteen freaking minutes long. Mr Torque's Campaign of Carnage is out November 20th, for $9.99.

Every week, Richard Cobbett rolls the dice to bring you an obscure slice of gaming history, from lost gems to weapons grade atrocities. This week, the animals may have gone into the ark two by two, hurrah, hurrah, but only one can be first past the finish line in this arcade racer...

Believer or not, everyone knows the story of Noah's Ark in some form or other. Oddly though, people rarely bring up what happened next - the part where the waters receded, and to celebrate, God and Noah threw a sadistic sports day that makes Death Race 2000 look like Super Mario Kart.

That is canon, right? Huh? Oh. Well, there are cannons involved, if that helps...

Oh no! The evil fish who were spared the flood by default! They survived!

There must be some good, actually sane Bible themed games out there. Statistically speaking, they can't all be turgid and educational, or off their heads like our past friends Captain Bible and The You Testament. As you've probably guessed though, The Zoo Race isn't going to break the trend.

(Not least because it wouldn't be funny enough to include here if it did, obviously.)

Before we get to the game though, I'd better answer the inevitable question: Why pick on another Bible game, you jerk? I've prepared a quick clip to explain. Observe it with your pitiful human eyes.



I trust that about covers it.

The Zoo Race isn't just one of the strangest Bible games ever, but one of the weirdest games I've ever seen - no qualification needed. As far as I can tell, it's genuine in its devotion, but that really doesn't matter. Not when you've seen that spinning horse, and realise that it's absolutely nothing.

This week's Crapshoot will be a bit shorter than usual, for the simple reason that I can tell you The Zoo Race, but I may as well just show you a video on the grounds that otherwise, you'd think I was kidding. For even more proof, you can also download the shareware version - though watch out for the launcher trying to deluge your system with more shit that God supposedly threw at Job that one time.

The one unticked box is the one allowing for easy reversion later? Classy, guys...

So strange is The Zoo Race that it doesn't have a plot. It has two of them. In the official story, which quotes one of the biblical versions and then tacks on its own bit on the end... I quote:

After the Great Flood, Noah and the animals were very happy to be chosen to live on the Earth. Noah then declared the games of Celebration to begin. The sons of Noah built racetracks and then encouraged the animal creatures to race in them.

Quite. Those animals incidentally include a pig in a top hat called Priscilla, an apparently Viking rhino, a cougar called Cain rocking a pirate hat, and a tiger called Tamar described as simply "Lovely". The full version gives each of them a unique world, but the shareware only offers one - Cain's Caverns - and... hang on. This is a biblical game for kids, and it called one of its characters Cain? Was Judas the Jackrabbit not available? At least the race announcer doesn't say "On your marks!"

I chose the cougar, because if I'm going to have to stare at an animal's arse, I don't want it to feel weird.

Speaking of the announcer, I'm not entirely sure who he's meant to be. It has to be either God or Noah, simply because it can't be his one of his sons and everyone else in the entire world is dead. Either way though, there's no doubt Noah has a potentially literal hell of a lot of explaining to do.



Before I tell you about some of the specific stuff in the shareware map though, I'd like to draw your attention to the reassuring message of this screen. On the flag. You see it. Right there.



Seems innocuous enough, right? Right. Well, this is what's waiting at the top of the same ramp.



And past that? Crushy death walls! There's no point showing those, since they just look like blocks in the screenshot. Around the next corner though... guess! If you thought "One of Noah's sons hurling exploding barrels!", you are correct! And the workings of your mind worry me! Tremendously!



Some versions of the Noah's Ark story say that after the flood, he and his family gave thanks by giving up burnt offerings. I DO NOT THINK THIS IS WHAT THEY WERE REFERRING TO.

Nor I suspect was it the jets of fire and lava pits in the next room, or cannons used to shoot the animals through the air. If The Zoo Race says anything, it's that their experiences with the whole Ark thing gave Noah and his sons such amazing PTSD that they immediately devoted all their carpentry skills to creating a bestial version of Saw. How else can you explain this - a hall of plate glass panels the animals are forced to run through to progress, most of which turn into solid walls when hit?



But you want to see this in action, right? Of course you do. And you're in luck! Not only does a clip follow, showing off the racing, it also includes the full version of The Zoo Race's... uh... second storyline. In this one, the whole thing is the dream of a librarian so boring, she actually suggests one of her visitors go and read a dictionary. If it sounds boring, don't worry! Soon, it gets incredibly creepy!

On the plus side, we do find out that the announcer is actually meant to be God.There's even a bit of a fight between Hannah and her friend Reuben over whether or not simply having omnipotent power over the cosmos is enough of a qualification for that job, and believe me when I say that it takes some serious chutzpah for these actors to even read those lines into a microphone.

After that, everyone is magically turned into animals! And they race! Because... I have no idea.

If you just want to see the racing, skip to 4:13 for an exciting montage. Stick out the rest though, and you'll see production values that put even Mortal Kombat: The Journey Begins to shame.

And I do not hand out such a compliment lightly...



Greatest racing game ever? Ignore the graphics, physics, track design, premise and everything else that can be either objectively or subjectively rated, and I don't see how anyone could argue. Here endeth the lesson. Go in peace to play something better. That, ah, probably won't be too hard...

The end date for Greece's strike within its justice system has come and gone, but Bohemia Interactive developers Ivan Buchta and Martin Pezlar remain jailed in what the studio called "an unmitigated disaster" after both men were charged with espionage while on the Greek island of Lemnos. In a report by Czech news site Rozhlas, a Greek court dismissed Buchta and Pezlar's petition to appeal and denied bail, effectively sealing a required trial with a sentence up to 20 years for a guilty verdict.

Buchta and Pezlar have remained in jail for nearly 70 days. Their families have asked for the direct assistance of Czech President Václav Klaus and Prime Minister Petr Nečas. A Foreign Ministry representative told Rozhlas the government is "working very intensively" on the issue on "virtually all possible levels." A fan campaign calling for the pair's release acts as a hub of up-to-date information regarding the incarceration.

"Our boys no longer tell us on the phone that it’s alright, that they’re handling it," Buchta's mother, Hana Buchtova, said. "After the court's decision, we only hear from them something that no parent ever wants to hear: 'Mom, Dad, please save us.'"

Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition Creative Director Trent Oster talked to us recently about Overhaul Games' remastering of the classic BioWare RPGs, as well as the notable possibility of a new Baldur's Gate game. Another highlight from the interview was Oster's comments about the volume of writing in Baldur's Gate, an Atari localization meltdown over Neverwinter Nights' 1.2 million words, and how some fan translations made it into Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition, beating out professional contractors.

The full interview transcript will be posted next week.

PC Gamer: I’m curious to know if, going through all those source files, you know just how much writing is in Baldur’s Gate. It must be tens of thousands of lines.

Trent Oster: I’m not sure the exact number of lines, but if I remember correctly, I think there’s close to a million words of dialog.

PCG: Wow, a million? I ask because the other day the Dishonored guys were talking about the number of dialog lines in their game. I thought it was an interesting statistic, because we don’t always think of it in that sense—that these are novel sized or bigger works.

TO: Yeah, the most hilarious example I can think of is when we signed Neverwinter with the Atari guys. So they sent us their localization form and it had three boxes on the form, and it said: “Number of words of dialog: Less than 100; 100 to 1,000; 1,000-plus.”

I made a fourth box on there, checked it off, and wrote “1.2 million words.” I sent the e-mail back to them, and got a call the next morning from the translator saying, “You’re kidding, right?”

And I’m like, “No, I’m dead serious. There’s 1.2 million words of dialog in Neverwinter Nights.”

And they’re like, “Oh my God, oh my God.”

And they hung up on me and I didn't hear from them for a week. Apparently they had a big meltdown in their localization department as they realized the volume of what they committed to.

PCG: That’s a great story. So, are big localization efforts happening for Baldur’s Gate Enhanced Edition?

TO: Yes, actually. We’re using—a lot of the original fans of the series in different countries have done translations since the original launched. The original game launched in 11 languages, and I think currently there’s 19 in progress. So we've hooked up with a lot of these communities and in some cases they've kind of thrown their translation at us, saying, “Hey, this is the best we could do. We’ll do anything we can to get it into the game.”

And that’s kind of the story with the Turkish version. There was no Turkish version originally, these fans built it and they really want to make a commercial version of the Turkish version, and we’re like, “Well, sure, we’ll be happy to support you guys if we can. Let’s figure out how we get your stuff into the game and what we can do to solve that. We’ll put you guys into the credits for doing the translation.”

And it’s been just a pretty impressive result. You've got these volunteer groups able to go in, and in some cases you can self-organize around, here’s our main editor, our secondary editor, and our translators and they plow through the data and come up with a translated version of all the content.

PCG: It's always interesting when creators and community come together over a mutual love.

TO: The thing that gets me the most is that—I mean, you can get translations done, and it’s not crazy expensive to do, but these are passionate fans of the series, they know the ins-and-outs, they know the little details, and they’re doing it because they love it. The end result is just— the quality is so much higher. The attention to detail is so much higher. They know the terms, they know what THAC0 means and how it should be framed in their language to be understandable to someone who don’t know the rules necessarily.

I just think an engaged community can do so much better of a job than just a paid contractor in this case. But we’re just, “Hey, anything we can do to support you guys in your translation, we’re happy to bend over backward to make it happen.”

PCG: I imagine some of the lore, and the humor is especially tough to translate. But fans want to get it correct?

TO: Exactly, and they’re willing to put in that effort to make sure the joke carries across and carries across properly. And they’ll understand it within the context of the rules and mechanics of the game so that their translation of it just makes so much more sense.

Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition is scheduled to release on November 28th.

We already know of the powerful mystique of hats, so indie platformer A Hat in Time's dapper domewear is a difficult hook to pass by. In development by Jonas Kaerlev, AHT features both a hat-sounding acronym and the cel-shaded gentleness of The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker in a whimsical time-traveling setting. Don't forget your hat!

As the blurb describes: "Run around in five vastly different worlds while the evil Mustache Girl is loose causing havoc! Even if you can’t beat the bad guys right now, don’t worry, you've got time on your hands. Change the course of the game’s story and before you know it, the enemies are crumbling in fear."

AHT tips its hat to console collection-fests of yore such as Banjo-Kazooie and Conker's Bad Fur Day with a heavy emphasis on platforming around town to pick up various items—presumably for acquiring an even bigger hat. Or so we hope. Either that, or the included umbrella multi-tool/weapon will sprout an additional, tinier umbrella on top of it as a sort of upgrade system. It's as if Dr. Suess collided with Alice in Wonderland while high-fiving a Bloomingdale's.

Kaerlev hopes for a summer 2013 release with a demo launching in January or this December. A Steam Greenlight entry also asks for your vote of approval and shows off more images and concept sketches.

(Via Rock, Paper, Shotgun)

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 is out. Evan, T.J., Tyler and Omri toss around their initial thoughts on its conspiracy-laden campaign alongside this week's news: the GTA5 trailer, Valve's new Source engine, next week's healthy lineup of releases, and more.

All that and a little more in... PC Gamer Podcast 337: The Blackest of Ops

Have a question, comment, complaint, or observation? Leave a voicemail: 1-877-404-1337 ext. 724 or email the MP3 to pcgamerpodcast@gmail.com.

Subscribe to the podcast RSS feed.

Follow us on Twitter:
@ELahti (Evan Lahti)
@tyler_wilde (Tyler Wilde)
@omripetitte (Omri Petitte)
@AsaTJ (T.J. Hafer)
@belsaas (Erik Belsaas, podcast producer)

Like their brethren in other FPS games, the bothersome bullets buzzing around in Black Ops 2's frenetic multiplayer regularly takes flak from players lamenting perceived imbalances. Speaking to Destructoid, Treyarch Design Director David Vonderhaar said he'll "drop knowledge bombs" backed by recorded match data whenever complaints arise.

"There's a lot of instrumentation in this game and there's a lot of data logging, so I know exactly what the power band of a weapon is at all times," he said. "So, I can combine how something feels with how it's actually behaving. I just know this is going to happen: A million people are going to Tweet me and tell me , 'The PDW 57 is overpowered, Vonderhaar. What are you doing?'

"What I'll do is look at the math and say, 'Actually, you know what, dude? You're just good with it. Have fun, because the math says that it's not overpowered.' I have the averages. You're being successful."

Vonderhaar went on to successfully string together at least three more war-related metaphors for combating complaints, saying, "I'm just going to kill people with facts this game whenever they say 'This thing is OP.' I'm going to go 'Actually, it's not OP, you're wrong.' I'm not going to yell at them or anything, I'm just going to tell them the truth. I don't have to hide this stuff from people, just drop knowledge bombs on guys. It's gotta be done! What people are doing is reacting emotionally, and I'm like a really emotional guy so I get it."

Our Black Ops 2 review's hopefully won't further jargonize your brain, but it definitely holds more of our thoughts on both single-player and multiplayer offerings.