There was something missing, in Mass Effect 3. The game was filled with a hundred tiny details that paid homage to all the choices and deliberations I'd made in two previous games, and yet one thing sat unfinished.

Aria T'Loak sat on the Citadel for all of Shepard's last crusade, riding out the end of all things in a cushy balcony in a bar that wasn't hers. And everything about that felt wrong. Aria is an intergalactic badass, a blue crime-lord whose iron fist rules the most notorious hive of scum and villainy that Mass Effect's universe has to offer. Would she, honestly, sit around and let Cerberus just keep her station?

Well no, of course not. It's just that her campaign to retake Omega—one that sweeps up Commander Shepard, who Aria might grudgingly concede is the galaxy's second biggest badass—got saved for DLC.

Ever since her introduction in Mass Effect 2, this asari is clearly a person NOT to be trifled with. She has an agenda. She has goals. And she'll use any tool that comes to hand—including one on-again, off-again human Spectre—to make them happen.

As these things nearly always do, the campaign to retake Omega begins with a message at the Commander's private terminal. It's time, Aria says, and she leaves instructions for you to go to specific coordinates on the Citadel. From there, you're off.

Shepard does have to go without her companions, which is uncharacteristic. Aria justifies it as not liking the company you keep. Of course, the good Commander is not alone: Aria herself becomes a fierce, extraordinarily powerful ally, as does a turian called Nyreen. Aria and Nyreen are both biotics and, for once, it's a mission that seems almost tailor-made for my Shepard of choice, an Infiltrator.

Speaking of Nyreen, I would be remiss if I didn't take a moment to discuss her, the much-vaunted first female turian to appear in the series. For all that the Mass Effect franchise has done remarkably well with its human gender depictions over the years, its representations of other species have been somewhat lacking. Despite Codex entries and in-game conversations that speak of complex and more-or-less egalitarian societies, it took until Mass Effect 3 for the krogans and the salarians to get on-screen female representation (and all of them go veiled or hooded), and until Omega for us to meet Nyreen.

Happily, she's a great character. She and Aria play beautifully off each other. If Aria is the quintessential renegade on Shepard's shoulder, then Nyreen is the constant paragon. They have opposing goals and philosophies and yet orbit each other, each being drawn into the other's perspective. Each makes an entertaining foil for the other, and brings balance to the overall narrative. Aria's personality is enormous and could easily overshadow everything, and Nyreen's could easily be overbearing and sanctimonious. Together, they achieve an excellent equilibrium. And blow things up.

Boy, do they ever blow things up. Two powerful biotics, together with Shepard's sniper rifle, made short work of most enemies. Such short work, in fact, that at first I thought I must have set the difficulty to casual or narrative. While combat does get more challenging as the DLC progresses, I felt that there were two major simplifying factors.

The first is that I have played a significant number of multiplayer matches. As the single-player content for ME3 evolves, it takes more and more cues from its online multiplayer sibling. I recognized the wave types I was playing, particularly the two that were "kill [X] high value target" and "disable 4 [Y]," and approached them accordingly. (The latter is where being an Infiltrator comes in particularly handy.) Multiplayer ME3 also gave me a set of reflexes and tactics that influenced the way I handle the single-player game, making me more mobile and focusing my energy on flanking maneuvers. All of those are smart tactics in Omega.

The second is a lingering suspicion that my Shepard, who started the mission at level 59 and primed for an end-game that, thanks to the awkward placement of single-player DLC, she'll never reach, is simply overpowered. Omega is a story that feels as if it would fit best as a parallel tale to a major event that's already inside Mass Effect 3, [SPOILER] the ousting of Cerberus from the Citadel between plot acts [END SPOILER].

Aria may essentially be the mafia don of Omega, but wandering through her bunker isn't that different, materially, from wandering through the Citadel. There are very few humans here, but the batarians, turians, asari, and salarians are working together — with the same hushed and worried conversations, the same fragmentary losses, the same concern and grief that's displayed in the ice-blue halls of the galaxy's government. Here, in its seedy red underbelly, is the flip side to the utopically crisp base of operations we are used to.

For all that Omega brings some new things to Mass Effect 3, in a bigger sense it's all about revisiting the old. The new enemy type, the adjutant, is fearsome, though not quite as bad as a banshee. Introducing them through use of suspense, silence, and a darkened, difficult-to-navigate map ramps up their menace, of course. Still, survival horror isn't ME's strong point. Decision-making is.

Near the climax, I had to make a decision that I, as the player, wasn't really comfortable making. I wished, in that moment, for Shepard's constant companions to be with her. I would have welcomed Garrus's dry observations on the cold calculus of war or Liara's compassionate understanding. Instead, Shepard stood alone.

I find myself wondering, after the fact, if there was really a true decision to make at all or, if like the Mass Effect 2 DLC Arrival, the game would in the end have undermined my ability to make Shepard's choice. Someday I may play through again and find out. For now, what I know is that it tempted me three times with an alternative I didn't want to take, and on the third, I caved in and made the call.

Of course, standing alone lets Shepard cut loose a little, too. It's hard not to revel in the chance to capture some well-earned renegade points throughout the mission to retake Omega. My Shepard may have a do-gooder streak as wide as the Citadel, but she's not stupid. There's a time and a place for everything, and standing next to a heavily armed, thoroughly pissed off Aria T'Loak is not the time to try gently persuading anyone of anything.

In the end, then, Omega is a worthwhile romp, entertaining in its own right and valuable for how it expands the world of the game it's attached to, as well as the world before it. It does connect back out to the larger story of Mass Effect 3, even while remaining concerned entirely with itself. (A lot like Aria.) Afterlife always had its motif of flames by its entrance, a futuristic LED display mockingly leading its visitors to hell. When the actual station is on fire, and the galaxy around it burning too, its gaudiness feels eerily prophetic, a little too on-the-nose.

Shepard, too, sees the pattern of all things. When Aria mutters, "We can't field an army large enough," Shepard retorts, "Then we need to find allies. Hmph — story of my life."

The quest for allies is, indeed, the story of Shepard's life. Aria, and the underclass of Omega, are as unlikely an ally as ever the space marine had. And yet, in two games, she makes good. Omega is Aria's home and Aria's story. We, and the good Commander, just get brought along for the ride.

It's a new console! These are momentous events in gaming, and yet nobody seems quite sure how to react to Nintendo's new entrant, the Wii U.

To some, it feels like the last of a generation that launched with the Xbox 360 many years ago. To Nintendo, it's the first of the next generation, well ahead of Microsoft's and Sony's next iterations. It takes an interesting, two-pronged approach to audio and to video, though the two-screen approach can create some problems of its own. It comes with a huge, slow update right off the bat but combines the features of consoles and of portability.

In short, the Wii U is a huge question mark. Is it cool? Is it interesting? Is it gimmicky? And how does that giant gamepad work, anyway? These, and other questions, are what reviewers worldwide have set out to answer.

Most outlets don't score their hardware reviews, so there are no hard numbers to round up. (The exception, Polygon, gave it a 6.5) So here's a whirlwind tour of what reviewers far and wide make of Nintendo's new household name.

Destructoid

The difference between the Wii U's eShop and previous digital storefronts on the Wii and 3DS is remarkable, given that this time it's actually good. Vastly quicker to browse, with an efficient layout and easy access to game info, screenshots, and trailers, the new eShop is an active pleasure to browse. It looks prettier than storefronts on rival machines, works like a charm, and boasts one beautiful feature that Nintendo systems have been aching for—background downloads!

Credit card information can be input easily and saved, and downloads themselves are fairly swift. I'm yet to buy one of the full retail games, because I'm not made of money, but my purchase and download of Chasing Aurora was fast and hassle-free, taking four minutes or so to download. The only issue is that, like with the PlayStation 3, downloaded games must be installed manually, a process that tacks on an extra minute or so of waiting. Once that's done, another few seconds on the home screen will add a fresh-faced icon.

Eurogamer

Nintendo's focus on using the GamePad as the centre of the experience—even in these initial stages—is a great idea. Simply going through the motions with the set-up procedure familiarises you with the tablet, and you can even use it as a TV remote (albeit limited to power on/off, input, volume and channel control). Despite the inexpensive parts, there are some pleasant surprises here: this clearly isn't anything like as good as an iPad-style IPS display, but viewing angles are fairly decent and colour reproduction is OK, if not spectacular. The lack of multi-touch support is a serious issue—for the browser in particular—but overall responsiveness from the screen is fine.

We'll be studying the latency in more depth soon with a bit more of a scientific approach, but our first hands-on impressions are positive, as games are equally as playable on the GamePad as they are on the big screen. Indeed, we have the feeling that the Wii U GamePad's response may actually be superior to a great many HDTVs out there, something we'll be quantifying in the upcoming days.

Game Informer

This touch screen works just like the 3DS', which means it can't sense more than one finger at a time, but you can touch it with anything as opposed to typical phone and tablet capacitive screens that need a signal from your body. A front-facing camera and microphone facilitates video chat and can show your face to take pictures of it to display on your TV. The photo/video image quality isn't going to win any awards, but it's enough to do the job. An accelerometer and gyroscope handles motion control, which performs smoothly in launch titles like Nintendo Land. Near Field Communication functionality is built in, but implementation in games is limited at this point. Despite its relatively large size, the GamePad still feels light at 1.1 lbs compared to a standard iPad.

The rechargeable battery is only good for a few hours, but you can maximize that time by going into the controller settings and dimming the screen brightness. There's also an option to turn the screen off if you're not using it, though it comes back on if you touch any buttons.Charging via a cable to the main console is a no-go. You have to run a separate power cord from the GamePad to a wall outlet or use the charging dock included with the deluxe console. I'd gladly trade off more battery life for a heavier controller. The Pro controller, which sells for $50, looks like a 360/PS3 controller and is said to last "up to 80 hours." Be sure to check if it's compatible with the game you want to play, however, as its support is spotty. Notable incompatible titles include New Super Mario Bros. U, Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two, Batman: Arkham City: Armored Edition, Scribblenauts Unlimited, and Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed.

IGN

Nintendo just can't seem to get the simplest things right—like voice chat. For those that missed the news, Nintendo's "hardcore" Wii U Pro Controller doesn't come with a headset jack. Which means you'll need to plug your headset into the Wii U GamePad, even when you're not using it. That's ridiculous.

The worries don't stop there. Nintendo has remained mum on what processor is inside the Wii U. Currently, all we know is it's an IBM Power Architecture-based multi-core processor. Except we don't know how many cores, or what it's clocked at, or what its cache size is… etc, etc, etc. For all we know, it could be a beefed up version of the Wii chip—which isn't that wild of a guess.

So what does all that mean? It means what everyone already knew—Wii U won't be as powerful as the PS4 or next Xbox. But is that a surprise? And does it really matter?

I'm not convinced Wii U is going to age as well as the next round of consoles—but I am convinced that it's going to offer a completely unique experience with a large handful of irreplaceable games.

Joystiq

Imagine Twitter, but with threaded conversations, and divided into "communities" around a game, and adorable, and you've got Miiverse. Miiverse lets users send messages both from and about supported games, reply to one another, "follow" users Twitter style, and most importantly, send friend requests right to those people.

Messages can consist of short text or Swapnote-style drawn messages, with which Nintendo staff have helpfully already populated communities. I've already had a good time pseudo-Tweeting with game journalist friends. I look forward to investigating Miiverse further.

One disappointing limitation has already presented itself: you can only follow 1,000 people, and you can only have 100 friends on the Wii U. That continues to be an uncool limit for the Xbox 360, and it's uncool for an ostensibly next-generation system.

Polygon

Nintendo has promised that it understands the need for third-party support for the Wii U, but it beat a similar drum prior to the launch of the Wii and even the 3DS. The Wii's third-party efforts were largely ignored and generally substandard, and outside of the Monster Hunter series, the 3DS's third-party footprint has dwindled significantly. Put simply, Nintendo has more to prove in this regard than any other platform holder, and it isn't filling us with confidence that we can expect third-party titles will consistently appear on the Wii U. We're even more skeptical that third-party titles will make good use of the Wii U's unique capabilities.

But Nintendo's greatest hurdle is demonstrating that it understands online, and how to use that to offer a good experience to players. As of this writing, the Wii U that customers will buy on November 18th doesn't have an online component—that has to be downloaded in a day one firmware update for the system. While firmware updates are nothing new, no one outside of Nintendo and some third-party developers have any idea how the Wii U's online infrastructure will function. We don't know what the shop experience is. We don't know how you reach out to friends, whether you can join games via invites a la Xbox Live, how voice communication works. In fact, at the time of publish, Nintendo hasn't even enabled backwards compatibility for Wii titles.

Kotaku

But if you are on the fence, if you are wondering if it's time to get a Wii U, we can guess with you that Nintendo is going nowhere, that excellent games from Nintendo are surely on the horizon, and that firmware updates may give the system all of the features it was supposed to have at launch maybe as soon as early December. Having played a batch of games on the Wii U and having had the system in my home for nearly a week, I can confirm that it is a good machine that makes one's console gaming life surprisingly more convenient and luxurious. I just can't tell you that you have to have one now.

Is it time for a gamer to get a Wii U? Is it a must-have?

Not Yet.

Give it a month or three. Wait until the "launch window" closes at the end of March and the likes of Pikmin 3, Lego City Undercover and a slew of interesting download-only games are available.

With any new console you might be wisest to give it a year, especially if you want to be able to compare it to what Sony and Microsoft have coming next. And if they don't put screens in their controllers, know right now that Nintendo will have at least that excellent advantage over them.

It's hard to describe the benefits and drawbacks of a specific gaming mouse, in many ways. Certainly, I can discuss whether the drivers work, whether the buttons work, whether any programming is intuitive and whether the product works as advertised—and in a moment, I will. The biggest problem with describing a mouse, though, is that it's got to be the piece of hardware most overwhelmingly subject to personal preference.

A mouse is an even more personal decision than a keyboard. We all have our personal likes and dislikes for the feel and look of keys under our fingers, but a mouse... you're holding it all day long, and where a game controller is always the same size, and demands the player adjust, a mouse is much more variable. And the Roccat Savu, sadly, is one that's clearly not made for me.

The Savu looks quite nice, and it feels pretty solid out of the box. It's got enough heft not to feel flighty, while still remaining lightweight. All seemed to be going well as I unwrapped it and plugged it in. That was a few days ago and while as far as my PC is concerned, the experience is going well, my body, alas, begs to differ.

Finding and installing the drivers from the Roccat website was intuitive and painless, and learning to use the Easy-Shift features didn't take long, either. Between the scroll wheel and two thumb buttons, in addition to standard right- and left-click, the Savu can hold over a dozen programmed commands, and they're easy to remember and to change. As well, the Savu lets users save five distinct profiles of commands, for different games and purposes.

Lighting is part of the profiles, too, which is helpful for remembering what it's set to. I developed a basic Windows profile (where buttons controlled volume and web browsing) with a green light, and enabled several of the Dragon Age macros on a second profile, with a lavender light. When I wondered why the volume controls were no longer working, glancing down and seeing the purple glow was an immediate and welcome tip that the problem was human, not software- or hardware-based.

For all that the programming and details work well, though, the Savu and I just do not get along. After three days of using the Savu in place of my normal mouse, my hand has raised many objections. Since the switch, any time I'm either gaming or working at the PC for more then 30 or 40 minutes, my fingers start to hurt. The joint where my thumb meets my hand doesn't feel too great, either.

In short, it's not the mouse; it's me. My hand and this mouse are as much the wrong shape and size for each other as it is possible to be. Over the few days I've been using it, I've done much gaming, much general writing and web use, and a good deal of Photoshop work as well: three different uses, three different kinds of adjustment. I thought maybe my initial discomfort was just the shock of change (I've had my "standard" mouse for well over a year, and the one before it was an almost identical model that the cat killed), but the more I use the Savu, the worse my discomfort gets.

There's a very specific thumb groove that I keep automatically aligning my thumb into, but that alignment puts the rest of my hand out of place. My impulse is to slide my fingers further down the buttons than I need to and as a result I'm kind of contorting my hand. It's clearly not working at all for my joints. Meanwhile, I don't enjoy the feel of the rough textures on the sides under my thumb, and while the "ROCCAT" imprint across the right button does indeed remind me that my finger is in the right place, it feels strange and unpleasant against my finger. The grooves are an irritant.

It's frustrating, because the mouse itself works very well and has comprehensive, comprehensible software that makes it quite user-friendly. Ergonomics, though, are no joke—especially for someone who routinely uses the PC in question for more than 10 hours a day.

For use with the doomed Savu, though, Roccat also sent a fancy high-tech mousepad, the Hiro.

The Hiro promises many fine features, such as quiet use, smooth gliding, and being easy to clean. It also intrigued me with a promise that the fabric it's made from won't fray: "Thanks to a power-bonded construction between upper and lower surfaces," as the website explains, "the Hiro's edges won't fray – durability that translates to the longest life of battle readiness, no matter how aggressively you game."

If I still worked in an office, I might not care about these features as much. However, we have a little grey house cat who fancies himself the destroyer of worlds. And at the very least, he's had much success as the destroyer of his humans' PC equipment. My current mousepad has been sneezed on, chewed on, napped on, and clawed at one time too many, and I eagerly welcomed a replacement.

The bad news is, Roccat's wrong about the fraying. It took maybe two or three minutes of me worrying at one of the corners with my girly-girl fingernails before loose threads began to sprout. Now, it's true that actively plucking at the corners of a mousepad isn't exactly normal use. I might, in fact, absent-mindedly toy with the thing under ordinary circumstances, but it wouldn't always be the same spot and it would probably take me months to wear down.

So I forgive the failed no-fray promise. And happily, the Hiro makes good on pretty much every other promise. With the Savu, you need a mousepad of some kind. It's completely non-functional on the surface of my (dark "wood" IKEA) desk, but does indeed glide smoothly and cleanly over the Hiro surface. The Hiro has also been easy to get the cat hair off of, and does indeed stay firmly put in place when something (i.e. the cat running full tilt into the desk) jostles my workstation.

My final verdict on the Roccat products, then, is that the fault lies not in them so much, but in me. Just as there are some quite nice athletic shoes I'd never wear, this is a quite nice mouse that I won't be using in the future—but that doesn't mean it doesn't have much to offer others. For an easy-to-program gaming mouse, the Savu's a pretty solid bet.

Yeah, it came out in time for last year's holiday season, but I've dropped this on some folks since then for birthdays etc, and it's always worth it.

A smart game knows its audience. So let's take a moment to understand what kind of audience I am.

My actual cat is named Guybrush. I have this print in my living room. I think cats and pirates are probably the best things ever except for, maybe, pirate cats. So when a game called Cat Pirates shows up... well. I mean. They may as well have called it "Kate Cox, You Play This Game Right Now I Mean It."

Cat Pirates is a reasonably standard tower defense game. In this particular instance, your tower is your treasure, and it is under attack from cat pirates, who are jerks.

It's not their fault, really. Pirates are kind of jerks—they do, after all, specialize in stealing stuff that doesn't belong to them—and so are cats. All purring and contentment one minute, all trying to murder the hell out of your bathmat the next. Come on, kitty! It's dead! You killed it! Please let me out of the shower in peace!

Ahem.

The point is, pirate cat jerks are coming for your treasure, through a maze of crates. You have exactly one way to stop them, which is with bombs. Sometimes when you blow up a cat with a bomb, it drops an upgrade. (Do not try this at home.)

The upgrades apply themselves automatically to the next number of bombs you place, and create some... interesting combinations. One bomb type leaves the tiles where it explodes burning for a few seconds. Another upgrade type turns one placed bomb into several. A bomb can have both upgrades applied, which causes it both to multiply and also to leave a fire merrily blazing in its wake.

The trick is learning to manage upgrades. The difficulty curve comes both sharply and quickly—after finding the first five levels (of 30) almost laughably easy, I very suddenly had to take multiple stabs at the sixth. Wasting a giant mega land-mine leaving, fire-starting bomb placement, when the map is chock-full of oversized, treasure-stealing cats, does nobody any good.

Actual pirate cats may not approve of this game. At least, that's my take-away from the number of times that Guybrush Threepwood Cox, Mighty Pirate Cat, has knocked my iPod onto the floor in the last 24 hours. For humans, though, it's an entertaining jaunt.

Cat Pirates [Google Play, $0.99]

Cat Pirates [iTunes, $0.99]

In what is ultimately sure to be a fool's errand, Time magazine has compiled a list of the 100 best video games of all time.

Coming up with lists of the bests is harder than it looks, and any set of criteria used will have flaws in it. Curation is hard, and lists change all the time. It's hard to deny the lasting impact on the world that the original Super Mario Bros had, and everyone knows what Tetris is. (Though Kotaku's own Evan Narcisse described it and several others admirably well in the Time list.) Halo launched not just a franchise but also the now-dominant console, and sure, the first Civilization may no longer be the best, but its importance can't be denied.

Looking back to thirty or forty years ago, we have the benefit of hindsight to see which titles have stood the test of time. Some have since become foundational or legendary, and it's easy to point to those as the bests. The system gets a little trickier with more recent entries, though. Portal is likely to go down in history for spawning cake joke memes, even after its excellent gameplay has long since been forgotten, but is Braid really the best, most meaningful indie game they could have picked?

The 2010s section of the list will no doubt generate the most voluble feedback. It covers three years with two games: Batman: Arkham City and Mass Effect 3. The latter is certainly the most controversial game of 2012, but is it the best? Time justifies their pick by explaining that, legendarily divisive ending aside, the game itself is the ending to the trilogy as a whole, and that the way it remembered a player's decisions across two entire previous games makes it worthwhile. They aren't the only ones to feel that way about ME3.

At the moment, the poll on the Mass Effect 3 page has with 78% of respondents saying it definitely belongs on the list, making it far more popular than beloved adventure classic Grim Fandango (23%) or even Chrono Trigger (53%). Perhaps as this furor of the spring dies down, the capstone to BioWare's science fiction trilogy will age well after all.

At least, until the next one comes out.

All-TIME 100 Video Games [Time]

If you, like me, are an episode or two behind in Telltale's remarkable Walking Dead series, don't watch this video. If you, unlike me, have caught up on episodes three and four of the five-part series, then by all means, go to town.

In addition to releasing the player stats video for episode four, Telltale has announced that the fifth and final episode of the series, "No Time Left," will be coming out on November 21, for nearly all platforms. The one exception is on PlayStation Network, where the episode will be released on November 20.

Until this point, release dates for the series have been staggered, with mobile editions coming many weeks after their console and computer brethren. Now, though, there are no excuses. And with next Thursday as a day off for a huge number of us here in the US, Thanksgiving might just have more zombies in it than it usually does.

Or, since next week will also signal the start of the holiday shopping frenzy, you might just put the fancy retail version on your wishlist.

The Walking Dead Season Finale Release Dates Confirmed! [Telltale Games Blog]

Assassin's Creed isn't the only movie that Ubisoft wants to get to the silver screen as soon as possible.

Rumors from earlier this year that Ubisoft was looking at making a Splinter Cell movie appear to have been well-founded, according to Variety. And what's more, the movie's got a star.

British actor Tom Hardy is reportedly on board to star as Sam Fisher, operative extraordinaire. Hardy most recently took to the silver screen as masked villain Bane in The Dark Knight Rises earlier this year. He also featured in Inception, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and the sadly disappointing Star Trek: Nemesis.

The Splinter Cell game franchise dates back to 2002. The last was 2010's Conviction; the next is 2013's Blacklist.

Tom Hardy game for 'Splinter Cell' movie [Variety]

Origin users—which means anyone who's played Battlefield 3 or Mass Effect 3, among other games—should keep a close eye on their accounts.

Some users are reporting a wave of hacked and stolen accounts. It appears that a hacker or hackers are managing to log in to Origin accounts and then change the e-mail address and passwords associated with them, which of course locks out the original owners.

Kotaku reader spy0070 wrote in to tell us that his Origin account was one of the ones recently stolen, with the e-mail address and password changed without his knowledge or permission. He found out about it when he received an automated "your e-mail address has been changed" message from Origin support. A thread full of NeoGAF users are reporting the same issue, as are a growing number of users on EA's official forum.

Stolen accounts are, sadly, nothing unusual in the modern online world; however, the security processes—or lack thereof—on Origin accounts are making it difficult for customers to get their accounts back. To verify accounts, EA customer service asks users to verify their dates of birth. However, the hackers are apparently changing the birthdates stored in a profile when they take over an account, thus preventing users from regaining access. Unlike other services such as Steam or Google, Origin currently has no secondary authorization process or two-step verification available.

As one NeoGAF member discovered, players who have their Origin or EA account tied to another service, such as Xbox Live, can reset their account e-mail information through it as a work-around. The rest of us, though, don't seem to be so lucky.

Meanwhile, any Origin user would do well right now to double-check their e-mail address and profile information, and to change their passwords to something unique.

Update: EA has issued a statement to Eurogamer, saying that "At this point, we have no reason to believe there has been any intrusion into our Origin database."

Fans of Beyond Good & Evil have been waiting a very long time for a sequel.

The game, which came out in 2003, was envisioned as part of a trilogy but as the years have gone by, fans have let their expectations wane. A 2011 HD re-release seemed to be it for a while, until some screenshots from Beyond Good & Evil 2 began to surface in May. Creator Michel Ancel confirmed, also back in May, that the game was in development, but said the game would not be likely to surface before the next generation of consoles.

In an interview with Polygon, Ubisoft head Yves Guillemot further dampened fans' spirits, explaining that Ancel's work on Rayman Origins and Rayman Legends has put BG & E 2 even further on the back burner.

"It's really a game that we've been working, we have worked on, and is a game that we want to do," Guillemot reassured Polygon, but work on Rayman Legends comes first.

For fans who loved Jade's original journeys through Hillys, a few more years on the back burner are just another part of the wait that's taken the better part of a decade.

Ubisoft: Beyond Good & Evil 2 still in the works, Rayman titles slowing development [Polygon]

It's November, and that means three things. The days are getting shorter, holiday advertising is ramping up, and there's a new Call of Duty game.

Last year's entry, Infinity Ward's Modern Warfare 3, shattered all kinds of sales records in its first day and first weeks on store shelves, launching into the stratospheric billion-dollar sales sphere usually reserved for the biggest of Hollywood's big blockbusters.

This year is Treyarch's Black Ops II, successor to 2010's Black Ops. Two years ago, reviewers were blown away by Black Ops and felt it was the pinnacle of the series to date. Do they feel as warmly about its successor in a jaded, cynical 2012?

Well, yes, in fact, they do. Critical consensus is tight, with every scored interview falling into a narrow, unanimous, positive range. Read on to see the good, the bad, and the ugly—but really, mostly just the good—of reviews of Black Ops II.

Polygon

These excellent new additions are layered atop an already-refined multiplayer blueprint, which is as good as it's ever been. Black Ops 2 multiplayer feels like a Swiss watch I could never afford.

Treyarch took a big risk with the Pick 10 create-a-class system, and it paid off, reimagining how players customize their experience. They could have stopped there, but the developer's drive to go deeper, changing certain core elements of Call of Duty multiplayer to encourage more teamwork, makes Black Ops 2 online play even more remarkable. No other online shooter is offering a better experience right now.

Giant Bomb

All of this story is set against a new Cold War with China, but the world's problems take a backseat to the more personal story of Menendez, his sister, and his over-the-top quest for revenge against the guys that wronged him. By the end, he's controlling huge drone fleets and bringing the world to the brink of war. It's outlandish and ridiculous to think that one determined man could bring all this about. It's the sort of thing you'd expect to see in a proper action movie, which, with all the jumping back and forth between quiet nights deep inside Noriega's Panama and the deck of an aircraft carrier as it comes under attack, sums up the pacing and feel of Black Ops II's campaign. Compared to the past games in the series, the story feels far more personal. It still jumps between characters in traditional Call of Duty fashion, but each character is meaningful and each conflict is more directly tied to the overall plot. It unfolds in a fascinating way, and you'll actually have some very real agency in how that plot unfolds.

Game Informer

For shooter fans that don't require as deep of a dive, Black Ops II's multiplayer may feel like more of the same. No significant new match types are present, and the Pick 10 system doesn't drastically change the gameplay experience. Most of the changes to the Call of Duty formula come in campaign mode, and they are executed with mixed results. Despite some frustrations, Black Ops II is yet another massive, polished, finely tuned entry in a series that shows no signs of slowing down. Even if Treyarch misses the mark on occasion, I respect the developer for taking chances with a series that would sell just fine if it stuck with the status quo.

GamesBeat

The story makes you think about how far you would go to stop a man like Menendez. Like any good cinematic video game, it makes you think.

It has a couple of disturbing parts in which you play the enemy, and those are sure to raise alarms among concerned parents (and media and politicians looking to score some cheap points). You have no choice but to go on a murderous rampage, shooting the good guys or even civilians. As the player pursuing the villain, you make some critical ethical decisions about whether to shoot a captive or show him mercy. Often you don't have a "right" decision. The story has multiple endings, adding some variety and replayability to the campaign.

EGM

Whether it's assassinating targets or protecting computer terminals holding valuable information, the Strike Force objectives are supposed to help determine how you play. Unfortunately, once you dig into these side missions, you'll realize how incompetent the ally AI is; it often ignores your commands, and soon the RTS view becomes null and void. In the end, it's better to try to supersoldier it and control one character at a time in order to win the day. Strike Force is a great idea that finally brings some new gameplay elements into the mix, but it's poorly executed, making some of the missions a bit of a chore depending on the parameters.

Aside from this one glaring flaw, however, the campaign is the best since the first Modern Warfare. The story enthralls from the start, and the gameplay is still definitively Call of Duty-especially with some sweet future tech like the Millimeter Scanner that allows you to see foes through walls.

GameTrailers

The sound design is tight and punchy, with special commendation for the near-future weapons, and the voice actors deliver strong performances all around.

Call of Duty: Black Ops II is the most evolved sequel we've played in recent memory as it challenges the status quo at almost every turn. The elastic story provides plenty of incentive to replay the campaign, the strikeforce levels aren't executed perfectly, but they're a glimpse at the future, and the multiplayer features are tweaked to make every play style relevant and to level the playing field. It does so many new things so very well, making it the most groundbreaking Call of Duty since the first Modern Warfare. Shooters simply don't get much more deep, varied, surprising, or rewarding than this.

Kotaku

Black Ops II is a great shooter, but that alone doesn't make it worth playing to me. Black Ops II's triumph is found in how it assembles modern-day issues, ultimately making it impossible not to feel like I was staring into the mirror of my society. If the the constant question with games of Call of Duty's ilk is whether or not they hold some responsibility in what they depict, then Black Ops II feels like an answer. An answer that shows that the things that make us reconsider things, as "responsible" media does, do not always have that intention-and they don't have to. I think that lacking that explicit purpose actually accentuated the crisis I felt as I realized that as much as I enjoyed what I was playing, I didn't like what the game revealed.

Today is becoming something of a comedy of errors as far as game discs are concerned, it seems.

As Game Informer first reported, Warner Brothers is recalling Xbox 360 copies of Lego Lord of the Rings after they were mistakenly shipped containing a demo disc instead of the final product.

Game Informer editor Andrew Reiner ran into the demo disc issue at two different stores; Kotaku tipster Eric wrote in to tell us of his friend encountering the problem with the game at two different Target locations. Warner Brothers sent us a statement explaining that the issue is one of labeling only, but that they are issuing a recall for the affected shipments:

Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment is recalling a small number of LEGO The Lord of the Rings video games that were released for the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft to Walmart, Target and Toys ‘R' Us in the United States with a disc labeling error. The discs in question are incorrectly labeled as demo discs, but those discs do contain the full game content and are fully functional. This error does not affect any other formats of the game. We are in the process of remanufacturing the discs and will get them to the stores as soon as possible.

Consumers who purchased a copy of the Xbox 360 version of the game with the disc labeling error can contact customer support via email at support@wbgames.com or phone at 410-568-3680 for a replacement disc.

This is not the first problem today of something unexpected presenting itself inside a sealed game case to consumers; earlier today, PC retail versions of Call of Duty: Black Ops II were found to have a serious manufacturing error on the second disc: namely, that disc was in fact Mass Effect 2 and not Black Ops II at all.

Let's be honest for a moment here: pretty much everyone around the world has at the very least thought about calling in "sick" to work or school while their health was perfectly fine, for one reason or another. For some folks, it's a beach day; for others, just a chance to sleep for an extra few hours. And then, of course, there are the gamers.

It's a classic running joke that a Call of Duty launch day means players will stay home "sick" to glue themselves to the TV and shoot virtual weapons all day. And it's a joke that seems well-grounded in truth.

USA Today has a report on the uptick in unscheduled absences and sudden illnesses that take place on a Call of Duty launch day. CNET also chimes in, pointing to poll data gathered by IGN, which found that one in four respondents planned to call in "sick" today to get more Black Ops II time in.

Of course, as much as many of us would like to take a day off just to play a new game, reality often intervenes and we can't always follow through. But plenty of folks, it seems, are. From the schoolkid cutting class to the savvy boss who knows exactly where his employees really are, Twitter is full of the stories of the Call of Duty twenty-four hour flu:

Some PC players of Call of Duty: Black Ops II report that disc 2 of their recently-purchased game is the wrong sequel entirely.

Players on the Call of Duty forums, the Steam forums, and Reddit are reporting that when they insert disc 2 as prompted, they receive a Mass Effect 2 read error. The video above (some language NSFW) demonstrates the issue.

The discs in question are correctly printed with the Black Ops II front, but appear to have received the wrong image where it matters: in the software. Clearly, something went awry in the manufacturing.

For most players, this won't be a show-stopping problem. Black Ops II authenticates through Steam, and so once players have associated their game's serial number with their Steam account, they can simply download any missing files.

Call of Duty publisher Activision and Mass Effect publisher EA are, of course, notoriously rivals with some bad blood between them. This manufacturing error is no doubt the only time players will ever find a Call of Duty game and a Mass Effect one in the same case.

Owners of the PC version of Black Ops 2 are getting a Mass Effect 2 disc read error. [Reddit]

Reads disk 2 incorrectly [Steam]

Disc 2 Error [Call of Duty]

Natural Selection 2 is the first ever game I've enjoyed watching more than I've enjoyed playing.

If that sounds like an insult, it's certainly not intended as one. Rather, read it as perhaps one of the highest compliments I could give. Natural Selection 2 is good stuff—but playing it is only half its purpose.

First, some background: Natural Selection 2 was and is the little big game that should have been impossible. The game is from Unknown Worlds, a tiny studio of just seven people who took on the task of creating a massive, fully functional, online multiplayer shooter and strategy game.

The gambit worked, and over 144,000 people picked up the game in its first week of being live. Though in this instance, "live" is a bit of a misnomer. The game came to life through extensive collaboration between the dev team and fans, many of whom paid for pre-order and beta access, then helped bring the game to life. It well and truly launched on Halloween, ten years to the day from the moment the original Natural Selection, a Half-Life mod, was published.

So, yes, the saga behind Natural Selection 2 is a good story—and yet as we've seen over and over, it takes more than just a fairy-tale narrative to make a good game. Happily, NS2 is more than just a story about a scrappy studio. It's a genuinely well-made, top-notch game. One that I am manifestly terrible at playing. But more about that in a moment.

NS2 is a multiplayer, online, competitive, team-based shooter, but with a couple of twists. Only one set of players in any given match is taking on the role of the ever-popular gun-toting space marine. The other team takes on the role of the aliens, trying to conquer the station by taking to its walls, ceilings, and access tunnels. Marines take their first-person view down the barrel of a rifle (or, in moments of desperation, behind an axe); aliens take theirs from inside a mouth. A big mouth. Full of sharp, pointy, nasty teeth.

What I am saying here is: the aliens are serious bastards. Play as them.

Despite the many differences between sharp teeth and rifles, both sides are in fact exceptionally well-balanced. Or at least, they can be. Team performance, as in any multiplayer game, depends entirely on the players taking part. NS2, though, doesn't just demand cooperation of its cannon fodder. Instead, it requires true leadership.

Each team has a commander. The role isn't pre-assigned; both the aliens and the marines have particular stations that a player can stand in. The player in control of the command station is the commander, and while everyone else in the game is playing a first-person shooter, the commander is playing a real-time strategy base-building game. The commander chooses which upgrades to research and which structures to build. Structures get built when marines or aliens go and construct them, and so the commander issues orders and delivers tactics that the team, ideally, then follows.

The commander, like any great general, really is the linchpin of the team. If he (and in every match I played, on either side, it was a he) knows what he's doing and can issue clear, direct, intelligent orders, then the team has a good chance at survival. If he doesn't know what he's doing, and dithers too long over constructing resource extractors or gives contradictory orders to his side, then the team is going to be a mess.

I had expected to run into some ego-driven tantrums over the role of commander, as I wove through servers and parties, but I never actually did. I am sure there must be some pissing matches going on, but it seems that players are keenly aware of the responsibilities of command (and the potential blame), and take the duties to heart. I did, however, encounter one match where command was bugged. The command center kept ejecting players serially—sometimes, in as little as 30 or 45 seconds. Unable to keep anyone issuing orders for more than a minute or two, the marines eventually ground to a halt and, despite having superior numbers and having made significant progress in the match so far, crumbled.

Between good shooting and smart, quick RTS elements, Natural Selection 2 is a genuinely good multiplayer experience. It's also, in all honesty, a game that I should probably not be playing. To all the strangers on the rookie-friendly servers who put up with my fumbling, thank you. I promise not to do it again.

Learning to play NS2 can be a challenge. I, personally, found it quite intimidating. I watched the beginning tutorial videos, as the game itself prompted me to do, but I simply don't learn very well from YouTube. Part of why I play games is because I tend to learn best by doing—all the informational videos in the world fly out of my head when confronted with an actual experience later down the line.

After the videos, I wandered a map in Explore Mode. This, too, was beneficial: I managed to gain familiarity with some of the landscape, and to learn what certain machines and nodes are, how things are built, how things are killed, and overall to make sure my grasp of the basic mechanics was sound. And yet even memorizing an empty map only does one so much good as compared to a full map full of skittering creatures swarming at you in three dimensions to eat your face.

All of which, then, brings me back to the joy of watching.

After one loss (which admittedly, I had only joined the server six minutes prior to), when thrown back into the lobby, I more or less hurled myself through the door marked "spectate" in despair. I needed a break, and neither the tutorials nor the hands-on experience had yet taught me what Natural Selection 2 was all about.

Some major gaming phenomena are just not on my natural list of likes. The rise of eSports, streaming gaming, and player-vs-player competition are all on that list. I've never understood why so many people might prefer to watch a livestream of some strangers play a game when they themselves could be playing instead.

Now, I understand. I had hoped that viewing a match as a spectator would give me a better grasp of how the game should ebb and flow—and it did. More than that, though, I began truly to enjoy watching games for their own sake.

Watching both sides duke it out, with access to the full game map, has the same sort of strange tenterhooks satisfaction as watching a horror film. I'd find myself thinking, "Aaaah! No! Don't go in there! Go the other way! THE OTHER WAY!" And when I watched one very, very good space marine dodge, weave, and survive his way through most of the base, only to walk face-first into a nest of aliens that had been left in waiting for him, I admit to shouting, "IT'S A TRAP!" aloud, to the confusion of all.

In the end, Natural Selection 2 is perhaps best described as a skeleton, or a scaffold. It's an excellent, stable frame on which to hang cooperation, teamwork, and competition. As a multiplayer game, the experience is exactly as good as a player's allies and enemies are. Strong teams, that join the game and work together to perfect and enhance their skills, could truly be a thing of beauty.

I know my limitations; as far as NS2 is concerned, I am not born to be a leader. It's a grunt's life for me, as I try my best to do what I'm told and find the correct room I've been ordered to go to without getting killed twice along the way. Lacking a team to play with as a unit, I'm probably best left on the sidelines... but I think I'll still be watching.

And so the inevitable march of Windows moves onward: DirectX, the software that Windows computers rely on to make games run, is getting an upgrade—but only for Windows 8.

A Microsoft employee confirmed in a (tech-heavy) post to developers that "there is no plan for DirectX 11.1 to be made available on Windows 7." Windows 8 systems, meanwhile, are getting the 11.1 version of DirectX. The only significant difference to end-users between version 11.0 and 11.1 at this time is that the newer version includes native stereoscopic 3D support. Very few users of Windows 7 gaming PCs and DirectX 11 will miss the addition.

However, the fact that Windows 7 will not be receiving the 11.1 update signals a push from Microsoft to get more users upgrading. When DirectX 11 came into being for Windows 7, it was also reworked to run on PCs running Windows Vista, which had originally included DirectX version 10.

Developers of big-budget, high-profile games generally work with the newest, latest version of DirectX available. While Windows XP remained a reliable and accessible OS well into the Windows Vista and Windows 7 era, if Windows 8 continues to receive DirectX upgrades that Windows 7 does not, the resulting fragmentation could force both developers and players to upgrade before they otherwise might.

C++ AMP: CPU fallback, WARP, Windows7, DirectX 11.1 [Microsoft developer forum, via The Verge]

Lion's Arch is under attack!

Or, well, make that, Lion's Arch is under attack—again. The poor city just can't seem to catch a break. Just as the Mad King himself burst into Lion's Arch rather destructively on October 28, so too is something coming to the coastal city next weekend. And it's not a nice something.

The "Shadow of the Mad King" October event that marked Halloween in Tyria was the beginning, not the end, of Guild Wars 2's slate of large-scale live events. The next, "The Lost Shores," is coming on November 16.

The event, which takes place over three days next weekend, promises to leave a permanent mark on Tyria. Players will have to work together in the large scale not only to fight the invading karka, but to research means to damage them at all.

In addition to a major three-day live event taking place in the game's regular zones, ArenaNet is adding a major new dungeon structure and a new PvP zone to Guild Wars 2 with their November update. The PvP area, Temple of the Silent Storm, promises to be more vertically oriented than existing PvP maps, challenging players to move through the giant iceberg dojo of the kodan, a race of heavily armored polar bears.

The dungeon addition, meanwhile, adds a whole level of progression in and of itself. Fractals of the Mists is a set of level 80 mini-dungeons that get more challenging for players the farther they progress. On entering the dungeon, a group must complete a set of three separate small dungeons, each taking about 15-45 minutes and culminating with a major boss fight. When that set is complete and players return to the hub, each successive return gets harder. There are 9 total "fractal" maps that players can be randomly sent into. As players progress through the fractals, and the challenge continues to increase, they can earn "ascended" item rewards. These, a level higher than existing exotic items, are the gear level that players will need as they keep getting further in and the challenge keeps rising.

Guild Wars 2 is also getting its first free trial weekend to coincide with the launch of "The Lost Shores." Starting later today, current players will be able to invite up to three friends into the free trial event, which begins on Thursday, November 15 and runs through the full weekend.

"The Lost Shores" is a level 80 event, but participating players will be bumped up via GW2's "sidekicking" for the duration, so pretty much anyone can dive in.

The next installment in the Call of Duty juggernaut, Black Ops II, launches tomorrow. In preparation for the legions of players who will no doubt soon be shooting each other, exploiting every glitch, and saying very rude things on voice chat—as well as the millions of folks who just want to play, and have to deal with the jerks—Treyarch has posted their official Security and Enforcement Policy on their forums.

The policy is a laundry list of bannable offenses, with penalties, ranging from 48-hour suspensions to loss of certain privileges and stats to permanent removal from online play, clearly outlined.

Piracy, modding, and hacking, when discovered by Treyarch, will be rewarded by permanent bans. The use of "unsupported devices and applications," which include but are not limited to, "modded controllers, IP flooders and lag switches," will trigger a temporary ban and stat reset for the first offense, with potential permanent bans for repeated use. Exploiting glitches in any way is also, naturally, a big no-no.

As for lewd and offensive but not cheating-related behavior, first offenses result in temporary bans, second offenses in temporary bans and the revocation of voice chat, and theoretically "extreme or repeat offenses" can get a player permanently banned from online play.

The same applies to problematic behavior while live-streaming play, so streaming players, be sure to remember when to log off and walk away first.

Call of Duty: Black Ops II - Security & Enforcement Policy [Call of Duty official forums]

There's this small problem I'm having with Assassin's Creed III. It's nothing to do with the game itself, actually, and everything to do with me. The problem is this:

Assassin's Creed III is turning me into a kind of obnoxious person.

I've developed this running commentary while the game goes on. It has nothing to do with the game's themes, or characters. It's unrelated to the gameplay and more or less completely unconnected to anything meaningful inside the game. It sounds like this:

"I used to work about a block away from there."
"They haven't changed out those cobblestones since 1773 and they're murder on nice shoes."
"That hill is the Back Bay now."
"That river is the Back Bay now. They put the hill in it."
"Lexington Common looks different when it's full of cows."
"A beacon? On Beacon Hill? I didn't see that one coming."

I grew up in and around Boston, making my home well inside of Route 128 from birth until striking out down the coast for New York City shortly before turning 25. While previous Assassin's Creed games have claimed high fidelity in recreating Damascus, Rome, and Istanbul, the basic fact of the matter is that those cities aren't my home. Boston is.

AC3 certainly doesn't represent the Boston or New England of the 21st century, of course. But the late 18th century setting of the game, a scant 230-odd years in the past, retains much more immediacy than the Italian Renaissance or the Crusades. The creatively imagined Boston-that-was is close enough to my Boston-that-is to give me a sense of familiarity both comprehensible and misplaced.

Games occupy this strange place in memory, where we so clearly go places and explore worlds that never actually existed. Experiences like To the Moon explicitly address this dissonance, but it's true of every game. I can remember how to get around a space station as well as I can remember how to get around my local mall, but my body's only been to one of the two. The mall is real; the Citadel is not.

When game spaces represent real-world spaces, the strange sense of memory gets ever-stranger. I moved to Washington, DC the year that Fallout 3 came out. Controversial advertising sprang up through the city's Metro system depicting a post-apocalyptic Capital, but it wasn't until after the game came out that I felt the full weight of investigating my own ruined city.

The general size and scale of the virtual DC is of course a mismatch to the real one—spaces in games were ever thus—but the details are devilishly familiar. In particular, the ruined Metro that provides the Lone Wanderer a route for getting around a city full of toppled buildings, nuclear waste, and super mutants is uncannily, frighteningly similar to the Metro that federal commuters use every day.

At first, while playing Fallout 3, I'd wander through the game comparing its locations to ones I knew from daily life. But after fifty or so hours of Fallout, a funny thing happened. Instead of comparing game-play time to real-world experience, I began to relate the other way around. While waiting to change trains at Metro Center in the mornings, I'd see a bench in the shadows and think, "That's good cover for avoiding the super mutants," or I'd see a door and think, "Didn't I pick that lock yesterday?"

Two Kotaku colleagues not based in New York reflected that the Grand Theft Auto games had inspired similar deja vu in them. They had played the games first, and then visited the city. On visiting, they handily identified and remembered places they hadn't actually been. As someone who lived a block away from Brooklyn's Grand Army Plaza the first time she came to the neighborhood around Outlook Park in-game, I could sympathize. On that memorable occasion, I'd blurted aloud, "I can see my house from here!"

I can, of course, visit the real Boston—or New York, or Washington DC—at more or less any time, weather and cost permitting. I don't need to see them in a game in order to explore them to their fullest—and even when I do use a game, it's not the kind I can put in the PS3. Exploring a real space, and digitally navigating an imagined space, are never the same thing.

Sometimes, though... sometimes, when game spaces represent real spaces, the uncanny and the real cross over in a very strange way. Through the games I've played, I remember the cities of my heart as places I've never actually known them to be. The tall ships of Connor's era are long since replaced with ugly motorboats, but the next time I stand on Long Wharf, part of me will remember seeing Haytham sail in on the Providence even so.

The studio behind Bad Hotel is back. They've just released the teaser above for their next title, Wave Trip.

Like Bad Hotel, Wave Trip is as much about sound as about graphics. Unlike its predecessor, however, Wave Trip looks to be more about side-scrolling motion than about defense. Additionally, it promises the ability for users to create and share their own levels.

Even now, audio is still an under-appreciated aspect of game design. The more games that are about making cool sounds, the happier I am.

The same security company that found a security flaw in Steam earlier this year has found security holes in Modern Warfare 3 and CryEngine 3.

As ComputerWorld reports, researchers from security company ReVuln announced their findings at a security conference in Seoul today. They demonstrated two major issues. The first was with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 which, according to the presentation, is open to malicious denial of service (DDoS) attacks that can crash the game servers.

The other major issue was found in Crytek's CryEngine 3, and demonstrated on the game Nexuiz. The research team was able to access a remote player's computer via the game servers and "caused a graphic of cat riding a rocket to be displayed on the victim's computer."

If only all hackers sent cat pictures.

Of course, as a security company, it's in ReVuln's interest to point out security flaws, even minute ones, in any software they can. The company is planning to release full advisories about their findings next Tuesday, to coincide with the launch of the next Call of Duty game, Black Ops II.

Researchers find vulnerability in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 [Computer World via Polygon]

It's starting to seem like fall, 2012 might just be best thought of as bug season.

Assassin's Creed III: Liberation, the PS Vita handheld companion to Assassin's Creed III, has a nasty save-corrupting bug hitting some players. The issue, as reported by players on Ubisoft's forums, is corrupting save games and causing players to lose their progress. As shown in the video above, players affected by the bug essentially get stuck in an endless loading screen, forever trapped in the Animus.

An anti-gravity alligator is one thing. Losing the entirety of one's play progress, though, is another.

Both Assassin's Creed games released this fall have had a number of bugs surface, but one that kills an entire save file is probably the worst.

Assassins Creed Liberation save corruption bug [Ubisoft forums]

Throughout the lead-up to its launch, Medal of Honor: Warfighter touted its authenticity as a modern-day military shooter. Over the course of its production, it consulted heavily with real-life Navy SEALs, in order to make missions more realistic. The authenticity, unfortunately, didn't help the game, and now it turns out its hurting the SEALs too.

CBS reports that seven members of SEAL team six have been disciplined for revealing secrets while consulting on the game. According to CBS, "while serving as consultants for the game, they used classified material which had been given to them by the Navy."

SEAL team six became famous for successfully executing the raid in which Osama bin Laden was killed at his Pakistan compound in May, 2011. The seven, who are still on active duty, have all received letters of reprimand and are on half pay for two months. Four other members of the team, who have since transferred out of the unit but remain on active duty elsewhere, are also under investigation.

The SEAL team is also featured in the upcoming film—and Warfighter DLC—Zero Dark Thirty.

7 Navy SEALs disciplined for role with video game [CBS News]