Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 – Multiplayer for Everyone

Millions of people play Call of Duty every year, but many of them don’t experience everything the games have to offer. For some, Call of Duty games have become campaign-only experiences with multiplayer being looked at as “too unapproachable” or “intimidating.” Even some of the players killing one another online every day never do things like Prestige or use the film systems, often because they don’t want to lose their progress or it’s too overwhelming, respectively.

Rather than just rehashing the same multiplayer modes and other tools, developer Treyarch is attempting to employ a number of smart tweaks to known systems in an effort to make Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 the most approachable Call of Duty to date. They want you, person-who-only-plays campaign, to jump into multiplayer and learn the ropes with people who make you feel competitive. They want everyone to create films with as little or as much effort as they want. They just want you to feel like Black Ops 2 was made for you, whether you’re a headshot master or the type of person who can’t seem to keep your gun straight.

Any of the millions of people who have gotten into Call of Duty over the years have probably experienced the hardships of starting out. You come into the game after the franchise has been out for years, or maybe even jump back in to the new game after it’s been out for a few months, and you get your ass handed to you. You just can’t compete with a legion of hardcore fans that have way more hours than you to hone their skills, and thus some of you put down the controller in frustration, never to return.

To combat this, Treyarch is first and foremost introducing Combat Training, a series of special takes on team deathmatch and Black Ops 2’s objective-based modes. Here players can level from 1-10, facing off against teams that have a mix of human and AI opponents. When they hit level 10 they’re no longer allowed to participate, though anyone can still do “Bot Stomps,” teaming up with five of their friends and just murdering AI opponents for no experience. The hope is that the Combat Training modes will ease new players into the game’s multiplayer in a less-harsh environment, and that things like Bot Stomps will allow them to fight easier enemies and experience some of the game’s cooler things, like the Kill Streak-replacing Score Streaks. Even skilled players could find something to enjoy in Bot Stomps, as Treyarch views this as an excellent way for clans to plan out tactics and practice them in private before taking them out in real matches.

Of course once you get a bit of multiplayer experience under your belt you get to build a class, and Treyarch is completely redoing Black Ops 2’s loadout system to make it intuitive for all users and still feel like something new for longtime fans. Referred to as the “Pick 10 system” (which you can read about more in our previous coverage), this is where you get the most flexible loadout system ever implemented in a CoD title. Every gun, attachment and perk has a value of one, and in the Pick 10 system you get to choose a loadout of your own devising that combines most any combination of them. For instance you could take a primary weapon with two attachments, a secondary weapon with the same, then two perks and two grenades. Or you could use Wild Cards, which take up a precious slot but in turn allow you to break a game rule, to go all out on a primary weapon and give it three attachments and then use another Wildcard to take four perks instead of three. The sheer number of combinations you can do is pretty incredible, and should give even seasoned fans a lot to think about and fun ways to experiment with their loadouts.

If the Pick 10 system sounds too overwhelming for new players they can also use pre-made loadouts or tweak these to suit your personal playstyle. Additionally, you won’t have everything unlocked at once, but instead will have to hit the right level to unlock the option to use tokens (earned through leveling) to permanently unlock the gear.

Maybe you don’t think the Pick 10 system lets you take enough gear, or maybe you wish that you could play multiplayer with just your friends. Well, for you Treyarch’s including a robust Custom Games mode in Black Ops 2. You can choose between any of the modes, add bots, restrict content, modify the Pick 10 system so you can choose as few as three or as many as 17 items, and more. If you want to create your own take on Capture the Flag or Kill Confirmed and then play with your buddies then Treyarch wants you to do so. With Custom Games it’s like Treyarch is trying to tell you that they don’t care how you play, just that you’re playing.

If all you want to do is play team deathmatch you can do that, but for people looking for something new you can check out the new Hardpoint mode, as well as multi-team battles. Hardpoint is essentially Halo’s Crazy King, with capture points that bounce around the level, forcing each team to see who can hold it the longest before it up and moves again. It’s nothing revolutionary, but it’s a great addition to Black Ops 2’s multiplayer suite.

The multi-team battles, though, they really change up the dynamic of a multiplayer match. You can play three teams of four or four teams of three, with up to 18 players in a Custom Game match. The only modes currently available in multi-team battles are team deathmatch, Hardpoint and the returning Kill Confirmed, but even with the limited list this mode makes for a great alternative to standard matches. Each team essentially turns into a roving pack, with teamplay and communication becoming crucial. Multi-team battles end up having the frantic pacing of a free-for-all match with the teamplay of TDM. It’s a weird mix that just works, and is a hell of a lot of fun.

If you decide to spend the time to level up you’ll have the option to Prestige in Black Ops 2, only now you don’t lose your Challenge and weapon progress. Let me restate that, because it’s a big deal: You don’t lose your progress when you Prestige in Black Ops 2. Instead, Prestiging earns you a token you can use to ignore level requirements and unlock an item permanently, as well as one of three additional options: an extra slot for Custom Class slot; reset your stats just like you would in previous versions of Prestige; a refund that you can use at any point during your Prestige level allowing you to get all your unlock tokens back and spend them how you see fit. The reset option is there for the hardcore players who liked the challenge of starting over, but the other choices exist because they want more people to participate in Prestiging, which previously the studio found people avoided. With 10 levels of Prestige available, and emblems available for each that showcase just how much of a badass you are, the hope is that Black Ops 2 Prestige system will draw people in like never before.

Once Treyarch has all of us playing hours and hours of Black Ops 2 multiplayer, they want us to get involved with the community. One part of this strategy is the built-in shout cast capabilities, which Treyarch hopes will build up a whole new wave of Call of Duty personalities. The other part of this is improved Theater. Just like before you can cut together your games, editing short films that showcase your skills or maybe show a hilarious failure. For some people, though, the system was too complicated and time consuming, thus they avoided it altogether. To better serve these parts of the audience, Treyarch has created a one-button system where you can take any match you’ve played and have the editor pick out the highlights and cut it together in seconds. After that it’s easy to upload it to the internet and spread it around, or go in with the editing tools and tweak it to your liking. On the flipside the Theater mode also has even more tools to let ambitious film makers create elaborate scenes, such as the “attach to object” tool that lets you stick the camera to parts of the world, including things like rockets as they fly out of an RPG. The goal is to cater to both extremes: the lazy or less-interested players who don’t want to take the time to create a film, as well as the future Martin Scorceses of the world.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2’s multiplayer probably won’t change your mind if you dislike the franchise already, but with so many smart changes to previously established systems it just might manage to win over a few new fans, as well as surprise the hardcore with it's twists on the formula. The tagline for Black Ops 2 is “The future is black,” but with what I’ve seen so far I’d say it’s better written as “The future is bright.”

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Florida officials find 198 non-citizens on voter rolls after extensive search

Florida officially renewed its hunt for ineligible voters on Wednesday, sending a new list of 198 people suspected of being non-U.S. citizens to county election officials and asking them to start the process to remove them from the rolls. 

This new list is a far cry from the more than 2,600 registered voters that state election officials once targeted -- but Republican Gov. Rick Scott and others have defended the continued effort. 

"I have not talked to one Floridian who says I want my vote diluted by somebody who has never had a right to vote in my state," Scott said last week. "We are doing absolutely the right thing. We believe in honest and fair elections." 

It's not clear, however, if the latest effort by the state will result in voters being removed from the rolls prior to this year's presidential election. Florida is a key swing state, and voting rights groups have criticized the purge as a way of discouraging legal immigrants and minorities from casting ballots. 

Under the process that election supervisors will use, they will send out letters to those suspected of being non-citizens. In some cases it could take up to 60 days before the voters are eventually removed from the rolls. 

"It's going to take a while," said Susan Bucher, the Palm Beach County elections supervisor, who was sent the names of 14 voters suspected of being ineligible. "It lands us after Election Day." 

It was Scott who last year first pushed to have the state look for non-U.S. citizens on the rolls. The state initially compared a list of driver's licenses with voter registration data and came up with a potential list of 180,000 voters suspected of not being citizens. 

That list was pared back to much smaller one of more than 2,600 registered voters that was sent out to county election officials this past spring. Many election supervisors, however, did not wind up removing anyone after questions about the law and the accuracy of the list arose. There are still outstanding lawsuits that contend that the state lacks the authority to remove voters within 90 days of Election Day -- although one federal judge this summer sided with the state. 

The most recent list came about after the state reached an agreement with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to screen names on a federal immigration database. That yielded a list of 207 names -- which has gotten smaller as state officials have continued to verify information. 

Some of those on the most recent list include voters who have already admitted that they are not citizens. 

Most of the voters on the latest list are from Miami-Dade County, although there are suspected ineligible voters from the Panhandle to Southwest Florida. 

While Florida moves ahead with its most recent purge, the state has agreed to ask counties to reach out to the voters targeted earlier this year and inform them they are still registered. 

The state also agreed to place back on the rolls any voter whose non-citizenship status has not been confirmed by the database Florida is now using. At least two counties -- Collier and Lee -- had removed voters from the rolls because they did not respond to certified letters and newspaper ads.

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Libyan President el-Megarif reportedly eyes Al Qaeda in 'preplanned' attack on US consulate

Libyan President Mohammed el-Megarif said he believes Al Qaeda is responsible for the deadly attack at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi that killed four Americans and said roughly 50 people have arrested in connection with the violence, according to two broadcast interviews Sunday.

Megarif, president of the Libyan National Congress, also reportedly differed with the Obama administration’s position that the attacks Tuesday were sparked by an anti-Islamic video on the Internet.

In an interview with NPR, Megarif said foreigners have been infiltrating his country over the past few months, which has been undergoing major changes since the uprising against the late dictator Muammar al-Qaddafi. 

Megarif says the attackers, who he believes are connected to Al Qaeda, used the protests at the consulate as a cover to attack the U.S. Consulate on the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

"We firmly believe that this was a precalculated, preplanned attack that was carried out specifically to attack the U.S. Consulate," Megarif told NPR.

U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other U.S. staffers were killed in the attacks.

"Our friend and friend of all Libyans and all residents of Benghazi and we feel very, very, very," deep sadness, Megarif told NPR.

Megarif said in a separate interview with CBS News that Libyan authorities have arrested about 50 people in connection with the attack.

The Americans were killed when attackers fired on the U.S. consulate with rocket-propelled grenades and set it on fire.

Megarif said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that "a few" of those who joined in the attack were foreigners, who had entered Libya "from different directions, some of them definitely from Mali and Algeria."

"The others are affiliates and maybe sympathizers," he added in the CBS interview.

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The Iceman Review

Richard Kuklinski worked as a contract killer for the mob for four decades. He claimed to have murdered at least 100 people and possibly more. He died in 2006 while serving out five consecutive life sentences in prison. He was characterized as brutal and unflinching and an outwardly emotionless man. He had a grisly penchant for chopping up his victims and freezing them before disposal hence the underworld moniker “The Iceman.”

Michael Shannon plays the terrifying title character with amazing control. His performance is an exercise in precision, showing us a coldly exacting killer boiling just under the surface. His tightly-controlled performance works so well because we see the character under incredible stress. Kuklinski may have been a hardened killer, but he was also a family man. He had a wife and children who knew absolutely nothing about his mob work. To them he was a devoted husband and father, perhaps a bit distant at times, but unequivocally a good man. Balancing this double life proves ample fodder for a fascinating film.

The Iceman himself is a truly captivating character, but, unfortunately, as memorable as Shannon’s performance is the same can’t be said about the other actors. It’s definitely an interesting cast, and they all seem to be trying, but no one here is acting on the same level as Shannon. Kuklinski’s wife Deborah is played amiably by Winona Ryder. It’s nice to see her in a substantial role again, but this is not her best performance. When she gets mad and starts yelling at her husband, you’ll totally believe his reaction but her end of the argument just isn’t quite there.

Similarly, the rest of the supporting cast gives passable performances that might work in a different film, but when put up directly against Shannon’s Iceman pale in comparison. Ray Liotta shows up and doesn’t stretch very much to play mob boss Roy DeMeo. Small scenes with James Franco and Stephen Dorff are both overly emotional and end up coming off as artificial. The only actor who really comes close to standing toe to toe with Shannon, surprisingly, is Chris Evans. He plays another contract killer, Robert Pronge, nicknamed “Mr. Softee” after the ice cream truck he drives around town. Since his character is written more as a peer to The Iceman perhaps that gives him an edge on relating to him more believably. Pronge and Kuklinski develop a respect for each other’s work and eventually start taking jobs together.

The kills here are suitably gruesome, but they’re all designed to serve the story. There’s nothing gratuitous here. Kuklinski is cold-blooded, never betraying emotion outwardly, but we can see there’s more going on. It’s the contrast between the public Kuklinski and the inner one that makes this film such a fascinating character study. You keep watching because you want to see how he holds it all together under such enormous pressure, what might break him, and where those boundaries lie.

The Iceman is a good film despite the secondary characters falling flat. The central story is excellent, and Michael Shannon gives a praise-worthy performance. This is the kind of character study that makes you question how some people can be the way they are … or realize that people are definitely not all they seem to be.

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Lawmakers push for Obama administration to get tough over embassy attacks

Lawmakers and other officials stepped up calls Thursday for the United States to put heavy pressure on the governments whose people are storming U.S. diplomatic posts across the Middle East and North Africa -- even if it means freezing aid and expelling diplomats from Washington. 

The calls increased as anti-American demonstrations and attacks spread to Yemen, and as protests entered their third day near the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, Egypt. The clashes continued, after four Americans including the U.S. ambassador were killed Tuesday night during attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. The attack came roughly a year after the U.S. and its allies helped Libyans overthrow dictator Muammar Qaddafi.

Rep. Peter King, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, told Fox News that President Obama should be putting particular pressure on Egypt and its president, Mohammed Morsi, over the sustained demonstrations there. King said the U.S. should suspend aid to Egypt until Morsi makes "absolutely clear" he is condemning the demonstrations and taking "forceful action" to protect the U.S. Embassy. 

Obama, in an interview with Spanish-language network Telemundo, pushed back on the idea of suspending aid, saying the U.S. "doesn't have an option of withdrawing from the world." 

On Egypt, he said pointedly: "I don't think that we would consider them an ally, but we do not consider them an enemy." 

King countered: "If he's not an ally, why do we continue to give him billions of dollars in aid?" 

Egypt was slated to receive $1.6 billion this year in U.S. aid. Protesters earlier in the week stormed the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and tore down the U.S. flag. 

Other officials said the U.S. needs to make clear to these countries that they are accountable for what happens at the U.S. embassies. 

"When you attack an embassy, you're attacking America," Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., told Fox News. 

John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under the George W. Bush administration, said Obama should communicate privately to Egypt and Libya that if this happens again, "we're cutting off all assistance." 

"That message has to go all across the Middle East," he said. 

Some lawmakers are trying to carve out U.S. aid to Libya in the stopgap funding bill hitting Capitol Hill this week. 

Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, went further, saying Wednesday that the U.S. should send a signal that "this barbaric behavior will not be tolerated" by suspending aid, closing U.S. embassies in Egypt and Libya and expelling their diplomats from the U.S. 

King, though, said the fledgling government in Libya should be treated a little differently. 

He said the U.S. might "reconsider" aid, but stressed that the government is fragile there -- and still forming after the downfall of Qaddafi -- and that Libyan security personnel did try to protect Americans during the Benghazi attack Tuesday night. 

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Wednesday that the U.S. should distinguish the government and people of Libya from the "small and savage" group that launched the attack on the consulate. A number of officials stressed that the relationship with a new Libya must endure despite the attack. 

Obama called the presidents of both Libya and Egypt on Wednesday about the demonstrations and attacks. 

According to the White House, Morsi "expressed his condolences for the tragic loss of American life in Libya and emphasized that Egypt would honor its obligation to ensure the safety of American personnel."

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Exclusive: UN Still Has Ties That Bind With Bloody Assad Regime

As the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad accelerates its ferocious military campaign against its own people, the United Nations Development Program, the U.N.'s flagship anti-poverty agency, is still intimately linked to institutions that keep the Assad family’s grip on power -- and that conduct surveillance and may be conducting cyber-warfare against those protesting the brutal regime.

One of the UNDP's partners in its elaborate development schemes for the battered nation -- now suspended due to Assad’s onslaught -- is the Syrian Computer Society (SCS), an organization created by Assad’s older brother and run by Assad himself until he assumed the presidency in 2000. In a 2007 U.N. report, the society was hailed as “the main and most widely used private provider of Internet services” in the country -- and a participant in major collaborations involving information and communications technology (ICT) with the Assad government dating back for years.   

The computer servers and other (ICT) installed in U.N. offices in Syria, which operate at www.un.org under the auspices of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP),  are hosted at an Internet address owned by SCS. 

Sharing the same Society-owned  IP address as  www.un.org  are a flock of Syrian government departments, clearly identified by their “.gov.sy” listings, many of which have also worked in close partnership with UNDP for years.

CLICK HERE FOR THE IP ADDRESS INFORMATION

Other U.N. organizations, including the U.N. relief agency known as UNHCR -- which is deeply involved in aiding refugees from the Assad reign of terror -- are hosted at another website address also owned by the Society.

According to a UNDP press spokesman, the agency’s relationship to the Syrian Internet provider is purely routine: “We contracted SCS services because it was the only organization with the required infrastructure and technical support able to provide Internet services.” He added that “servers hosted at UNDP’s Country Office in Syria are protected by a firewall system.”

Similar points were made by a spokesman for UNHCR.

In fact, in at least 79 of 166 UNDP country offices around the world, the organization bypasses local Internet services by using private -- and more secure --VSAT satellite transmissions for its Internet communications . The Syria office is not among the 79, though such services are readily available in the Middle East.

According to the UNDP spokesman, UNDP “has moved” to a VSAT system, but according to information on UNDP’s procurement website, the bidding for such a global system for UNDP seems to be ongoing.

CLICK HERE FOR UNDP’S VSAT BIDDING NOTICE

Despite the claims that the relationship with SCS is nothing out of the ordinary, a cloud of puzzles still surround it, starting with the different and directly contradictory answers provided by the same UNHCR spokesman on two consecutive days when asked to explain a financial riddle. 

Why, according to U.N. procurement records for 2010 and 2011, did the relief agency uniquely show the “location of the supplier” -- meaning the location of the payment – for “computer services” from  SCS  not, as other U.N. agencies did, in Syria but in Switzerland?

According to the first answer, the payments were merely made through UNHCR’s Swiss headquarters bank to “save costs and improve efficiencies.”  The next day the spokesman added an update: forget that.

“UNHCR pays SCS locally in Syria and not through HQ Bank accounts in Switzerland as UNHCR complies with the necessary restrictions on international banking transactions,” the spokesman said.  “There were no payments via Switzerland.”

The fact that two separate annual compilations of U.N. spending for two separate years showed the SCS supplier payments going to Switzerland, in computer-assembled statistical reports that also record numerous UNHCR payments -- in Syria -- for other goods and services used in Syria, is apparently “an error.”

CLICK HERE FOR THE PROCUREMENT RECORDS

Similar mind-bending might be required to consider SCS as no more than an ordinary Internet services provider.

As far back as 2009, the Paris-based organization Reporters Without Borders,  which has called Syria “one of the world’s most repressive countries toward Internet users,” put SCS on a list of “Internet enemies,” and charged that SCS  “can intercept emails and therefore monitor dissidents,” something that the regime had been doing for at least two previous years, tracking cyber-protesters  through their IP addresses.

Also in 2009, in confidential State Department cables later published by the rogue website Wikileaks, U.S. diplomats relayed concerns from American relief organizations that unauthorized SCS employees were being placed in their offices without permission, in order, the diplomats said, to “keep tabs” on the grassroots aid groups as popular hostility to the Assad regime deepened.

More recently, allegations have surfaced in the human rights blogosphere that members of the so-called Syrian Electronic Army -- pro-regime hackers who have taken down or defaced news websites with cyber-attacks, or used them to spread disinformation about Assad’s opposition -- might have ties to SCS. These ties have never been fully demonstrated, says Paul Rosenzweig, a visiting senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a former deputy assistant secretary for policy in the Department of Homeland Security.

“Plausible. Likely,” he told Fox News. “Can you call it proven? No.”

The main point, though, he notes, is that “everything in Syria is under the government’s thumb.”

For his part, a UNDP spokesman said, in reply to questions from Fox News, that “UNDP has not been officially informed of any complaints by NGOs regarding surveillance activities by SCS.  SCS does not have free access to UNDP premises.”

But there are connections between the Syria Computer Society and other Syrian institutions that are accused of more sinister intentions than spying and prying.

Also hosted at the IP address shared with UNDP is the Commercial Bank of Syria (CBS), a state-owned financial institution that has been under U.S. Treasury sanctions since 2006 for terrorist-related money laundering. On its website, www.cbs-bank.sy, CBS denies the money-laundering charges.

For the past year, however, the bank  has also been under U.S. Treasury sanctions for something even more alarming: alleged financial ties to Syrian and North Korean  organizations involved in ballistic missile production and creation of  “unconventional” weapons of mass destruction, as well as ties to Iranian banks linked to that country’s own nuclear proliferation program.

 CLICK HERE FOR THE 2011 U.S. TREASURY ANNOUNCEMENT 

Additional sanctions against the bank were levied by the European Union in October 2011,  in a bid -- so far unsuccessful -- to stem the “appalling and brutal campaign the Syrian regime is waging against its own people,” according to the European Union’s top foreign affairs official, Catherine Ashton.

Along with electronic ties, there is a human link between the sanctioned bank and the Syrian Computer Society.

According to website information obtained by Fox News, a  computer expert named Ghassan Fallouh, who is also a prominent academic at Syria’s International University for Science and Technology, has served on the boards of both institutions since 2010, and on the board of the Syrian Computer Society since 2006.

Fallouh’s university resume says that he also served from 1999 to 2004 as a “consultant to the UNDP for the [Syrian] Central Bank.”

CLICK HERE FOR FALLOUH’S RESUME

Questions to Fallouh about the Syrian Computer Society, sent by Fox News on August 16, had not been answered by the time this article was published.

According to UNDP’s spokesman, “UNDP has no commercial relationship with CBS.”

Whatever the connections between SCS and other organs of the regime, experts argue, the Syrian Computer Society is much more than an Internet host for the U.N., the Assad government and alleged financiers of weapons of mass destruction.

It is an important “tool of the regime,” according to David Schenker, head of the program on Arab Politics at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a prominent bipartisan think tank, and a former adviser on Syrian affairs to then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

“When Assad came to power, he was the Internet president,” Schenker says.  “He was setting the stage for how enlightened he would be. He made an effort to burnish the modern nature of the new regime,” with SCS as part of the effort.

Now, Schenker says, “we know he had no intention whatsoever of doing this.”

In the now-savage environment of Syria’s expanding  civil war, the relationship between the U.N. and its cyber-host raises additional questions about UNDP’s long relationship with Assad, and the organization’s strategy of “national execution” of its programs in dangerous corners of the developing world.

That strategy makes the government itself the chief implementer of social programs created with UNDP technical assistance and supervision, and builds intertwining financial and work relationships between the world body’s representatives on the ground and key ministries and institutions that ultimately help to ensure the regime’s control.

It also apparently made UNDP consider the Syrian Computer Society  as a “partner” of UNDP and a formal member of Syrian “civil society” in a planned six-year program  to help transform Syria under Assad, from a Soviet-style centrally planned economy to a “people-centered social-market economy,” in UNDP’s phrase.

A version of a so-called “country program document” for Syria covering 2007-2011 (and later extended to 2012), was distributed to UNDP’s 36-country supervisory Executive Board on April 26, 2006, prior to their June meeting . A record of  Executive Board decisions posted after the group’s subsequent  meeting in September 2006,  show that the body “took note” of the report -- U.N.-speak for passed it without making changes.

SCS  is listed in an appended “results and resources framework” to that document as a private sector partner in two central UNDP initiatives, to improve “structures and climate for trade, investment and competitiveness,” and likewise improve “employment environment and opportunities for skills enhancement for the under- and unemployed, especially women and youth.”

CLICK HERE FOR THE RESULTS AND RESOURCES FRAMEWORK.

According to the country program itself, the plan had also been approved by the Syrian government in February 2006.

According to UNDP’s spokesman, however, “although it was mentioned in UNDP’s results and resources framework, no agreement was made with SCS. Accordingly, the UNDP Syria country office has never had any development-related agreement with SCS.”

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Amnesia: The Dark Descent Sales Pass One Million

Frictional Games revealed today that nearly 1.4 million people have purchased Amnesia: The Dark Descent. According to a blog post from the developer, 710,000 copies of the game were sold directly, as well as sales from inclusions in the Humble Indie Bundle and Steam’s Potato Sack Reunion. Overall, the sales add up to 1,360,000 units in all.

“Despite that huge number of sales, what I think is more interesting is how good the monthly sales still are,” Frictional noted. “Not counting any discounts, the monthly full price sales lie at over 10,000 units. This means that less than every 5th minute someone in the world is buying a copy of Amnesia.”

Frictional also hinted at its next project, which is currently targeted for a 2014 release. “At Frictional Games our main concern is our new super secret project. We do not want to say much about this project yet, but we can disclose that it will be horror and that it will be first person,” the post reads. “One of the things I was most disappointed with in Amnesia was that it never really managed to deliver any deeper themes, but was more like a shallow fright-fest. For the new project we want to change that and really try and bring a certain theme to the front. Our hope is that this will create a very special experience, creating horror in a much more disturbing way.”

Frictional notes that “the game's current status is that we have pretty much all tech working, and have started to playtest the first parts. Still, a lot is up in the air and the current design is bound to change.”

Amnesia will continue with Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs later this year, which is in development by thechineseroom and produced by Frictional. For more on A Machine for Pigs, be sure to watch the debut trailer, and read all about Amnesia: Dark Descent in our list of the top 25 modern PC games.

Andrew Goldfarb is IGN’s associate news editor. Keep up with pictures of the latest food he’s been eating by following him on Twitter or IGN.

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Chilling 9/11 note reaches family 10 years later

“84th Floor west office 12 people trapped.”

The words were scrawled on a note by Connecticut resident Randy Scott on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, when the World Trade Center was attacked. Scott perished that fateful day, but the note withstood the collapse of the towers and was passed from hand to hand for nearly ten years before it finally reached his family, according to the Stamford Advocate.

Scott’s wife, Denise, learned about what her family refers to as “The Note” in August 2011. She had previously believed her husband died instantly after Flight 175 flew into the tower near the offices of Euro Brokers, where he worked. The scrap of paper has robbed the family of any illusion Randy Scott died a quick and merciful death.

"I spent 10 years hoping that Randy wasn't trapped in that building," Denise, 57, said to the newspaper from her Stamford home, with two of her three daughters, Rebecca, 29, and Alexandra, 22, at her side. "You don't want them to suffer. They're trapped in a burning building. It's just an unspeakable horror. And then you get this10 years later. It just changes everything.”

"I spent 10 years hoping that Randy wasn't trapped in that building."

- Denise Scott

The Note not only has the final words written by Scott, it also has a trace amount of his blood, according to the Advocate. DNA testing confirmed a match and helped the New York City Medical Examiner’s office track down his family, the paper reported.

Randy had phoned Denise before writing the note at the school where she teaches first grade, but believing that the first crash was minor, he simply left a message with the main office letting her know that he was fine, Scott recounted to the Stamford newspaper. Denise Scott said she did not know about the attacks until later that morning, when daughter Rebecca called her from Ohio.

For the next few days, the Scotts frantically checked around at hospitals, hoping the family patriarch had dodged death. Hope slowly gave way, yet they were able to believe that because Scott's office was close to the point of impact, he had not suffered, according to the Advocate.

Just over a year ago, as the nation marked the 10th anniversary of the attacks, Denise Scott was contacted by Dr. Barbara Butcher, head of forensics investigations for the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of New York, the Advocate reported. A tiny note had been determined to have been written by the hand of Randy Scott. 

"She said, `It's something written.' And that's when I just fell apart," Denise Scott recalled in the interview with the Advocate.

When Scott saw the note, she knew her husband had written it.

"The minute I saw it I didn't need to see the DNA test," she said to the paper. "I saw the handwriting. It's Randy's handwriting."

Butcher informed Scott that she had retraced where the note had gone for the past decade. The note was dropped from the 84th floor. It was discovered by someone on the street, who immediately handed it to a guard at the Federal Reserve Bank just before the building collapsed.

"He [the guard] went to radio, and the building was gone. The building collapsed," Scott recalled being told.

The Federal Reserve branch held the note for safekeeping before turning it over to the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, which worked with the Medical Examiner’s Office to trace its origin.

“[The note] is "exceptionally rare. I don't know of anything else like it," Jan Ramirez, chief curator of the museum, said to the Advocate.

"There have been other pieces of paper that came out of the towers that day, to which we have been able to attach some powerful stories, but none have been quite as rare and unusual and inspiring and sad and touching as this particular one. It really is in a class by itself," she said Saturday.

At Butcher's request, Scott granted permission for the museum to exhibit the letter once she told her daughters about it. But the right time didn't come until last January, after her own father's death.

This past March, Scott and Rebecca took a hardhat tour of the museum and was shown where Randy’s note will be displayed, as part of an exhibit on the final moments inside the towers.

"It's so amazing to think that Randy Scott wrote it and it eventually ended up with his wife and three daughters, which is an amazing arc of a day," Ramirez said to the Advocate. "We are incredibly proud to be able to show it and I think it will be one of the most powerful artifacts in the museum."

Some families of victims have chosen not to be notified by the medical examiner's office when fragments are found.

"I can't do that," Denise Scott said to the paper. "The last notification of remains I got was in 2008. And I can't do that. I can't leave him there."

Click here for more from the Stanford Advocate

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