It starts with two men in space helmets.

They walk across an airfield and climb into a Lockheed SR-71 reconnaissance aircraft, also know as the Blackbird. The year is 1968. The mission is "This is WMD." The game: Call of Duty: Black Ops.

Up on stage members of developer Treyarch are playing through a chunk of the upcoming shooter for us. The guy with the controller in his hand is in control of one of the men in the plane, using the aircraft's tech to watch over a team of men lying on the ground far, far below the high-altitude vehicle. He's using the right stick to command the squad.

Your ability to recognize insanely popular brands has likely meshed with your ability to recognize dates, rendering the text in this post rather superfluous. Unfortunately for you, we all get paid extra for using lots and lots of words -- especially ones like "superfluous."

Activision has unveiled the official website for Call of Duty: Black Ops, the latest entry from the franchise's alternate developer, Treyarch (they're the ones you haven't been reading about as much these days). Aside from its title and what appears to be a release date -- November 9th, 2010 -- Black Ops remains enshrouded in mystery and somewhat superfluous (we're up to 16 cents!) smoke. Expect to see much more when GTTV reveals the first footage later today.

We’ve opened up the hood on Xbox LIVE and tinkered with how matchmaking works for Modern Warfare 2.  It’s not a dramatic change, and the majority of our users won’t see any difference – but a certain subset of you should be happier now.

When you search for a match, our servers sort through the many thousands of available matches to find the “best” potential games for you.  We’ve changed how we determine “best”, and your country is now an even more significant factor than it was before.  What does this mean to you?

A group of nearly 40 past and present Infinity Ward developers have banded together to file suit against the publishers of Modern Warfare 2 for half a billion dollars, alleging breach of contract and unpaid royalties, according to court documents obtained by G4 TV.com.

The Infinity Ward Employee Group's suit, which lists 38 plaintiffs including some currently employed by Activision at the Infinity Ward studio, is seeking as much as half a billion in unpaid bonuses, royalties, profit sharing and future profits from games such as Modern Warfare 3 and punitive damages.

Take seven of your spare minutes today to watch Modern Warfare: Frozen Crossing, a tribute to the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare series.

If you happened to buy the Modern Warfare 2 "Stimulus Package" map pack immediately upon launch, you got problems first, and maps later. To get over the complications caused by your attempted Mapathy treatment, Microsoft's Larry "Major Nelson" Hryb announced that day-one buyers of the map pack will receive a free week of Gold Xbox Live membership. "Check your Live messages," according to Major Nelson, for notice of the reward.

Even if every single person who ever bought the Stimulus Package already has a Gold membership, now you have it for a week longer! And for nothing but a minor inconvenience.

Investigative organization WikiLeaks released classified U.S. military video today showing the killing of more than a dozen Iraqis, including two Reuters employees, with a spokesperson for the whistle-blower group slamming the soldiers involved for their "video game" like behavior.

That video, which is incredibly disturbing and graphic, shows a group of Iraqis walking the streets of New Baghdad, identified as armed "insurgents" by military personnel. The group, which reportedly included Reuters photojournalist Namir Noor-Eldeen and assistant Saeed Chmagh, is gunned down by a pair of Apache attack helicopters. Later, a minivan that appears to come to the assistance of the wounded is fired upon.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 remains the most popular game played on Xbox Live since its launch late last year, but that doesn't mean that the fans of the fast-paced, first-person shooter couldn't use some new ways to play.

Enter the Stimulus Pack. The first Modern Warfare 2 map pack, coming to the Xbox 360 a month before any other platform, comes with just five new killing fields: Crash, Overgrown, Bailout, Salvage and Storm. Two of those maps, Crash and Overgrown, are fan favorites pulled from Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare's multiplayer experience and retooled for the sequel. And they'll set you back $24 AUD.

Could a pack of maps be worth a quarter the price of the full game? Let's see.

Whats your best time in the pit? Around 20 seconds if your any good... Bt if the pit were real, how long to you think it would take a real life professional soldier to get through it? Well folks from the brit Gadget show wanted to find out and 'pitted' themselves against one. Sure, its not the fairest match-up but the gadget guy is pretty bad and it does make for good TV. Check it out!

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After the disastrous news surrounding Call of Duty developers Infinity Ward comes word that Modern Warfare 2's map pack is one of the most over-priced pieces of downloadable content we've ever seen! Popping onto Xbox Live spokesman Larry Hryb's podcast to promote Modern Warfare 2's upcoming "Stimulus Package" map pack (which is launching first on Microsoft's console), Infinity Ward's Robert bowling revealed that the five maps - two of which are old maps being re-released for this game - will cost 1200 Microsoft Points. Or, $24 AUD. Ouch!
[1500 points cost =$29.95] *.8 = [1200 points or $23.96]

An early listing of the Modern Warfare 2 "Stimulus Package" on the Xbox Live Marketplace web site reveals it is comprised of five maps, two of them old favorites from the first Modern Warfare.

The Stimulus Package isn't due out until March 30 on the Xbox 360 (dates for the PC and PS3 versions are still TBA). Here's the description from its Xbox Live listing, which was live as of 3 p.m. U.S. Mountain Time.

The best-selling Xbox 360 game of all-time just got bigger, with more epic multiplayer content, first on Xbox LIVE! The Stimulus Package delivers 5 additional action-packed multiplayer maps featuring a variety of locations: "Bailout," a multi-level apartment complex; "Storm," an open industrial park littered with heavy machinery; "Salvage," a snowy junkyard fortified by stacked debris and crushed cars. Two legendary fan-favorites from Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare return, including "Crash," [pictured above] a war-torn urban environment; and "Overgrown," which features a massive dry creek bed. There are no refunds for this item. For more information, see www.xbox.com/live/accounts.

It'll weigh in at 328 MB. No word on pricing yet, and you can't queue it up for download, either. It asks you for a redeem code.

It's official, the 1st LAN stop of the 2010 Pro Circuit has been announced, with $1500 up for grabs. ACL will be running an event alongside Respawn Lan to create an event with over 500 gamers. The ACL / AusHalo events will be run in a separate nearby hall on an individual network. We are very excited to be involved with one of Australia's most successful LANs.

Acknowledging that as many as 20 million (of its 25 million players) "no longer [derive] pleasure from blowing up people hiding in the cockpit or on top of the crane," Modern Warfare 2's creators say new map help is OTW.

"Mapathy" is the name of this affliction, for which Modern Warfare 2 creative strategist Robert Bowling tweeted about 30 minutes ago that Infinity Ward researchers have found a cure. It's coming - to Xbox Live - March 30. That's all we know now. So, no pricing, nor PC or PS3 availability info yet.

Michael Barnes is the man to thank for this incredible piece of Modern Warfare 2 machinima, which recreates the game's controversial "No Russian" mission in a manner fit for prime-time TV.

What you're seeing here is almost entirely in-game action from the PC version of the game. What Barnes has done is record it from different camera angles than the game's standard first-person perspective, then cut it together to look like a movie or TV show.

The results are a lot more exciting than the actual mission turned out to be.

WARNING: The clip below contains violent content, so don't go watching it at work.