In the past week or so, the world of video gaming has gone crazy over the potential announcement of Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, with leak following leak following rumour and gossip, and now we have yet more evidence that seems to point to the May 1st announcement from Activision being the grand unveiling of the Black Ops sequel. IGN have posted an image of a Target pre-order card that was sent in by one of their readers, which features not only the title but also the 13th November release date which had been assumed as the explanation for the "Eclipse" codename (given the appearance of a solar eclipse on that date). The game looks likely to be set in the near future (at least partly), after the blurry image of what we worked out to be a quadrotor machine-gun-mounted drone on the official Call of Duty site was fully revealed to show the exact image we predicted. And now further details are being hinted at on the same site, as two more of the classified images have been revealed: one reading Tacitus (more of which very soon), another revealing a sequence of numbers (which could be coordinates pointing to Tibet, Shangai, Japan, Afghanistan and South Korea, or coordinates pointing towards E3's LA Convention Centre, depending on which rumours you agree with) and the third reading the following message:
"The enemy could be anywhere and it could be anyone"
Lots to think about at this stage, and believe me, we're thinking. Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 now looks destined to be announced during the NBA play-offs on 1st May. Check back for more rumour round-ups and more spurious guess-work - all in the name of fun. Have you ever wanted to write about video games? Get in touch to find out about our contributor programme. Email our Gaming Editor on Simon@whatculture.com for more info.