'Walking Dead' won the game of the year title at Spike Video Game Awards

"The Walking Dead: The Game" took a bite out of the Spike Video Game Awards.

Telltale Games' interactive episodic series based on the zombie comic book franchise was selected as game of the year at Friday's extravaganza, which honors outstanding achievements in the video game industry over the past year.

'Call of Duty: Black Ops 2' crosses billion-dollar sales mark

Activision Blizzard said Wednesday that sales of its "Call of Duty: Black Ops 2" video game rocketed to the billion-dollar mark just 15 days after its release.

Sales of the game hit a billion dollars two days faster than 3-D film blockbuster "Avatar," which set a box office record after its release in 2009.
"The release of 'Call of Duty' has been one of the most significant entertainment events of each of the last six years," said Activision Blizzard chief executive Bobby Kotick.
Since the latest installment of the game launched on November 13, players using Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 consoles have racked up more than 150 million hours battling with or against each other online.
"Call of Duty: Black Ops 2" the sequel to an earlier Cold War-set episode in the franchise whisks players to a fictional 2025, in which a Nicaraguan militant is plotting to undermine US security.
"The move to the near future provided us with the opportunity to tell a time and generation-spanning narrative, as well as access an entirely new world of technology, weapons," Mark Lamia, head of the Treyarch studios that developed the game for the US publisher Activision, told AFP.
More than 250 people spent two years developing the new installment, working with arms experts to imagine the weaponry of the near future, from warrior robots to ultra-sophisticated drones.
"Our fictional world of 2025 is the result of news headlines you see today," Lamia said of the game, whose violent content makes it unsuitable for under 18s.
Total sales for the "Call of Duty" franchise, launched in 2003, exceed worldwide box office receipts for "Star Wars" and "Lord of the Rings," according to Activision.
The episode's main narrative offers around 10 hours of play, but gamers can then log on to battle one another in multiplayer teams.

Ubisoft launches 'Far Cry 3'

Ubisoft on Tuesday released a new installment of hit videogame "Far Cry" that turns a carefree island vacation young hipsters into tourist nightmare on a lawless land.In the opening moments of "Far Cry 3" players go from swimming, dancing, skydiving and otherwise cavorting with friends to escaping the clutches of vicious and arguably psychotic pirates.
"Far beyond the limits of civilization lies an island, a lawless place ruled by violence and human suffering, where your only escape is through drugs or the muzzle of a gun," Ubisoft said in a description of the game setting.
"This is where you find yourself, stranded in a place that has forgotten right from wrong, a place where you must live by the principles of violence to survive."
Positive reviews of the open-world, first-person shooter game quickly stacked up at game evaluation website Metacritic.com, with GameSpy and The Escapist each giving "Far Cry 3" ratings of 90 points out of 100.
"When Far Cry 3 invites you to come stay with it for a long vacation, take it up on its offer," said a GameSpy review posted at Metacritic.
"This is a great example of how to do an open-world shooter right, and for me it's been one of the nicest surprises this year."
Posted player reviews overall praised the game and the rich immersive graphics but some expressed disappointed with glitches or the seeming lack of smarts in artificial intelligence programmed into virtual enemies.
Versions of "Far Cry 3" were available for play on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 videogame consoles and on computers powered by Windows software.
The console version was priced at $60 while the title for play on personal computers cost $10 less.
"Far Cry 3" was developed in the Montreal studio of France-based Ubisoft.