Last night, EA hosted a preview event focusing on its early 2013 lineup, including Crysis 3. There, Crytek founder Cevat Yerli announced Crysis 3 will launch on February 19 in North America and February 22 in Europe.

Last month, EA revealed the pre-order bonuses for Crysis 3, which include multiplayer perks – the Predator Bow, Recon Arrow, Hunter Nanosuit Module, an instant start at level five and three exclusive dog tags – plus a free digital copy of the original Crysis.

Halo 4's episodic co-op campaign Spartan Ops will go on hiatus next week, concluding in January with the final five episodes of season one. Microsoft is also teaming up with Virgin gaming on the "Halo 4 Infinity Challenge," which has a V8-powered 2013 Ford F-150 SVT Raptor (pictured), along with an appearance in a future Halo game, as its grand prize.

Those interested in participating in the Mountain Dew and Doritos presents, in association with Seven Eleven and Harvey's RV World, Halo 4 Infinity Challenge can register at www.halo4infinitychallenge.com. The tournament begins December 17 and will track War Games and Spartan Ops leaderboards, with over 2,800 prizes available. The qualifier phase will run until January 10.

After the qualifier section, players will be tiered into three groups, with the final phase taking place the week of January 12. Leaderboards will be reset at this time to award the top performers in each tier. No word yet if the new Ford F-150 handles like a Warthog.

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The second batch of DLC for Trials Evolution is headed your way in December (yes, that's this month), and it's titled 'Riders of Doom' in celebration of the end of the world. Riders of Doom will run you 400 MS Points ($5 USD).

The DLC includes 40 new tracks set in the Big Sand Lands, an apocalypse-inspired environment that will be built up and destroyed throughout the stages, and a new Banshee bike. Riders of Doom also adds "hundreds" of new editor objects to the level editor and has 10 new Skill Games, including an infinite series of generated extreme obstacles.

If the world is going to end, you might as well go out playing Trials Evolution.

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The Xbox SmartGlass app was updated for iOS today. iPhone 5 users can finally interact with their Xbox 360 without suffering the pains of a squished interface on their iDoodad. Bugs have also been addressed in version 2.1 – we'd tell you which bugs were squashed but none are listed in the update notes.

Xbox SmartGlass first launched on Windows 8 devices back in October. That lengthy half-day exclusivity ended with an Android version on October 26, followed by the iOS app's arrival in early November.

Need for Speed: Most Wanted gets some new cars and events this month. A press release from EA's UK branch pulls back the tarp on the Ultimate Speed pack, a collection of new cars – the Pagani Zonda R, McLaren F1LM, Lamborghini Aventador J and Bugatti Veyron Grand Sport Vitesse – and 25 new events to conquer. There's also a new Most Wanted car to take down and own, the Hennessey Venom GT Spyder.

The Ultimate Speed pack will be available for download on December 18 in the UK, for 800 MS Points ($10) through Xbox Live, PlayStation Network and Origin. There is no specific announcement for North America yet; however, most of the time DLC launches worldwide so it's safe to assume we'll get the goods on December 18, too.

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Mass Effect series developer BioWare Edmonton is working on a new piece Mass Effect 3 DLC, and it's "all hands on deck," level designer Jos Hendriks said on the BioWare forums.

"It's all hands on deck for this one. Pretty much every ME3 DLC writer here in Edmonton is involved (which would include both Patrick Weekes AND John Dombrow)," Hendriks wrote. Other writers included Jay Watamaniuk and Cathleen Rootsaert. Additionally, composer Sam Hulick tweeted that he's working on "unannounced Mass Effect 3 DLC."

"Tossing in piano and muted strings for this one particular piece. High potential for tears. #ME3DLC," Hulick tweeted.

Twitter previously outed Seth Green and Raphael Sbarge, voices of Joker and Kaidan Alenkowere, as working on something for Mass Effect 3. Neither appeared in Omega, the DLC that hit last week.

Guitar Hero 7 was a game that existed, at least in a development phase, until Activision canceled it in early 2011, Kotaku reported, citing an anonymous source.

Guitar Hero 7 had only a guitar, ditching the drums, mic and bass that surfaced once Rock Band entered the market. The guitar saw some changes, however, and had a full six strings and an extra button in the neck. It was expensive, unresponsive and development was, overall, a "disaster," Kotaku said.

Vicarious Visions, the team in charge of developing Guitar Hero 7, had some great ideas about creating a morphing, unique music video for each song. The songs themselves posed a problem: "The game had all of the worst hits from the 1990s," Kotaku wrote, quoting its source. "They realized that, with our lack of budget and time, they couldn't get quality music so they bought bargain-basement music like 'Closing time' and 'Sex and Candy.' There were some songs in there that had been used at least three times in the GH franchises before."

The music video idea quickly became unwieldy, too, and development fell apart. Guitar Hero 7 was canceled in the middle of an expected two-year development cycle. Just think, we could have had a new Guitar Hero on our GOTY lists this year. Maybe.

Maybe not.

Giana Sisers: Twisted Dreams is coming to XBLA in spring 2013, from publisher bitComposer. Giana Sisters hit Steam in October as the second title to launch under Greenlight, published and developed by Black Forest Games. It appears bitComposer will be taking over all publishing duties, listing a PC launch for spring, too.

The (quite successful) Kickstarter for Giana Sisters listed a launch on PSN and XBLA in "early 2013," so we're keeping our eyes peeled for any PS3 news from bitComposer.

Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams pays homage to the platformers of yore, and does a wonderful job of it on PC. Sitting on the couch and holding a controller should only exaggerate that nostalgic joy. Unfortunately, blowing on the code of a downloadable game just isn't the same as blowing into a cartridge. But hey, give it a go anyway. You won't look insane at all.

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Winter holidays are, statistically speaking, the very best holidays, due to their general abundance of twice-baked potatoes and various pies. But when every serving at every meal contains at least three sticks of butter, those extra pounds can really pile up.

Nike and Microsoft recommend solving your tummy troubles by doing crunches in your living room while a virtual man watches, or as the system is commercially known, Nike+Kinect Training. They've even got an Xbox 360 bundle for it and everything, which includes a 4GB console, Kinect, Nike+Kinect Training, Kinect Adventures and a month of Xbox Live Gold for $250, as seen above. That price tag is only valid through January 5, we should point out. After that, the bundle is kicked up to $300.

Microsoft has also announced that the game itself will be digitally available through Xbox Live on December 25, at a smooth $50/4,000 MS points.

Microsoft has overcome whatever dark sorcery removed Fable 2 from the Xbox Live Marketplace. Lionhead's saucy 2008 action-RPG is now available for download again.

"There was an isolated issue affecting the availability of Fable II on Games on Demand recently," a Microsoft representative told us. "We have resolved the issue and the game is once again available. We apologize for any inconvenience this caused." Take that, ambiguous "issue!"

Pier Solar HD has more than hit its Kickstarter funding goal, bringing in $231,370 at the end of the campaign this morning. People were sufficiently piqued by the idea of an HD remake of a present-day Genesis RPG to not only get developer WaterMelon Co. to its $139,000 goal, but to exceed every stretch goal set by the developer.

That means the released game will be a "Directors Cut" with additional material. It also means Pier Solar HD will be released on Android, Ouya, and Wii U. Everyone who backed the project will get a digital copy of "One Year at WaterMelon," a video documentary about the development of Pier Solar HD and two other SNES and Genesis projects.

Activision may have skipped its annual five-day totaling of Call of Duty sales, but the publisher announced this morning the latest installment, Black Ops 2, grossed $1 billion in 15 days.

The publisher announced shortly after Call of Duty Black Ops 2's launch the annual blockbuster made $500 million in 24 hours at retail, eclipsing Modern Warfare 3's record of $400 million the year prior. The lack of a five-day total, which the company had done for three years running, gave some analysts "cause for concern" that Black Ops 2 wasn't selling as well as previous installments.

Seeking a new way to contextualize the achievement, Activision noted the $1 billion milestone was achieved faster than James Cameron's Avatar, which in 2009 reached a billion in ticket sales in 17 days. Modern Warfare 3 reached the one billion milestone in 16 days.

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People with expensive home theater set-ups and/or insane people who listen to music through television speakers now have yet another option when using their Xbox as a weird internet radio device. Specifically, subscription-based streaming music service Rhapsody has launched a new app, which is available now for anyone with Xbox Live Gold and a (paid) Rhapsody account.

The app includes access to Rhapsody's full music library, allowing users to access playlists they've constructed on other devices. It also supports gesture and voice commands via Kinect, which sounds good on paper, but we're going to withhold final judgement until we've tested whether our Girls' Generation choreography practice is falsely interpreted as interface navigation.

The bizarre patent case between Motorola and Microsoft that could have seen the Xbox 360 banned from import in the US has removed that possibility from the table. According to a BBC report, a judge has ruled that Google's Motorola can't ban sales of Microsoft's Xbox 360 over a patent dispute currently going through the courts.

Microsoft had no comment on today's ruling, but noted today's decision placed a more permanent order on the ruling in September preventing the injunction.

The case now continues with the court and parties working out what is a fair rate for Microsoft to license the patents in dispute.

Three new multiplayer modes are headed to the Xbox 360 of Resident Evil 6 on Tuesday, December 18: "Predator," "Survivors" and "Onslaught."

Predator casts one player as the bioweapon Ustanak, while all other players attempt to bring the great beast down. Survivor mode augments regular solo/team vs. mode by making felled humans rise as zombies, who must chomp on some noggins before being able to respawn as a person.

Lastly, Onslaught sounds like a weird combination of Gear of War's Horde mode and Dr. Mario's multiplayer, where two players attempt to survive separate waves of enemies, with kill combos sending more zombies to the opponent's side.

Each mode will set you back 320 MS Points ($4) if purchased individually, or 720 MS Points ($9) if purchased as a bundle. No word on when this content will become available on other platforms.

Update: Capcom has uploaded some footage from each new mode – feel free to vault past the break to check it out. Also, Capcom-Unity confirms that a patch will come to Xbox 360 and PS3 at the same time. This free update allows players to adjust the camera's field of view, and adds co-op to the Ada campaign and the No Hope Left difficulty mode.

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Microsoft's trademark renewal of Killer Instinct has been rejected by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for "likelihood of confusion." As NeoGAF points out, this bit of confusion has to do with the short-lived FOX show Killer Instinct from 1995. Microsoft announced in mid-September it was in the process of renewing the long-languishing intellectual property, but did not specify the purpose.

So, what does the rejection mean? We checked with attorney Mark Methenitis who pens Law of the Game.

"In short, this means ... more or less nothing," Methenitis told us when asked if there was more to the rejection. "It's just an office action; they happen on lots of trademark applications, and is not by any means the final say on the application. It just means that Microsoft has to provide more evidence to overcome their objection to move forward with the application."

He continued, "All things considered, I would imagine that Microsoft has a pretty strong position reverting back to the previous Killer Instinct games, which far predate the Fox filing, and moreover, there's no evidence of actual confusion between that show and the game."

According to Methenitis, Microsoft has six months to respond. He equated this action to fighting games, saying it's like taking some hits in the first round, but you haven't even come close to losing the bout.

Far Cry 3 concludes the 2012 holiday review season for big budget games on a high note. Beyond explaining the game's excellence, our review of Far Cry 3 also held a valuable life lesson: "Goats ... are not to be trusted."

• Eurogamer (100/100): "Far Cry 3 is all the best things about open-world gaming. It's a glorious anecdote factory, where you manufacture brilliant new memories every time you wake up in a safehouse and head out into the jungle. ... And it always lets you play, but it also controls the tempo - sometimes a little heavy-handedly, but always with good intentions."
• Gamespot (90/100): "Stretches of unpredictable exploration and free-form hunting alternate with challenging pirate confrontations, sometimes culminating with a rocket blast to the helicopter hounding you from above. This is an ambitious and finely tuned adventure that gets better and better as you play."
• Game Informer (90/100): "After two remarkable but uneven offerings, Far Cry finally pulls everything together in the third installment. The diverse open-world action, compelling story, and an alluring environment that begs exploration are all high water marks for the series. This is an island adventure all shooter fans should experience. "
• IGN (90/100): "Far Cry 3 is important for the same reason as Far Cry 2. It's a shooter that considers shooters thoughtfully, both in the way they're designed and the way we play them, and then asks us to do the same. Should massacring hundreds be a great way to entertain ourselves? Maybe not. But it is. "
• Destructoid (80/100): "While riddled with minor gripes, there is no one overwhelming, glaring fault that threatens to drag the whole experience down. With the third installment in the Far Cry series, Ubisoft has managed to deliver a game that provides not one, not two, but three well-crafted experiences that may vary in terms of longevity but all manage to be of uniform quality."

Assassin's Creed 3 Season Pass holders get the game's first piece of downloadable content on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC today. Titled 'Hidden Secrets,' the content becomes available for everyone else to purchase on December 11, except for Wii U owners who'll see it come to their systems at a later date. In Europe, Season Pass owners on PS3 must wait until tomorrow to access the DLC, and those without Season Pass until December 13.

Hidden Secrets contains three extra missions including Lost Mayan Ruins, Ghost of War, and A Dangerous Secret, all of which featured in various pre-order bundles. The trio totals in at an hour of bonus gameplay, according to Ubisoft. The DLC also comes with Colonial Assassin and Captain of the Aquila costumes for single-player, as well as Redcoat and Sharpshooter characters for multiplayer.

Ubisoft also confirmed today the upcoming The Tyranny of King Washington campaign is split into three separate packs. An Assassin's Creed 3 online survey discovered last week suggested each pack is around two hours in length. Also now officially revealed is 'The Battle Hardened' pack, which includes new maps and characters for multiplayer.

Hidden Secrets, Battle Hardened, and the King Washington trio appear to make up the five packs announced as coming to Assassin's Creed 3. All five are unlocked via the game's Season Pass, available on Xbox Live Marketplace for 2400 MSP and PSN for $29.99.

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