Last year, Orcs Must Die! from Robot Entertainment (consisting of prior employees from Ensenble Studios, the makers of Halo Wars) really shook things up on both PC and Xbox Live Arcade, with players getting into the bloody, strategic action of killing hundreds of orcs using melee attacks and various gut-busting traps.  Now, the team is at it again, bringing Orcs Must Die! 2 to the front this fall with two-player co-op action, more traps and, of course, more dead orcs.  Who could ask for anything more?

In news that could shift how game developers and healthcare professionals harness the power of videogames to do good, HopeLab and Stanford University researchers today announced new data showing that Re-Mission, a video game about killing cancer in the body, strongly activates brain circuits involved in positive motivation. This reward-related activation is associated with a shift in attitudes and emotions that has helped boost players’ adherence to prescribed chemotherapy and antibiotic treatments in a previous study. The study published today provides new insights into how these effects might have occurred, revealing that active participation in gameplay events is key to activating the brain’s positive motivation circuits. Seeing and hearing the same information without active participation in gameplay had no impact on activity in positive motivation circuits.

National health care company Humana has extended its partnership with video game leader Ubisoft by offering rewards for healthy gaming. Through its wellness and loyalty solution, HumanaVitality, members are now able to seamlessly earn Vitality Points™ for exercising using Ubisoft’s fitness games, Your Shape: Fitness Evolved” and “Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 2012,” available exclusively on Kinect™ for Xbox 360. This partnership marks the first time a fitness video game has been integrated with a health care solution in this way.

SAN FRANCISCO -- According to Canadian hockey legend Wayne Gretzky, “a good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.” And that’s exactly how the game is being played in the thriving Ontario Technology Corridor, as evidenced by “hockey stick” expansions by companies including Google Inc., Electronic Arts Inc. (EA), Gameloft and Arkadium.

With George Lucas taking flight with his new Red Tails movie in theaters, his LucasArts division continues to have success with Star Wars games. With over four years of development, a team of 200 employees and a reported budget of $80 million, Electronic Arts has come under fire of late for BioWare’s massively multiplayer online (MMO) game, Star Wars: The Old Republic. But Michael Pachter, videogame analyst for Wedbush Morgan Securities, said the game has already sold 2 million copies worldwide. And the game is already a huge success and money generator for EA, as well as licensor LucasArts.

LAS VEGAS -- The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) has officially put the Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2012) into the record books as the largest in the show's 44 year history, with 1.861 million net square feet of exhibit space. The previous record was 1.857 million net square feet of space at the 2008 International CES. Owned and produced by CEA, CES 2012, the world's largest tradeshow for consumer technology, runs January 10 through January 13 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The mess that is Ocean Marketting (yes we misspelled that on purpose) and its operator, Paul Christofolo, sure created quite a stir by the end of 2011.  A rude, asshole-like response to someone inquiring about their order for an N-Control peripheral, the Avenger Controller, made the front page of Penny Arcade, and the rest, as they say, is history, with Christofolo thrusted into a negative spotlight and plenty of Internet buzz.  But how did this whole thing conclude?  Would you believe that things actually got more ridiculous?

Valve had an outstanding year in 2011 with the release of the highly anticipated Portal 2, a game that went leaps and bounds over the original, both with single player and co-op components.  So all that's left to wonder now is...what's left for 2012, aside from the upcoming Counter Strike: Global Offensive?  Well, if Internet hints indicate anything, the company is hard at work on yet another long-awaited sequel -- the follow-up to Half-Life 2.

Chinese online game company ZQGame has partnered with Los Angeles-based SEE Games to create, co-invest in, and publish an original MMO (massively multiplayer online) game based on Sony Pictures Entertainment’s 2012 summer event film, Total Recall (2012), starring Colin Farrell. The deal represents the first time a Hollywood entity has partnered with a game company from China to develop an online game in-full.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is still just over two weeks from release, but it's already considered one of the most highly anticipated games this holiday season -- even if EA's trying to steal a little bit of that thunder with Battlefield 3.  But Activision's making all the right decisions on this game, and we explain why it's going to be an unstoppable juggernaut once November 8th rolls around...

It's hard to believe that the Grand Theft Auto phenomenon has been sweeping over the game industry for years.  And while gamers are currently enthralled in the likes of Grand Theft Auto IV and its two side stories, there was a time when the games had a simpler start back on the PlayStation 2.  This month, the one that really started it all, Grand Theft Auto III, turns ten, and Rockstar Games is celebrating in a big way.

Nival and 38 Studios have joined the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), the trade association for U.S. computer and video game publishers. These additions bring the ESA’s total membership to 33 companies. Michael D. Gallagher, president and CEO of the ESA, talks about the ESA’s biggest event, E3, in this exclusive video interview.