With Call of Duty: Ghosts looming in the horizon along with the next gen console launches, Call of Duty: Black Ops II has one last push to make the FPS world sink in more months of their life in the meantime.

On August 27th, the final map pack called Apocalypse will be released for Call of Duty: Black Ops II on XBox Live with later releases coming to PS3 and PC. It will include four new multiplayer maps (Pod, Frost, Takeoff and Dig) and one new Zombies map (Origin) to help round out the Black Ops II experience.

Pod: A failed utopian community from the 70’s has left stacks of dilapidated residential pods nestled into an abandoned cliff side in Taiwan. Its residents long gone, the modernist compound now hosts frenetic combat as players must run atop the pods, as well as navigate their multi-tiered interiors for a strategic edge.

If you are a Call of Duty: Black Ops II player, you probably spent the better part of your day yesterday playing the new Vengeance maps that came out on XBox 360. If you’re a PlayStation 3 owner, let’s face it that you aren’t a real Black Ops II player to begin with. The XBox 360 players got to dig in to the four new multiplayer maps as well as the new Buried zombie map as well.

Instead of a standard fare trailer showing off the levels like the teaser videos have done already, the team at Treyarch worked on something a little different. In the launch trailer for the Buried zombie mode map, Treyarch paired up with Malukah who is best known for her Skyrim cover song (with over 10,000,000 YouTube hits) to create “Always Running”.

With a voice similar to that of Amy Lee from Evanessence, Malukah does a fantastic job capturing the desperation overcoming players during zombie mode. This combined with some fantastic in game close call footage gives a very different feel than a fast paced shoot ’em up that Call of Duty: Black Ops II often gives its players.

I know that two weeks ago we showed you the reveal trailer for the Vengeance map pack for Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 (which comes free to Season Pass holders) but we’ve got a new trailer featuring new gameplay footage from the DLC levels. But, more importantly, the Replacers who are our favorite marketing gimmick so far for any game out there also get a new member. Joining JB and Peter is…. well I can’t spoil the trailer for you.

In addition to the new member of the team, we do get to look more in depth at the four new levels coming to Vengeance. The Cove looks like a fantastic combination of the beach level from Mario Kart combined with Zanzibar from Halo 2. Rush is a paintball video game finally done right, probably since it involves actual guns and not subpar paintball gameplay mechanics. Sadly, this would be the one time I’d hope for a paintball mode back like they had in Goldeneye 007 and we aren’t getting it.

Detour is eerily reminiscent of a scene from Left 4 Dead except now everyone can shoot back. Uplink has the feel of a classic Bond level to it with a computer control room that everyone gathers in but the only difference this time is how gunships can rain down fire through the skylights. Finally buried adds not just a new location to the zombie mode but a new gameplay twist with a rampaging giant to deal with or befriend.

We’re looking forward to this DLC for CODBO2. Should make a great enhancement to an already awesome game. At least it will help pass the time until Call of Duty: Ghosts arrives.

Can’t wait for that one either. Until then, we’ve got some vengeance to tide us over. Look for it on XBox Live starting July 2.

Earlier this week, we touched upon the Mob of the Dead portion of the Uprising DLC pack coming to XBox 360 on April 16th for Call of Duty: Black Ops II. In it, mobster movie icons Chazz Palminteri, Joe Pantoliano, Michael Madsen, and Ray Liotta take on the roles of four Alcatraz inmates getting ready to bust out only to find out an undead, demonic horde has broken in to the tightest security prison in the world.

In the trailer below, you’ll get some back-story on the fictional mobsters modeled after these stars and find out just where they fall into the prison hierarchy before everything starts going south. As with other new versions of the infamous Zombie mode, you’ll also see new zombies to deal with and traps to hatch. There is also a brief look at the new purgatory game mode as well.

This past weekend, 32 teams of four took up arms in the ultimate XBox Call of Duty Championship. In the end, it was the team Fariko Impact that took home the gold and $400,000 cash prize. Damon “Karma” Barlow, Adam “Killa” Sloss, Marcus “MiRx,” and team captain Chris “Parasite” Duarte (collectively known as Fariko Impact) faced off against EnVyUs in the final round Sunday after the three day tournament.

Fariko Impact would emerge victorious with the winner’s share of the $1,000,000 total pot. But don’t feel too bad for EnVyUs as the second place team would walk home with $200,000 themselves and third place team OpTic Gaming taking $120,000 with them.

Also revealed this past weekend alongside the images of the new Uprising DLC Map Pack was the latest Replacer trailer. After the original Replacer was revealed, it would only be a matter of time before more Call of Duty: Black Ops II players would need to call upon the services of these men in black.

This time, original Replacer Peter Stormare is joined by J.B. Smoove. This time, as you’ll see in the trailer below, the Replacers find themselves in even more awkward scenarios, the kind it takes two people to tackle.

Great news for those of you using a PS3 or a PC to play Call of Duty: Black Ops II. That’s right, the Revolution DLC is here!

Check out the full press release below:

Just a quick note to let you know that Call of Duty®: Black Ops II players on PlayStation®3 and Windows PC now have access to the game’s first DLC Map Pack – Revolution. Revolution delivers an unparalleled amount of variety and content for all types of Call of Duty: Black Ops II players, featuring four all-new multiplayer maps set around the globe:

• Grind: Set in a skate park in Venice Beach (the birthplace of skateboarding!), quarter-pipes and curved surfaces drive players away from easy cover and into intense firefights.

If there one thing that Activision has mastered it is knowing how to hype up their Call of Duty franchise releases. Whether it has been pairing with Eminem for an E3 concert or huge advertising budgets, each year they make the franchise bigger and bigger With just two weeks to go, Activision and Treyarch kick things up one more time with the Live Action Trailer follow up to Jonah Hill pushing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 from last year.

In the “Surprise” Trailer below, there is an interesting combination of celebrity cameos combined with various gameplay mechanics to help push Call of Duty: Black Ops II. While we will let you catch the cameos on your own, we will let you know that the air strike, the tank combat mechs and even the horse all make their way into the trailer. For the first time too, the Zombie mode gets a spotlight in the trailer as well. Director Guy Ritchie brings together everyone from Hollywood A-Listers to internet sensations together for this trailer.

If you were playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, chances are you may have became a member of Call of Duty Elite. For a fee, you were able to access Call of Duty Elite and first dibs on all of the Call of Duty content drops. With Call of Duty: Black Ops II upon us in less than a month (check out the release trailer here), the question has been, “What will happen to Call of Duty Elite”? When the various SKUs were announced for Black Ops II were announced, there was no mention of Elite membership as one of the advantages to purchasing the higher end SKUs. And now, we know why.

Call of Duty Elite is coming to all Black Ops II players for free. Now before everyone who paid for the first year of Call of Duty Elite gets up in arms because they paid for membership, take notice that it isn’t the same as it was a year ago. In the video trailer below which discusses Elite’s membership benefits below, notice the one most important (and most expensive feature) is no longer included in this second season of CoD Elite. The Content Drops. When you look back at the cost of Call of Duty Elite and how it related to Modern Warfare 3, it was the content drops that made up for the charges from Elite membership.

There’s not much that needs to be said about Call of Duty: Black Ops II. It’s the sequel to one of the most successful video games of all time and poised to be a huge success as well.

There’s a new launch trailer out now for the game and in a word, it’s awesome. That’s pretty much all we can say about it. That and we can’t wait for this game to arrive.

Check it out below. Look for CODBO2 to hit stores on 11.13.12.