Destiny is Bungie’s upcoming First Person Shooter,  and in many ways it also draws on the role playing game genre with gear, a level cap and, it would seem, a lot of revisiting the same stages.

Recently it was revealed that you can go beyond Destiny’s level cap of 20. When you hit level 20 you will stop collecting xp points, instead the xp you would of collected is turned into “motes of light” which you can use to craft special equipment which boost your characters stats to push your abilities beyond that of a level 20. Designer Sage Merril has said that once you reach level 20 the game is yours, you can pretty much do anything and everything in the game but some raids will take several attempts and a great deal of skill unless you use the motes of light to build bigger and better gear to push yourself beyond the level cap, so far the highest level gear that has been seen was by IGN at level 29.

So, it’s the second week of Blizzard’s schedule for the single-player expansion they’ve released for their virtual card game, Hearthstone. A week that unfortunately brought with it many problems with the purchase of the second wing of the expansion, as many found themselves unable to access the Plague Quarter after purchasing it, even when the gold and real-life money payment had been taken out. So, is it worth it once you have the wing, open and paid for with the right amount of payment?

The three bosses are Noth the Plaguemaster, Heigan the Unclean and Loatheb, who is the most difficult of the three. Noth’s hero power is a passive one, spawning a 1/1 Skeleton for every minion that dies (not including the Skeletons themselves) and it can get out of hand very quickly if not contained, especially if you value board control as I do. Heigan’s hero power is a 1-mana cost, and causes 2 damage to your left-most minion; which causes you to actually think about where you’re placing your creatures on the field. Loatheb’s hero power is a 2-mana cost that causes 3 damage to your Hero, and as he has 75 health to your 30 it’s a very difficult battle. However, there is a trick for winning but I won’t reveal it here for those of you who want to figure it out yourselves.

So, how does it match up to last week’s Arachnid Quarter? I honestly found it to be somewhat easier myself, but maybe that’s because the way these computer opponents play is much easier for me to counter with the way I play. None of the bosses were able to trouble me for too many attempts and I beat all 3 in 30-45 minutes. Does this mean it’s bad though? Not at all. I found it challenging still and I had to work for all 3 victories.

And then I tried the Hunter Class Challenge and learned the value of a Webspinner. Originally I thought its Deathrattle ability to put a random Beast into your hand took only from your deck; but when random Beasts begin to appear in my hand that didn’t come from the special all-Webspinner deck I was playing with I learned: it literally meant ANY random Beast. Including Legendaries. Needless to say it’s the only Class Challenge I’ve beaten so far, and I keep going back to replay it. It’s just that much fun for me as someone who loves playing the Hunter class.

Overall I have to say that Blizzard are doing quite a good job so far as far as the gameplay content and challenge level is concerned. If only that carried over to the actual launching of each wing, we’d be golden.

So we’ve known for a while that Bioware were not going to leave the Mass Effect series behind and at the San Diego Comic Con this was confirmed with a panel, only some of the information from that panel has been leaked and we have seen the main character’s basic armour. It looks like Bioware wanted to make the armour realistic with soft under-armour and a hard outer carapace designed for exploration and maximum agility.

The armour looks solid and it looks like a type of armour that could be built by humans in the near future and it seems to fit the aesthetic and feel of the series past and future. Another treat that came out of SDCC… the Mako is back with a brand new look and feel, for veterans of the series the Mako is a well-loved exploration device from early in the series which was clunky but very fun to use with jet jumping and a lovely big cannon.

So it looks like Bioware has learned its lessons from Mass Effect 3 and is bringing us a game that is about the exploration and freedom of Mass Effect 1, I for one will be watching this very closely in the hopes that this will be their return to form!

As gamers we expect the release of a new game or expansion to it to be fraught with hiccups and bugs, especially if that game was highly-anticipated or hyped to great heights. Launch day crashes are so common nowadays that even if we get annoyed by them, we can’t say we didn’t expect them.

However, the second wing of Hearthstone’s single-player expansion Curse of Naxxramas has been not just fraught by them, it’s been plagued. Ironic really given that it’s the Plague Quarter.

Ever since launch many users have found themselves unable to buy the wing, either because the store is closed for them or the purchase refuses to go through; or even they’ve purchased the wing (or multiple in some cases) and found that although they’ve been charged the gold or real-life cash for the wing, it still remains locked to them. We’re coming up to 24 hours since launch and understandably a few users are beginning to get annoyed. Some have even questioned why the store was not closed for all to prevent people who didn’t know about the problems from purchasing and losing cash or gold.

Blizzard have been looking into the errors now for many hours, posting up updates on forums, their social networks and putting up a Breaking News notice on the Hearthstone launcher to warn people of ongoing problems with the game. As of time of writing, it’s still unknown how long the Plague Quarter will remain in an unexpected quarantine.

“PlayStation Plus memberships are up more than 200% since the launch of PlayStation 4, which shows that gamers are looking for memberships that offer a multitude of services, across various devices, for one low price. We don’t think asking our fans to pay an additional $5 a month for this EA-specific program represents good value to the PlayStation gamer.”