Electronic Arts has announced a new subscription service that gives Xbox One owners access to some of its biggest games for a small monthly fee. Called EA Access, the service is launching to select users in beta today, with a starting price of $4.99 (£3.99) per month or $29.99 (£19.99) per year. The company says EA Access will “launch for everyone on Xbox One soon.” Paying for the subscription will get you access to what EA calls its Vault, a collection of games you’ll have unlimited access to as long as you’re subscribed. During the beta, that will include a sampling of four titles — FIFA 14, Madden NFL 25, Peggle 2, and Battlefield 4 — though the company says more games will be added “soon.”

The service will also get you early access to some of EA’s upcoming titles. Subscribers will be able to play trials for upcoming games like Dragon Age: Inquisition and this year’s EA Sports titles “up to five days” ahead of their launch date. Additionally, EA says subscribers will save 10 percent when buying EA games through the Xbox One game store. “This is something we’ve never done before and we’re excited to share it with you,” the company says. EA calls the service a “partnership” with Microsoft, and there’s no word on whether it will be available on other platforms as well.

Ubisoft have released a new CGI game trailer for their next Assassin’s Creed game, Assassin’s Creed Unity, today. And despite the reason why this game became so infamous last month, there’s actually a woman featured in it as a character; just not the assassin character.

The woman in question is Elise, a noblewoman and a Templar, and has to be saved from a gruesome fate by Arno. Not much more is known of her right now, but as a Templar it can be guessed she can handle herself in a fight and there are certainly some hints of her knowing how to use a sword. Hopefully this bodes well for the game and the infamous “women are hard to animate” episode will just be a stumbling point in what turns out to be a decent game. Here’s hoping, even if I’d still prefer to be a classy female assassin in the game…

Check out the trailer below:

So, the BETA weekend for Destiny has come and gone and i played most for the weekend on the 360 version.

Ok, I’ve played first person shooters since some of the first came along and MMO’s for as long as they’ve been around (any one that’s seen my XFire game time list will attest to that), and such, I have high impressions for both genres.

Games like Borderlands kicked things off for me int he right direction for Multiplayer shooters with an RPG element, and Destiny is very much in that vein, but has massive leanings to HALO, for obvious reasons.

BUT, this is a console game, which means it also suffers in every way a typical console based FPS falls flat.  The Controller!

HALO is spot on, its built around a controller, it has just the right amount of twitch and its easy to get going, even our own Digmbot can’t disagree with that.  Destiny, somehow, drops the ball on that perfect HALO balance.  The controls feel at times stiff, at others, too sprung.  The auto aim is more a hindrance than a help, then turning it off (thank the gods you can turn it off), the aiming then becomes clunky, especially for a twitch shooter

Then there’s the maps and map transitions.

Between maps, the loading screen is your ship flying down to the zone you are heading too…   This was cool once or twice…  The third time? I took the chance to go get a drink.

Then there is the maps themselves.   I played the same map four times for four different missions.   And every time, it started me at the same point in the map, even though I then had to slog across the map I had already done to get to the next point.  I honestly found it a little boring to do it over and over again.

Now one thing I did like was the Melee attack, as you can see in the screenshot below, it’s more a close range force push, but it has a few second cool down, meaning you can’t just run around force pushing all the enemies, and some of the enemies come at you thick and fast for sure…

So, did I like the game?

Honestly, not so much, I got bored very quickly and just wanted to go back to playing HALO.   I very much doubt I’ll get it on console, but I may change my mind next year IF and ONLY IF the rumoured PC version makes an appearance.

Did you play the beta weekend?   Let us know what you think in the comments below!

So after teasing us about it for over a month and releasing the cards we can win in it, Blizzard released their single-player expansion for Hearthstone two days ago; starting with the first of the five wings – The Arachnid Quarter. Awful lot of webs and squishy eggsacs in this part of the crypt.

I played through the 3 bosses of the wing one after the other during a livestream on the station’s Twitch channel. And my opinion is that Blizzard knows how to code challenging NPC battles. not perfect ones but certainly challenging and enjoyable battles.

Each one of the 3 bosses has a deck made up of the new cards (including some that weren’t spoiled before Naxxramas’ release) and some of the old familiars regular players will be familiar with. As a warning though – don’t expect the same deck restrictions imposed on the regular player to mean anything to the NPC bosses. They can and probably will have more than 2 of a card in their decks; and will always go second meaning they get the coveted Coin card. Playing them is an interesting way to learn how well you can use the newly added cards and ways you can play them for maximum effectiveness.

Each boss comes with their own special ‘hero power’. Anub’Rekhan has a 2-cost that summons a 3/1 minion to the field, Maexxna has a 3-cost that can put a minion back in your hand (similar to the Rogue card Sap) and Grand Widow Faerlina… well, her 2-cost ability rains down as many 1-damage fireballs as you have cards in your hand at the time. Beware that one, it can cause utter devastation. Expect to play each boss a number of times before you win, as they are all fairly tough even at the ‘normal’ skill level; while Heroic just ramps them up to ridiculously hard levels. It is possible to win each though with a decent deck, strategy and a little luck of the draw.

The two Hero challenges unlocked after making it through the three bosses are Rogue and Druid, Rogue being a battle against Maexxna with a pre-constructed Rogue deck and the Druid against Faerlina with a pre-made Druid deck. Both are difficult and if you thought either boss was hard using a deck you’re comfortable with, this just ups the level of difficulty tremendously.

Naxxramas has opened with a bang, presenting us with more of the gameplay we know and love from Hearthstone but presenting us with new challenging opponents to have them against. The balance might not be perfect in my opinion, but it is worth it when you win a match you’ve already failed at ten times previously. Can’t wait for the Plague Quarter next week.

The Swapper is coming to Wii U. If you’ve  been living under a rock and you don’t know anything about The Swapper you’re in for a treat. The Swapper casts you as a stranded space explorer on an ancient space station armed with a cloning gun. It’s an intriguing and spooky game with a great deal of atmosphere and well thought out puzzles.

Reports say the game’s control scheme has been rejigged and optimized for the Wii U gamepad with a touch-only mode as well as a control stick option too. It seems like The Swapper has had a loving conversion to the Wii U platform.  Apparently all of the puzzles have also been tweaked to function optimally with the slower controls and Curve has said the game will cost about the same on any platform (PS3 on August 5th and Wii U in November) so this is somewhere between £10-£12. If you like puzzlers with atmosphere it is a great pick up.