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.

Today, future sports FPS indie game Epigenesis sees its full release on Steam, selling its glimpse of a world where those teams who can win a futuristic high-speed ball game rule supreme. It’s multiplayer and apparently quite good.

The game is a five-a-side and takes place on servers full of other players who you need to work with to score, which you do by getting it through the enemy goal hoop. Standing in your way though are the other team, the tops of seven tall buildings, panels that you use to get across and between the buildings? A very long fall. Even if the fall just means you respawn up top at your team’s spawn point. To aid in this you are equipped with a jump-pack and a non-lethal laser that knocks back rather than stuns.

Those of you who listen to our radio shows might find the game’s name familiar, and that’s because we’ve had the game’s developers, Dead Shark Triple Punch onto the Indie Game Show with Digmbot and PredictedCyborg before now. Calle Boström joined us and talked about the game, its concept, mechanics, the origin of the studio’s name and what happens when 9 players hit a tenth when the gravity mechanics aren’t quite fully programmed in yet (they land on the background scenery).

The game is currently selling for a launch price of 15% off, so if you want to get this game now while the sale lasts would be a very good time.

To celebrate the launch of the game, we have a bunch of keys for the game to give away! To win one, all you need to do is share this article on Twitter by retweeting it from the station Twitter post that links to it. Good luck!

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!

DayZ continues to grow and evolve as the game slowly works from early access into a more final form. Players are used to change logs coming out that seem filled with arcane lines which hold no meaning to those not well versed in DayZ’s apocalyptic survival horror world. Another such log was just released, and once you parse through the dev speak and extremely specific fixes, there are a few nice tidbits included. While I’ve included the full log, as well as a link to the official forum thread below, here are the highlights:

• Bug Fixes have been implemented for the face-palm gesture, preventing players from standing up from prone while using it.
• Cows, rabbits and wild boars have undergone a visual improvement.
• Players can now take Makarov pistols straight from the ground into their hands.
• New aimed animations with rifles.
• Players can now walk while surrendered.

And perhaps the most important changes:

• The village of Turovo has been added
• You can now force feed players zucchini
• Boonie hats now act as storage for fishing hooks

As you can see, a lot of DayZ development is incremental in nature. However, as someone who plays the game a lot, take my word that these are fantastic changes.

The full change log follows below. Let me know what changes you are most excited about!

Known issues:

• Player can in rare circumstances enter a state in which they cannot attack and must relog
• Character may temporarily enter a frozen state when throwing (resolved a few seconds)
• Melee targeting is off in some situations
• Players can in some circumstances experience slight desync with server
• Dynamic server events are temporarily disabled
• Backpacks rearrange after reconnection
• Players restrained while unconscious remained restrained until reconnection (after awaking)
• Persistent items & storage are disabled server side pending hot fix to stable branch

New:

• Actions: cans can be opened with SKS bayonet and sickle
• Actions: added playerDrinkCan action to config
• Actions: added Melee class to SurvivorBase
• Animations: New default aimed animations with rifle
• Animations: Player now can walk while surrender
• Animations: Transitions for surrender/restrained player
• Animations: Crouched zombie animation set
• Animations: Reload for CZ527
• Animations: Hand poses added for matchbox, Injection Vial, Hacksaw
• Animations: Drinking from can
• Character: New female face models
• Character: New male face models
• Engine: Ragdoll support for Zombies & Players
• Engine: Initial implementation of navmesh for zombie pathfinding
• Items: Boonie hat fishing hook storage
• Items: Chemlights
• Items: AK101
• Items: CR 527
• Items: Makarov
• Items PM 73 RAK
• Items: Medium Civilian Tent
• Items: Paramedic clothes (jacket and pants)
• Items: Military Boots now store knives
• Items: Red, Black, Polka dotted, Olive and Camo bandana added
• Items: Untied Red, Black, Polka dotted, Olive and Camo bandana added
• Recipes : Red, Black, Polka dotted, Olive and Camo as a bandage
• Recipes: Red, Black, Polka dotted, Olive and Camo bandanas can be untied and tied to mask
• Server: Persistent item support (disabled for this update)
• Server: Simulation changes to support increased server performance
• Server: Persistent storage support (disabled for this update)
• Server: Dynamic loot respawning
• World: Turovo village added

Fixed:

• Actions: Player is not able to fill a ruined canteen from well.
• Actions: When player opens ruined canned food there is low amount of food left.
• Actions: Player is not able to pour water from a ruined canteen.
• Actions: Player can no long empty magazine attached to a weapon
• Actions: No access to catch rain action during ongoing action
• Actions: Fishing actions displayed while using different items than rod
• Actions: Added missing part to improvised bag/backpack crafting messages in action menu
• Actions: Zucchini can be force fed
• Actions: Added new drink from well animation to blue well
• Actions: Unable to use actions while swimming or while on ladder
• Actions: Player can take Makarov into hands straight from ground
• Actions: Player can take PM73 RAK into hands  straight from ground
• Actions: Removing item on which consume action was called, not item which was swapped to hands during consume action
• Animals: Visual improvement of cow, rabbit and wildboar
• Animations: Gestures related bugs fixed (Facepalm, Cut throat, Silence)
• Animations: Crouch moves with bow
• Animations: Prone moves with pistol
• Animations: Fixed multiple issues with vaulting
• Animations: Zucchini handheld position
• Animations: SoundEdge(footstep sounds) set correctly for kneel run with rifle
• Animations: Face-palm doesn’t make the player stand up from prone anymore
• Animations: Sitting tweaked(changing weapons keeps player in kneel, instead of making them stand….)
• Engine: Adjustment to Night time lighting levels
• Items: Dimmed fireplace light so it not interfere with HDR
• Items: Tweaked shotguns dispersions and recoils
• Items: Tweaked pistols dispersions
• Items: Tweaked rifles, carbines and SMGs dispersions
• Items: Tweaked attachments (optics, buttstocks, handguards, compensators, bipod) dispersions
• Items: Wooden sticks can be held in hands
• Items: CR527 shadow glitch fixed
• Items: Set chemlight to last 60 minutes
• Items: Lowered light intensity for chemlights and flare
• Items: Removed buttstock as default spawned attachment for MP5
• Item: Binoculars size reduced
• Items: Added other chemlight color material variants
• Modifiers: Removed vomit message from blinded modifier
• Recipes: Player can paint CR 527 black, green and camo
• Recipes: Player can’t tear clothing into rags while there are things in it
• Recipes: Ruined cans opening tweaked

The original forum post can be viewed here.

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.