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.

For those of you who don’t know,  there is another Lord of the Rings game on the way. Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor is set in Tolkien’s iconic world where you play as a ranger named Talion… who is dead. Talion was resurrected by a mysterious wraith that also thirsts for vengeance against Mordor and the Dark Lord Sauron.

The game was originally set to launch on October 7th but Warner Bros are ‘responding to fans excitement’ and have moved the games release forward to September 30th for consoles and October 2nd for PC gamers. It seems that developer Monolith productions are listening to their fans and looking to genuinely please them. This title is certainly one to watch for Lord of the Rings fans as it is chronologically set between the Hobbit and the Fellowship of the Ring.

Are you excited by Shadow of Mordor, or are you more like our Station Manager who is currently in the basement sharpening knives and muttering about blasphemy and the Inquisition?

EDITORS NOTE:  I’m looking forward to this…  ~Lone

For those of you who follow the Smite eSports scene closely you will know that both the NA and EU regions have been taking part in a series of weekly tournaments for the last 10 weeks; according to Hi-Rez the teams taking part in these regions have played close to 500 games!

Out of these tournaments, 4 teams from each region have advanced to the next stage- the pro league.  On the 26th of July the EU regional kick-off lan tournament will pit these teams against each other with a prize pool of $50,000 as they try to qualify for the world championship tournament.

Each of the teams going to the LAN have faced each other repeatedly and all of them have made regular appearances in the semi-finals and finals, with all of them taking first at some point during the qualifiers . To bring you up to speed on the teams and competitors taking part in the EU regionals, we’ve put together a handy guide to each team and their respective rosters.

Cloud 9 HyperX  are first seed. Cloud 9 have made 8 appearances in the finals and taken 1st 3 times during the qualifiers, earning themselves first seed. They have performed consistently against the top teams in Europe and earned their spotand these veterans will be looking to close out the kick-off LAN with first place and $50K in their pockets. In the run up qualifiers Cloud 9 had an almost complete roster change with only 2 of the original team members staying on the starting line.

Their roster is:

Hunter- Youngbae(ex TSM player)

Support- Half Devil

Midlane- Psiyo

Jungle- Suntouch

Sololane- EnQu

Standing in Cloud 9’s way are Team Solomid. TSM are the reigning champions from the 200K launch event. TSM took second seed in the qualifiers after major roster changes and a very rough start- eventually swapping their hunter with C9. Their synergy initially seemed to fall apart then they pulled it back together towards the end of the qualifiers and now they have a lot to prove in this coming tournament.

Their roster is:

Hunter- Smek (exC9 player)

Support- Trixtank

Midlane- Lawbster

Jungle- Qvofred

Solo lane- Gamehunter (commonly referred to as Godhunter)

Team Coast Blue are the third seed, originally called Worth Gaming this young, upstart team took the qualifiers by storm in week 3. That week they beat C9 and took one game off of TSM in the finals,  finishing in second with some meta-breaking choices. In week 4 they came out even stronger, storming through all of their matches to finish 1st. They have consistently been a top 4 team and this brought the attention of Team Coast who are now their sponsor. They have been a force to reckoned with since week 3 and they will be looking to take the LAN event by storm to truly kick off their smite careers.

Their current roster is;

Hunter- Shaggyshenk

Support- Princesstomato

Midlane- Korinyo

Jungle- Ninjabobat

Solo lane- Variety

Team SK Gaming barely scraped their way into the launch tournament,  eventually finding their way into 4th place but the initial qualifiers proved to be too much for them and they were fighting desperately from week 1 to find a place within the top teams. TSM consistently beat then for 5 weeks, leaving them behind in the round of 8 until in week 7 they came out in top form to seize first place and find hope. For the rest of the qualifiers they were vying for position against another top tier EU team called IIIII. In the last week of the finals IIIII failed to clinch their position as 4th seed so they had to face SK in a tiebreaker match,  which SK took by storm.

Their current roster is:

Hunter- Realzx

Support- Badgah

Midlane- Captaintwig

Jungler- Zyrhoes

Solo lane- ManiaKK

The tournament will kick off on twitch.tv/smitegame at 6:00 AM EDT/ 12:00 PM CEST/ 5:00 PM GMT .

Don’t forget to show Team Coast Blue some Sanitarium.fm love for helping with our charity stream!

The people behind the popular mech FPS game, Titanfall, are planning something special for the next update, called simply Update 5. They’re introducing what has been called a ‘black market currency’ into the game, which is really a system for earning points.

The points can be earned in-game through completing certain set challenges or selling on unused burn cards, and can then be used to trade for burn cards which might be a better fit for your play style. The thing that is most obvious at a glance though is that this is a currency that can only be earned in the game; there is currently no plans to make the currency purchasable in any amounts for a sum of real-life money.

The update will also include Daily Challenges, possibly as the ones set up to earn players the new currency. The PC version is also getting some better support for multiple GPUs and the upcoming DLC Frontier’s Edge will introduce three new maps to the game.

There’s currently no ETA for Update 5, but patch notes are due to be released some time next week.