Counter-Strike: Global Offensive has been in the news so often for the wrong reasons, it’s nice when some news comes out that reminds us that it’s still a game with an active (and mostly behaving!) community of players.

Now some datamining by KordGamer on Reddit suggests that the game might be about to get its eighth operation event, and we could even know which maps it’ll be taking place on. Using a Flash decomplier KordGamer managed to locate an image from the game’s files. It’s similar to the ones used in the game to illustrate the maps in each playlist, but doesn’t match any of the current ones as well as having the title “mapgroup-op08” – which it a big hint towards this eighth operation event coming.

Although the eight fragments are hard to make out which maps they are, someone’s already identified seven of them as de_thrill, cs_agency, de_shipped, de_lite, de_blackgold, de_austria, and cs_insertion. A Steam community thread tracking clues to the eighth Operation suggests that cs_concert might also be among the new maps, although it’s not for certain yet though.

The first operation event was Operation Payback in April 2013, and since then there’s been many more. The reason the community looks forward to them so much is that operations are events that feature and make use of some of the most popular user-created content for the game found on the Steam Workshop. The last one wrapped in July of last year, so it’s about time for another. Participation in these events is paid, with some of the proceeds going back to the creators of community content.

Blizzard put on a Hearthstone livestream today, hosted by Senior Game Designer Peter Whalen and streamer Sean ‘Day9’ Plott, in which eleven of the upcoming new Un’Goro cards were revealed to the public.

Three of these cards were spells, with one in particular being the Warlock ‘quest’ card for the expansion – and we got to see its Reward card too.

And when played, the Nether Portal takes up one space on your board, summoning two 3/2 Imps each turn:

The other eight cards were all Minions of different types, and uniquely one had two states alive and ‘dormant’ with a means of switching between the two:

The final Minion was a Legendary and sees the return of Elise from The League of Explorers, a new adventure and a new ability to boot:

We were told that because of Elise’s ‘luck’ factor, the five cards we can expect to get from the pack (while still being randomised) have a better chance of being Epic or Legendary than your standard pack you would open outside the matches. Of course, these five are temporary only to the game you’re playing Elise and the Un’Goro Pack card in – so no freebies unfortunately.

We got a little further information about Un’Goro too, namely that each class will have a Quest card each, as well as a new Legendary Minion each too. As you can see above, Hunter’s will be Swamp King Dred whom was given a demonstration video during the livestream in which he went to town on a number of Murloc Tinyfins (much to Day9’s growing distress).

We can expect further reveals leading up to the expansion’s release in early April, including another livestream next week.

There are many things that can make a good game. Visuals, sound, mechanics… but I do place a lot of value on the story of a game personally. I love a good story.

Amazu Media’s comic gamebook Light Apprentice depends heavily on its story. We received Vol. 1 of it for review, which included the first four chapters. We follow Light Apprentice Nate as he is awoken many years in his future by Tlob, a Blueling, and finds out that not only was he sealed away for years – so were the other Apprentices meant to prevent a devastating war. That war has been and passed now, and their world is slowly dying. Tlob is one of a group hoping to find the Apprentices and use their planet-given powers to hopefully stop this slow inevitable death.

The game is split between the comic book ‘story’ parts, and the gameplay ‘adventure’ parts of the game. The comic book parts tell the majority of the story and offer decisions in how you wish to progress it, while the adventure parts are where you do most of the game playing, represented in a point-and-click style where you tap what you wish to interact with. This part is also where you’ll do the majority of battles, and these two have a ‘choice’ element to them.

Battles can either be ‘won’ through defeating all your enemies by attacking them down to 0 hitpoints, or by enduring their hits until they stun themselves after which you can choose to ‘forgive’ them. Both require timing to hit a ring to complete a successful block or a powerful attack move. I personally chose to play it ‘pacifist’ but both ways seem equally viable in this game for progression. Each character also has a stock of special moves they can execute by using some of the team’s spirit point total, a shared value that restores by 1 for each attack made by either side in the fight. There is one signature move that can be used without taking up an entire turn, but most of them will replace the attack of defend action you could have taken for that round.

There are also items to be found, some special to progress your way through the adventure elements, some in the form of potions which the party again shares between them, and the rest in the form of equippable items such as helmets, armour, weapons and rings/baubles.

I really enjoyed this game. It is another mobile game port, but with the limited input those games could have they found a really good way to implement a system that works. The characters and story are wonderful, the visuals and sound design just add a lovely richness to it and I want to find out more. I want to see the rest of the tale.

And that is the mark of a good story.

8/10