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.

Riot has begun testing a new banning system for League of Legends to try and curb the toxicity within the games massive community. They are looking to use a new system that utilizes both human reviews of complaints as well as “machine learning” in an effort to catch offenders and punish them, under this new system those seen to be ‘smack talking’ could receive extensive bans ranging from two weeks for minor offenders to permanent bans for repeat or chronic offenders.

This time though Riot are planning to be transparent with people appealing against their bans and much harsher, even going as far as releasing chat log transcripts as evidence. Riot they had this to say

“Some players have also asked why we’ve taken such an aggressive stance when we’ve been focused on reform; well, the key here is that for most players, reform approaches are quite effective. But, for a number of players, reform attempts have been very unsuccessful which forces us to remove some of these players from League entirely.”

Seems like a cruel but fair system to us, what do you think?

The next installment in Bioware’s popular Dragon Age RPG series has been delayed. The game was originally set to drop in October one of the busiest months of the year. It has now been delayed to late November, the developers wrote this statement on their blog:

“I’m writing to let you know that Dragon Age: Inquisition has a new release date of November 18, 2014 in North America (November 21st in EU). We appreciate the enormous support we’ve received from all of you to get to this point, and while this extra few weeks may not seem like a lot, I know the game you’ll play will be all the better for it.

Since we began working on Dragon Age: Inquisition almost four years ago, our goal was to create the best Dragon Age experience ever. It was that goal that motivated many of our decisions: moving to Frostbite, bringing race choice and customization back, improving tactical camera, building a team of characters whose relationships evolve based on your actions, and most importantly, crafting an epic, nation-spanning story that both draws upon past games and takes you to many new places in the realm of Thedas.

I’m privileged to be a part of a team that has been working very hard to surpass every measure they’ve set for themselves. That has meant completing huge amounts of game content, fixing bugs both big and small, and improving the overall experience. This last bit of time is about polishing the experience we want you to see. Ensuring that our open spaces are as engaging as possible. Strengthening the emotional impact of the Hero’s choices. And ensuring the experience you get is the best it can be in the platform you choose to play on.”

* Dragon Age is slated for release on PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One.

Are you ready to jump back into the world of Dragon Age? Let us know in the comments below.

The Crew is now in Beta, and I’ve been playing around with it a fair bit. Ubisoft and Ivory Tower’s new open world racing game has a lot of interesting ideas. But how well does it actually play? Well dear reader, thats why this article exists! So read on for my thoughts on The Crew closed beta for PC!

The Crew starts out with an action packed chase sequence that has you driving a truck offroad in a bid to elude pursuing police. Once you lose them, you enter a race in the nearby city of Detroit. Then…your brother shows up and asks you to accompany him to a gang meeting? Then he gets shot? And you end up in jail until an FBI agent offers to let you out in return for helping her take down a corrupt agent and your brother’s murderer? If this sounds like a rejected plot for a Fast & Furious movie, then you didn’t go ahead and check your brain at the door before jumping into The Crew.  Stellar storytelling is clearly NOT a top priority here, and I found it was better to just tune out the nattering of your NPC friend Zoe whenever she popped up in the corner of the screen.

Once you drive yourself through the Death Star sized plot hole that is the story, things thankfully start to get better. Immediately you are given the cash to buy one of four starter cars before hitting the open road. Then..Zoe shows up again. This will become a common theme, but it seemed that every time I was settling in and enjoying The Crew,  Zoe would pop up to nag me about something. Once you get your first few races out of the way, you are allowed to pretty much do whatever you want. This is where the game really starts to get interesting for me.

The entirety of the United States makes up the map in The Crew. Obviously, its not a 1:1 recreation and I find the selection of cities such as Detroit, New York, etc to be a bit wearing on the eyes. Things get better when you venture west , but I still saw far to much of grey city streets with grey buildings and grey skies. Eschewing the missions Zoe constantly tried to foist off on me, I decided to take a drive from Detroit to New York. The game let me do that without throwing any invisible walls in my way, much to my (pleasant) surprise. Even more pleasantly, as I cruised the highways at ludicrous speeds, slamming into tour buses full of unsuspecting victims and incurring no discernible penalty aside from the few seconds it required me to accelerate back to top speed, I came across challenges. One had me launching my car off of a ramp towards a landing zone. The further I jumped, the more points. Another had me slaloming in and out of gates littered along the highway. They provided nice diversions and gave me hope that driving in the game would be overall entertaining.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t appear to be the case. While I am aware that the game is in Beta, I found no such distractions when I chose to venture westward from Detroit to Salt Lake City. Instead, I was greeted by a bland expanse of open road, populated by overly chatty players whom I could not seem to turn off in my voice comms…and not single challenge to be seen.

Fortunately, the game is decent looking. Some people will argue that it looks great. And it probably does on console. Unfortunately, much like the recent Watch_ Dogs,  the game is merely competent on PC. Textures are of mixed quality, the frame rate is locked to 30 FPS and the damage modeling on the cars is so awful I actually stopped and searched the options menu for a way to turn it off. Mud and snow effects stick to the bottom of your screen, and while they are a nice touch at first, they quickly become distracting. The in car view is nicely detailed, but utterly impractical for long term driving.  It is noteworthy that I was unable to find any of the offroad races, and I will update this article once I do.

You might be thinking to yourself that I seem to have very mixed impressions of The Crew so far. Truthfully, I do. Once I did a little judicious tweaking and unlocked the games 30 FPS artificial cap, it went a long way towards solving the niggling control issues I had. That being said, the lack of things to do and the somewhat lifeless feel of the open world have me concerned going forwards. Is the game fun to play? You bet it is. The customization, sense of speed (even at 30 FPS) and overall presentation (aside from Zoe. SHUT UP ZOE!) are slick, polished and well implemented. I look forward to what Ivory Tower will do with their new IP. Unfortunately, unless something drastic changes, I won’t be seeing to much of it as I can’t justify paying full retail price for The Crew if the final game doesn’t improve by leaps and bounds over this beta.

Check out my video impressions below: