In the world of Hearthstone there are a lot of well known players, and one of them who is known as one of the best Hearthstone Arena players in the world is Hafu Chan. However, Hafu is female and that means that she has to put up with some stuff that people would never dream of directing towards a male player.

Now such issues and experiences are being shown off in a ten-minute documentary about the subject entitled “The Trials of a Female Esports Champion” in which she is interviewed about the abuse she has faced both now as a Hearthstone player and streamer, but also before that when she was a WoW pro player as well. She was previously turned off from that game’s competitive scene by such incidents as the time a team formed for a WoW Tournament Realm called “Gonna Rape Hafu At Regionals”. Just, wow.

In the documentary she talks about this and also why even though she loves Hearthstone, she’s thinking about walking away from streaming it for similar reasons.

“When you have 70,000 people watching a stream, and all you see is terrible things being said about you, it’s kind of like, why am I competing?” she says. “[Viewers] know to press where it hurts, right? And when you kind of show where it hurts, people will just keep pressing.”

Of course, there are some watching who claim that she has it wrong and that the abuse and harassment does not come from her being female – but simply because she is a streamer and therefore should expect such insults and attacks upon her person. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never seen a male livestreamer being told that said commenter would love to “rape them” or tell them that they’re only using their bodies to get them attention for their videos (not specific examples from Hafu’s video but commonly seen around many websites sadly). All streamers get trolls, but females are significantly more likely to get abuse related to reducing them to nothing more than their appearance or something to have sex with.

Either way, whether you disagree or agree with what Hafu is saying I’d recommend at least giving the video a watch. It’s just ten minutes of your life after all.

Kick or Die is a stationary beat-em-up by Boomfire Games reminiscent of One-Finger-Death-Punch except, you guessed it, the game uses your gams and not your guns.

The title is incredibly accurate. In this game, you either kick, or you die, and you can take 3 hits per stage before you give up the ghost. I encountered a few different kinds of reflex-testing enemies while playing; the basic black-clothed ninjas who die in one hit, seemingly mask-wearing ninjas who take one kick and rise up again for another mouthful of foot, and the white ninjas who attempt to trick you by dodging your first kick and appearing on the other side of you. Those in particular gave me trouble. But never fear, because each successful kick builds a meter for your ultimate attack, which conjures some sort of serpentine creature and launches tornadoes on either side of the player character that clear the map when you get a little too overwhelmed.

I am always a sucker for a nice art style, and this game doesn’t disappoint. Set in aesthetically pleasing Asian-themed pixel art backgrounds, the graphics, music, and sfx harken back to the old side scrolling arcade games of yore.

This game boasts 10k downloads on the Play Store with an overall rating of 4.4, however upon installation it asked for a surprising amount of credentials including access to my camera, microphone, and location. Somewhat worrying for a game of this kind, but nothing worth deterring a download.

I died a lot while playing, my reflexes are not what they used to be and mobile games are not my forte. Unfortunately this meant I encountered a lot of ads, which play almost every time you go through a loading screen. Typically I could skip them after 5 seconds, but the sheer amount was off-putting. The game also features a system of continues. You get a certain amount of continues, I believe I started with a maximum of 9, and a ten-minute timer replenishes them one at a time. Fortunately for both of these issues, for the paltry sum of .99c you can permanently banish the ads and give yourself infinite continues for unlimited, uninterrupted play. Honestly I believe that’s quite a fair deal given the content of the game.

In closing, I don’t regret the download and I’d recommend giving it a shot if you’ve got a buck to spare on removing the ads and enjoyed One-Finger-Death-Punch enough to want a mobile version with pretty pixel art.

My rating: 3.5/5, would probably have been higher without ads.

Kick or Die is available for Android and iOS

After yesterday’s news about Rodeo Games and their apparent shutdown after the less than optimal sales of their latest game release – Warhammer 40,000: Deathwatch – it seems that the studio might not be as done as it sounded.

Despite the comments from Matthew Spencer, an ex-Rodeo staff member, the studio is not shutting down but rather “taking a break” according to the studio themselves. In the meantime they will continue to support their titles, both on mobile platforms and the ones that have made their way onto Steam.

However Deathwatch has cost the studio more than it managed to make back though, as the team is not developing any new games at the moment although they continue to work on the games they already have out and will make plans for future releases “at an appropriate time”.

“As reported some of the team left the studio back in November, after we’d shipped the iOS and PC versions of Deathwatch,” Rodeo told us via email. “Since then the core team have been working on new platforms for Deathwatch, one of which we’ll be announcing shortly!

“Despite Deathwatch being the best game we’ve created as a studio and our highest rated metacritic game, the changes in market have meant that we are unable to continue development as we’d initially planned. Coupled with some personal issues within the team, Rodeo Games are currently taking a break from developing any new titles. The team will continue to support our existing titles.”

They also took the time to thank fans, as well as Games Workshop who owns the Warhammer IP that the studio makes use of for their games.

“We’ll announce our plans for future releases at the appropriate time. We intend to carry on making the games we love, for the people who love them.”

Space is awesome. Spaceships are awesome. And blowing things up in spaceships is…well…awesome. With that bit of wisdom out of the way, it seems that Frontier Developments has decided to make Elite: Dangerous just a bit more accessible with the launch of Elite Dangerous: Arena. They’ve taken the Close Quarters Combat (CQC) mode of the full game and made it available as a stand alone for just $7.49. CQC pits teams of 4 against each other in fast moving space battles. Players can choose from one of 4 ships, level up and customize their craft in three different modes. Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch and Capture the Flag are all available for those budding Luke Skywalkers out there.

Having sunk a fair amount of time into Elite:Dangerous, I have some experience with CQC. Having it as a standalone mode is an interesting decision, and should hopefully expose more people to Elite without the intimidating massive galaxy of the full game. However, it should be noted that as of the time of this writing, I have spent upwards of 30 minutes in queue waiting for a Capture the Flag match. This is nothing new, and as I primarily enjoy objective based game modes, has reaffirmed my opinion that CQC has nothing to offer to my playstyle. If you enjoy TDM though, give it a try.

If you were thinking about getting the season pass for Fallout 4, one of the most popular games of last year, you’d probably better get it soon if you want to pay less. The price has been confirmed to be going up as a result of the 3 pieces of upcoming DLC.

Starting from March Fallout 4 is going to be getting a new DLC once a month, the first being Automatron that will introduce new robotic material and enemies as well as letting you use their parts to construct your own robots. After that we’ll get Wasteland Workshop that will allow for the entrapment and possible taming of several creatures across the Commonwealth as well as new settlement building options and finally a new adventure with Nick Valentine as you’re introduced to the island of Far Harbor in the DLC of the same name – the largest and therefore most costly of the upcoming DLCs.

Automatron will retail at $9.99 in the US, £7.99 in the UK and $16.95 in Australia; Wasteland Workshop will cost $4.99/£3.99/$7.95 AUD; and Far Harbor will cost $24.99/£19.99/$39.95 AUD. Bethesda have also said that they plan to introduce “up to $60” worth of more Fallout material over the year.

Obviously the season pass does allow you to get access to all this DLC and at the moment it is priced at $29.99 US, £24.99 UK and $49.95 Aus. From March 1st it is due to increase to $49.99 US, £39.99 UK and $79.95 AUD which is quite an increase in price.

So if you want to keep up to date with what’s happening in the Commonwealth, you’d better move fast. Your time’s running out.