Anthem may be out in February of the far-off future year of 2019, but it looks like anyone wanting to hop into a Javelin and do an exo-suit assisted hurricanrana off the top rope (Citation needed), will be able to do so as early as next month. If you’re lucky enough that is. EA and Bioware have announced that Anthem will drop a closed alpha test in early December, for PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4.

By Dylan ‘Dib’ Brown The time zone was awkward, but this weekend signified the lifting of the Non-Disclosure Agreement for Artifact, Valve’s new card game based on the Dota 2 universe. Yours truly was finally able to stream and write about the game. So let’s get the first article out to share our thoughts on an underrated aspect of Artifact …

Say what you want about BETAs being glorified timed demos, but they’re genuinely are useful slices of gameplay that allows developers to receive some necessary feedback to help them rejigger the parts of a game that just aren’t working. Take Fallout 76 for example, as Bethesda’s upcoming life after the apocalypse simulation is in need of plenty of fine-tuning ahead of its release next week.

A chuffing 30 gigglebytes of patching needs to be done to Fallout 76, with fixes ranging from minor to massive thanks to exploits such as a frame-rate bug that allows people to pretend that they’re the Flash as they scoot away from danger.

Fallout 76 is currently in beta, and it’s got a lot of bugs, but that’s to be expected. Not just because it’s a beta, but also because it’s a great big Bethesda game. The game is being developed using the same engine that runs Fallout 4, so it has a lot in common with the game that had players wandering around Boston, collecting junk and building settlements. It appears to be just as easy to mod.

Fallout 76 feels far more familiar than you might expect, but charges you with adapting to its new rules and co-operative play in a big way.

Fallout 76 is a big game. It’s also a big game that’s made by Bethesda, so it’s going to have numerous bugs, glitches and otherwise unwanted issues. Bethesda even warned users to expect “spectacular” bugs, asking users to help find them during the beta process. There's already one big one..and it's in the beta client.

Bad news: You can’t play Fallout 76 right meow. Good news: You can play it on Saturday, as the game’s stress test will kick off on October 13. Provided that you meet several requirements.