Yogscast has unveiled the 2014 Jingle Jam charity drive, a special event that runs throughout December in support of five worthy causes. Last year's Jingle Jam raised nearly $1.1 million dollars, and this year the cheery casters are hoping for even more.

The Jingle Jam 2014 will feature members of the Yogscast family appearing on Twitch every night throughout December, playing games, taking on challenges, and just generally having all sorts of holiday-spirited fun. Fans who donate $5 or more to the Jam will be given a special Team Fortress 2 item, while those who kick in $25 or more will be awarded a special bundle of games through the good folks at the Humble Bundle, details of which will be revealed on December 1. Money raised through the event will go to support Mind, Doctors Without Borders/MSF, Flora and Fauna International, Special Effect, and End Polio Now.

The Yogscast 2014 Jingle Jam will get underway at 6 pm GMT on December 1 at Twitch.tv/yogscast.

Possibly just to keep me from pressing my sad face up against their office windows, the decksmiths at Blizzard have given PC Gamer an exclusive card to reveal from Goblins vs Gnomes, the next Hearthstone expansion, which is due out this December.

And here he is. Say konnichiwa to the Iron Sensei, a 3 mana rare Rogue card. The Sensei joins the swiftly-growing ranks of mech minions being introduced by the new set. He s so happy to be amongst his mech mates that at the end of each turn he ll give a friendly one +2/+2.

There s some nice potential synergy here with the other new Rogue minion revealed, the Goblin Auto-Barber. Drop both on Turn 5 with a dagger already in play and you d likely be in pretty good shape.

I like to think of the card as somewhere between a robots-only Shattered Sun Cleric and a Blood Imp, because the Sensei's buff also occurs each turn. That means he's going to be such a priority to remove for your opponent that the card might as well have Taunt too. Perhaps sneaky Rogues will start using Conceal to help keep this stats generator alive for longer. And there s also a Spare Part card which gives a creature Stealth for a turn to consider, although that'll be a lot less reliable.

Let us know what you think about the card in the comments. I ll obviously be including two copies in all my Rogue decks in perpetuity as a sign of gratitude, even if the Sensei ends up being the new Magma Rager. (Which he won t. I actually think he s pretty good value.) You can also check out some thoughts on the other recent card reveals in our gallery here.

Gemini Rue

The GOG Autumn Sale is concluding this weekend with a couple of opportunities to hit the deals you may have missed out on the first time around. All of the games featured during "flash sales" throughout the promotion are available until 2 pm GMT (that's 9 am EST) on November 23, after which all of the daily bundles will go back on sale for another 48 hours.

On the off-chance you haven't inflicted enough pain on your bank balance already, here are a few helpful suggestions on ways to inflict more pain on your wallet: Unmechanical for $2. The Witcher Enhanced Edition for $1.50. FTL: Advanced Edition for $5. Legend of Grimrock for $7.50. Divine Divinity for $3. Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena for $7.50. Gemini Rue for $5.

And yes, I'm obviously picking out the stuff that turns my crank, but there's a lot more than just this—16 pages of games in all. There's a "Movies For Gamers" bundle on tap as well, if you'd like to sink some time into watching instead of playing, and if you've been collecting stamps, don't forget to grab your Witcher 2 freebie. 

Some of these deals are time-limited, so if you don't want to feel silly for missing it again, I'd suggest not dawdling.

This morning, Dell  announced it is now shipping the Alienware Alpha, the company's all-in-one gaming "console" PC originally marketed as a Steam Machine earlier this year. The Alpha comes at four price points—$550, $700, $800, and $900—and ships with an Xbox 360 Wireless controller, given that Valve's Steam controller was delayed into 2015, just like the finalized SteamOS.

The low-end model features an Intel Core i3-4130T dual-core processor clocked up to 2.9 GHz, a customized 2GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 860M GPU, 4GB of DDR3 RAM and a 500GB internal hard drive. The $699 model doubles the memory and internal storage but keeps the other components the same.

The $799 model bumps the processor up to a quad-core i5-4590T clocked up to 3.0 GHz, while the top-end $899 SKU goes all out with an i7-4765T clocked to 3.0 and 2TB of internal storage. All four models sport Wireless AC and Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity, four USB ports—two 2.0 on the front and two 3.0 on the back—and connections for all your standard Ethernet, HDMI, and optical audio cables.

The console has been designed for easy upgradeability, allowing users to swap in a newer CPU or more RAM. The GPU, unfortunately, won't be upgradable. The Alpha's GPU is based off the Nvidia 860M, which is already outdated compared to Nvidia's 970M and 980M mobile GPUs released in October. The 860M should be more than capable of streaming, but it's not going to fare well against the most demanding games releasing in late 2014 and beyond. Alienware claims its overclocked 860M will be up to the task of 1080p gaming, but it's notably running on 2GB of GDDR5, unlike the 4GB Maxwell version in 860M-equipped gaming laptops. At $550, though, the Alpha is far more affordable than those laptops.

Out of the box, the machine loads up Alpha UI—a controller-minded interface designed by Alienware—but it can be configured to boot directly into Steam Big Picture mode or Windows 8.1. In other words, you can treat the Alpha like a standard desktop PC, a plug-and-play console, or something of a hybrid—whatever suits your fancy.

Frontier Developments founder David Braben says the studio will re-examine its Elite: Dangerous refund policy in the face of ongoing complaints from fans unhappy about the recent elimination of offline play. The change comes just a couple of days after Braben declared that anyone who has already played the game in either alpha or beta testing will not be eligible for a refund.

"We initially declined some people's request for refund as our records showed they have already played Elite: Dangerous online," Braben wrote in a forum post that went up yesterday. "After listening to many of the comments I received after my AMA here, we have since re-opened these requests and informed those people that we will be contacting them so that we can fully understand their individual situation before making a more informed decision. We will be contacting them each in the next few working days."

Elite: Dangerous was initially intended to support offline play, but Braben said earlier this week that it had been cut. It will still support single-player gameplay, but a constant connection to the internet will be required.

We wouldn't normally publish individual workarounds for specific game bugs, but the launch of Assassin's Creed: Unity has been ugly enough to warrant an exception. And this isn't actually for a specific bug, nor is it guaranteed to fix anything, but if you're having problems with the game crashing at the main menu, Ubisoft recommends you delete all of your game contacts. Yes, you read that right. 

The latest addition to the Assassin's Creed: Unity live update site says Ubisoft has discovered "one of the issues that may cause the game to crash at the main menu after pressing the 'continue' button." A fix is in the works, although there's no ETA at this point, and in the meantime, if you haven't been affected by the bug, there are two things you can do to keep it from making you miserable.

Step one: Do not add any "in-game recent player" as a game contact.

Step two: If you already have any game contacts, ditch them. All of them. Don't waste time apologizing. Do it now. Quickie instructions on doing so: My Brotherhood > My Contacts > Game Contacts (using RB/R1) > Focus on a Contact (LS) > More Actions (Y/Triangle) > Remove from contacts.

Getting rid of all your contacts doesn't seem like an ideal solution for a game that was billed so heavily as a multiplayer experience, but better playing alone than not at all, I suppose. If you experience crashes at the main menu even after cutting all your contacts loose, then Ubisoft asks that you please file a ticket at the official support site.

Welcome to this week's Playfire rewards bulletin where we outline all the great offers and rewards appearing on the Playfire service and Green Man Gaming. Don't forget if you sign up to Playfire, you actually earn rewards and incentives for playing games you love - how good is that?

This week s special Deal of The Day is an impressive 75% off Creative Assembly s epic Total War series.

With Total War: Attila announced for 2015, and a raft of new expansions for the classic Rome: Total War 2 this year, this is the perfect time to discover the heritage of Creative Assembly s superb real-time strategy series.

If you ve never played the Total War series you re in for a treat! First you ll need to rule the strategic map, marshalling your cities and economy to build up your forces, while using diplomacy to weaken your enemies. Then it s a move onto the impressive 3D battlefield to show off your generalship, ruling with cunning tactics and iron disciple as you deploy your forces, rout your enemies and crush all before you.

So head on over to Green Man Gaming Deal of the Day and from Friday 21^st until Sat 22^nd November fill your boots with the following:

Rome: Total War inc. Barbarian Invasion

Rome: Total War Collection

Medieval II: Total War

Medieval II: Total War Collection

Napoleon: Total War

Napoleon: Total War Collection

Total War: Shogun 2

Total War: Shogun 2 Collection

Not enough to sate your gaming appetite? Well, keep an eye peeled on Deal of the Day on Sat 22^nd Nov 4pm until Sun 23^rd -- for Renegade Ops and Binary Domain deals, with 75% off both base games and both complete collections (full game and DLC).

Still not done? Well on Sunday 23^rd it's Skullgirls!

Monday 24^th -- features a wealth of Sega Classic Titles

Head over to the Deal of the Day each day to bag a real bargain.

Right now you can also get this 20% voucher to use on these and thousands of other titles by just using this code!

NOVEMB-ERGMGX-20XOFF

Also out now is the fantastic Dragon Age Inquisition - get this great game and some of the very latest titles at market beating prices, only for logged in VIP customers - sign in to GMG and visit http://www.greenmangaming.com/vip/

Also this week there is another fantastic raft of Playfire Rewards that can be earned by simply playing the games you love.

Join Playfire now to get an exclusive 25% off reward voucher that you can use on any PC download game on GMG. You just need to connect your Steam and Playfire accounts.

Visit https://www.playfire.com/a/rewards for more information on rewards that are live right this second!

Have a great gaming weekend on GMG and Playfire…

What exactly is the point of advanced graphics technology if you can't boast the shiniest butts? Luckily for us, we can. Nvidia has posted some PS4-vs-PC comparison shots of Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes, and they confirm what we all secretly hoped. Our Snake's butt will gleam like no other.

The two shots can be compared over at the Nvidia site. Here's the first, (the one with the butt tech). The second is slightly more dramatic: showing the increased detail available for the PC release.

In addition, Nvidia has listed the technical achievements of this upcoming port. It's a significant upgrade from its console equivalents, featuring the following:

• 60 FPS frame rate
• Additional deferred lights per scene
• Additional shadows per scene
• Higher-resolution render targets
• Higher-resolution shadows
• Increased detail over distances
• NVIDIA SLI Multi-GPU support
• Options to adjust seven graphics features (Effects, Lighting, Screen Filtering, Shadows, Texture Filtering, Textures)
• Resolution support up to and including 3840x2160 (4K)
• Screen Space Reflections

What does this all require? The system requirements for Ground Zeroes were released a couple of days ago.

Ground Zeroes is due out on 18 December.

Earlier this week, we were introduced to Lost Ark—a beautiful looking ARPG that can succinctly described as Diablo x10. Now, a new and even longer trailer has emerged. It's twenty minutes of people super-biffing baddies while a narrator explains it all.

It still looks pretty great, and has an admirable number of classes to take charge of. Unfortunately, we still don't know when it's due for release, or even if it'll see a Western launch.