Steam sales may be landmarks on the PC gaming discount calendar, but there is one event that's altogether rarer. A Blizzard sale comes but once a year: like Christmas, if, instead of reindeer, there were an all-consuming race of insectoid aliens.

This year, Starcraft 2, Diablo 3 and World of Warcraft all have deals. Here's your selection:

• Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty - 8.50/$10
• Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm -  8.50/$10
• Diablo 3 - 16.50/$20
• Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls - 16.50/$20
• World of Warcraft - 4/$5

For WoW, you're also getting all pre-Draenor expansions bundled in—up to and including Mists of Pandaria.

Honestly, all of them are good in their own way, and the Starcraft 2 discounts are particularly nice.

All of Blizzard's Black Friday discounts are set to run until Tuesday, 2 December.

To celebrate, here is a picture of PC Gamer's official sale mascot, The Stoat:

Image Source: Judi Mahon, via BBC.

A new Humble Bundle is live. This time it's Sega's catalogue that's being plumbed for a pay-what-you-want bag of games. That should be a good selection for PC gamers—Sega have become a safe haven for some of our best strategy game developers. But while there are some undeniable classics, the whole thing is a bit... odd.

Here's the list:

Pay-what-you-want

• Dreamcast Collection (Sonic Adventure DX, Space Channel 5 Part 2, Crazy Taxi and Sega Bass Fishing)
• NiGHTS Into Dreams
• Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed
• Total War: Rome 2 - Caesar In Gaul DLC
• Miles' Tactic DLC for Football Manager 2015

Beat the average

• Empire: Total War
• Company of Heroes 2 - The Western Front Armies: Oberkommando West

Pay $12 or more

• Total War: Shogun 2 - Fall of the Samurai

There's some good stuff in there. Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed is a lot of fun, and thus the best Sonic game in decades. Empire: Total War is good, and Shogun 2: Fall of the Samurai is great. But it's strange that the bundle dials down so much on DLC for games that it doesn't also include. It's not like Sega don't have an extensive PC catalogue to draw from.

Company of Heroes 2's DLC is the exception in that it's a standalone thing that gives you access to that game's multiplayer—albeit with limited options. Fall of the Samurai is also standalone, although I'm not sure why, for the increased price, it doesn't also include the bigger main game.

The bundle runs for the next two weeks, and more games are promised down the line. And, as always, the bundle also benefits a selection of charities—including AbleGamers, Special Effect, The Willow Foundation and GamesAid.

Floppy-haired 90s washout Leon is targeted by a sniper on a creaky old bridge somewhere in Eastern Europe. He s a ten-second sprint away from the gunman but walled-in by a mob of zombies in casualwear, the sort of clothing you can get away with if you re out shopping but is plainly unacceptable if you re eating at a restaurant. I headshot one of the goons, then perform a sweeping QTE kick that takes a couple of heads off and clears the mob out the way. I dive roll through the laser sight so the first shot misses, sprint along the bridge into a diving skid before arriving on a knee slide and shotgunning the sniper in the face from a low angle for an instant kill.

This is Resident Evil 6, and that focus on ludicrously colourful action is just one reason the majority of older fans hate this modern entry. I enjoyed Resi back when it was a hard-to-control, genuinely frightening adventure with more puzzles than action, but I have as much affection for the last three mainline entries. There s sophistication buried in Resi 6 s bloated 30-hour wodge of noisy campaign.

That s where Mercenaries, Resi s longrunning horde mode, comes in. Tackle the campaign s versatile movement, headshot QTEs and wide radius melee attacks in seven-minute bursts against 150 enemies in tailor-made combat arenas, and suddenly the language of this critically savaged game starts to make sense. I m not sure if Resi 6 Mercenaries is actually good or not, but I seem to have played 20 hours in about two weeks, and the cycle of headshots, melee attacks and choice of movement abilities has seen me shun an array of new releases in favour of watching Chris Redfield pick up a zombie by the crotch and head, before lobbing it into three others and making skulls shatter in tandem.

There s sophistication buried in Resi 6 s bloated 30-hour wodge of noisy campaign.

Each level is intricately laid out, and depending on how well you re able to control the crowds with shotguns, grenades and timed explosives, the dynamic of the battlefield can change instantly. In the brilliant Sea Fortress, I find myself surrounded by snipers on vantage points while sprinting around a huge naval deck. With three laser sights on me, I hit both triggers to perform a jumping dive backwards, avoiding the gunfire in style. On the ground, I switch to magnum and perform precision one-hit kills on every one of my assailants while rolling out the way out of danger, before getting to my feet and finding cover. If only the game actually explained that you can perform such a wide range of cool manoeuvres and on-the-fly counterattacks.

Just as Mercs was getting a bit easy, I selected the PC-exclusive Mercenaries: No Mercy mode instead, which doubles the number of enemies on-screen while also chucking in the cast of Left 4 Dead 2 for some dodgy promotional reason. With 300 enemies to fend off in total, it s nearly impossible to move if you back yourself into a room while looking for health items. But god damn it, performing a QTE spinning kick attack and taking off four heads at once feels spectacular. There s something in the design and violent energy of Resi 6 s combat that I believe is worth championing, even if it makes me sound like a buffoon who s lost all sense of what counts as not shit.

What if there was a third-person shooter that didn t feel tired and derivative, but the campaign was too frequently terrible for you to actually notice? That s how I feel about Resident Evil 6. Am I mad, to enjoy a game that everyone I ve ever known, without exception, considers the worst in the series? Yes, is the answer. Join me.

We're only days away from what the Americans call "Black Friday," and what everyone else in the world calls "What The Hell Is Black Friday?" It signifies a weekend trapped in a dizzying fugue state of frenzy, regret and impulsively purchased cheap games.

Nevertheless, when a particularly good deal emerges, we like to separate it out from the pack—isolate it, if you will. Then, you can hunt it down, and jump out at its lowered price like some unstoppable killing machine.

All of which is to say that Alien: Isolation is currently half-price on the Humble Store. That makes it 16/$25.

That's one of the best prices I've yet seen for the one of our highest rated games of this year. The deal only lasts for the next few hours: ending later today at 6pm GMT.

And now, as was the agreed upon price for news stories about sales, here is a picture of a stoat:

Those waiting to play Dark Souls through Steam following the slow demise of Games For Windows Live will need to wait a bit longer. Publisher Bandai Namco announced on Steam today that the transition will arrive later than expected, and that more information will come in the coming weeks.

"We are working hard to finalize the process to move your Dark Souls: Prepare to Die saves and achievements to Steam," the publisher wrote. "We need to conduct additional testing and we are now targeting December to begin this process. We'll have more information in the coming weeks. Thank you very much for your patience!"

Namco announced the move last month, which will allow owners of Dark Souls to redeem their GFWL tokens on Steam in order to access the game. For a limited time players can also transfer their save data and achievements to Steam, which is good news for anyone forced to suffer the woe that is GFWL.

News about Ubisoft patch notes is becoming as ubiquitous as news about Ubisoft trailers. This time the company has released patch 1.4.0 for Far Cry 4, which purports to solve problems users are having with errant black and grey screens. The former occurs when the affected user tries to boot the game, while the later usually occurs at the end of Outpost Master Missions. 

It's worth noting that some users are reporting the persistence of the black screen error, but Ubisoft has yet to directly acknowledge those complaints. Future patches will address other problems including mouse acceleration, key bindings and black shadows on SLI, but no time frame was specified. 

Ubisoft acknowledged the black screen bug earlier this week, citing "the presence of conflicting peripherals" as the culprit. It follows a pretty disastrous month for Ubisoft on PC: Assassin's Creed: Unity's next patch will clear up 300 bugs. 

I've always thought that Warface is somewhat of a strange title for a game, mainly because I can't read it without imagining R. Lee Ermey screaming in my face and telling me I don't scare him. Which isn't really relevant to the recent announcement of an upcoming Warface expansion set in the chilly mountains of Sibera, but I can't stop thinking about it nonetheless.

Operation Cold Peak will add three new maps to the game, leading to a secluded stronghold in the Altai Mountains. It will require a particular focus on team-based play, as each map is filled with enemies boasting "advanced tactical AI," along with new new bosses and even suddenly-appearing blizzards that will "change the state of play."

Crytek's focus on Warface, and on the free-to-play market in general, caused the studio no small amount of grief over the summer, but the situation has seemingly smoothed out. And while Warface isn't great, it's far from the worst thing you could do with your time, and it's free, which remains a compelling price point. The expansion will be as well, when it comes out, but at this point a release date has not been announced.

There's tonnes of bugs remaining to be fixed in the notoriously buggy Assassin's Creed: Unity. Over 300 bugs in fact, according to notes for the game's forthcoming patch. It'll be the third patch since the game launched two weeks ago, but it won't be the one to specifically address the game's framerate problems, with Ubisoft writing that this will be the theme of a future patch. 

As for this particular patch, the notes are extensive so you'll want to read them all over here, but some highlights include fewer instances of Arno falling through the bottom of the map, fixes to cooperative matchmaking and a whole host of fixes to specific missions. 

The full notes are of Tolstoyan proportion so set aside an afternoon. It's due to release for PC later this week, and follows a pretty hairy November for Ubisoft, with ongoing issues affecting both Assassin's Creed: Unity and Far Cry 4. Tsk tsk. 

The horror of Five Nights at Freddy s 2 begins and ends with a hallway. Down its dark length lurks walking robot animals out to kill me, and I m only armed with a goofy bear mask and a flashlight. If I light up the hallway, I m treated to snapshots of terror: toothy jaws hanging open at weird angles, outstretched arms of patchy fur and gut-like cables, and eyes with a pinhole-sized glow staring right back at me. The hallway is a funnel of fear.

I peered down that hallway a lot during my roughly six hours playing Freddy s 2, sole developer Scott Cawthon s followup to his first spooky suit stalker simulator released in early August. Cawthon didn't wait long to leverage word-of-mouth popularity and YouTube celebrities horrified faces with a sequel that further establishes his skills at crafting a truly frightening experience.

What I wanted from a Five Nights sequel was more mind games and more uncertainty. I wanted the plodding animatronic suits to find me and rip my face off in new and interesting ways. I wanted working legs. What I got was a horror game dipping heavily into deception and subtlety, a wonderfully cruel cocktail of supernatural mystery and jolts of panicked adrenaline. Enjoying the good parts, though, comes with a cost of a frustratingly steep difficulty.

Once again, I ve made the questionable career move of taking the overnight security shift at a children s pizzeria for a measly pay rate. Strange Things occur among the tiled corridors and empty dining rooms at night, and staying alive entails warding off walking murderous animatronic animals by tracking their movements through grainy camera feeds.

I m still rooted in place with no degree of movement beyond swiveling my head left or right; a slight disappointment to my hopes of freely wandering around. The first game used that restriction as an added layer of stress, and that s effective enough the second time around, but the novelty feels a little worn now. Freddy s world is interesting enough that I want to explore it. I wouldn t mind poking around a corrupted version of Chuck E. Cheese s.

Silly hats only

Cawthon s other gameplay adjustments for Freddy s 2, however, are discernible attempts at reducing passivity. In a fit of corporate penny pinching, the security office s doors are gone, replaced with a single, large hallway yawning into darkness and flanked by two vent entrances. Excusing the fact that whoever designed the place doesn t quite grasp what security means anymore, the room s reconfiguration gives suits multiple angles of entry to threaten the dryness of my pants at any time.

Fending off the fuzzy intrusions involves jamming a Fazbear mask over my head to briefly fool the bots into seeing me as one of them, but I can t check areas or use the cameras while wearing it. Having to choose between safety and awareness was thrillingly stressful, particularly during last-second peeks at the cameras and hallway.

Get used to enemies entering the office at almost a non-stop pace. After the first night, attack frequency ramps up considerably thanks in large part to a new set of suits shambling alongside the original quartet. Bonnie, Chica, Foxy, and Freddy return in various states of disrepair alongside redesigned versions of themselves sporting glossier exteriors and the same vacant, chilling stares. Two new characters round out the bunch: a toothily grinning, balloon-vending boy animatronic and a midnight black puppet that appears exactly like what you d expect a puppet to look like in such a cheery place.

It s these last two newcomers that present the freshest differences to surviving Freddy s 2. Balloon boy doesn t attack directly but instead disables the flashlight, another vital addition. Robbed of the ability to illuminate threats lurking in the hallway, vents, or on horror-cam, I became easy prey—and I quickly learned to hate balloon boy so very much.

The puppet stayed put in his room as long as I was mindful to keep a music box continuously wound with a tinkling tune. Here s perhaps the strongest example of Cawthon s push for increased player activity; whenever I slipped and let the box wind down, the puppet would rush the office and tackle me into an instant game-over. Death by puppet isn t an epitaph I want.

Too much to bear

With the way the mask, flashlight, and music box work in concert, confrontation is inevitable. I appreciated that evolution of the first game s dread-lined sense of inevitability, and the paranormal mystique surrounding the suits and the pizzeria s checkered history is a great backdrop for the inherent creepiness of everything. Crank up the volume for some wonderful ambient noises and helpful auditory cues such as shuffling feet, demonic moans, or shudder-inducing giggling.

Actually skirting death for the full five nights (or seven for an added challenge) is where Freddy s 2 blunders into a few major problems. Most significantly, the constant pressure is astounding. At full swing, I m saving my neck from ten animatronics who aren t exactly receptive to waiting patiently in line. I latched onto those brief moments where nothing happened to soak up the atmosphere, but I wasn t given anything beyond a couple seconds before the craziness resumed.

By the fourth night, I had resorted to parking my camera feed on the music box room and nowhere else—a shame, since this was the same issue that cropped up with the Pirate Cove area from the previous game. I would ve loved more opportunities to explore other rooms and notice more details, but I was too busy keeping the hall lit, flipping the mask on and off, inspecting the vents, and keeping that confounded music box playing.

Veterans of the first game might appreciate having extra tasks to juggle, but dying from a single misclick or for slowing down a tiny bit quickly grew tiresome for me. There were moments where I d simply get overwhelmed and have to step away for a bit to cool down. The enigmatic story and gut-wrenching fear is there in plain sight to enjoy, but I feel the creative theme is somewhat soured with long and exasperating death chains, and that may be the lingering impression new players will have.

The makers of Natural Selection 2 have revealed their next project, Future Perfect, a game about making games—specifically, about "discovering, creating and playing games online with your friends." It's not ready for a full release yet, but gamers willing to deal with the foibles of "earliest access" can pick it up now and take part in the development process by viewing and voting on the studio's internal task tracking system, and playing through daily builds released on Steam.

Future Perfect features a built-in editor that lets players create their own games and share them on the fly, as part of the game itself. "The interface is easy enough for complete beginners to use, but also supports advanced capabilities," the website explains. "It is possible to import art and create gameplay scripts. In Future Perfect, editing isn t a single player affair. Live editing during play is not only possible, it is encouraged!"

The studio says in the Future Perfect development blog that the game was inspired largely by playing mods at LAN parties. It will be made up of two separate parts: various first-person co-op and competitive gameplay modes, and the editor, which will enable the creation of new modes of play. The "Earliest Access" release can only be purchased through the official website—it's "rough" and not yet ready for a proper Early Access launch—but the daily builds will be downloadable through Steam.

"You should only buy Future Perfect right now if you like playing in, breaking, and messing about with unfinished games," the studio warned. "Future Perfect is not a finished game." If a finished game is what you're after, it recommends you sign up for the mailing list instead, or add it to your Steam wishlist. There's currently no word on the expected full launch date.