It's a small thing, but being able to save and quit when I'm playing against the AI is a definite improvement in Warhammer: Blood Bowl. Though matches didn't take a huge amount of time in Blood Bowl 3, there were still nights where I'd find myself with 40 minutes before I should really go to bed thinking I can squeeze another game in, and then realizing too late I absolutely cannot.

A bigger change in Warhammer: Blood Bowl, though one that also makes it easier to squeeze in another match, is Rumble Mode. Based on the tabletop format called Sevens, it's a shrunk-down seven-a-side version of Blood Bowl played on a smaller pitch, inspired by 40K in 40 Minutes and Rugby Sevens. Each half has six turns instead of eight and rerolls cost twice as much, making failure much more common—and since a failed action results in a turnover in Blood Bowl, that speeds up play as well.

Rumble Mode isn't exactly the same as Sevens, though I'm playing the beta so details are subject to change. It doesn't have the Desperate Measures inducements, for instance, and you don't have to make one of your linemen a veteran (who is slower, but can reroll a few specific actions). But it still plays faster, and shakes up the tactics in interesting ways.

There's no line of scrimmage for a start. Instead of having to put three players on the frontline where they'll be biffing or being biffed from the outset, there's a no man's land between both teams. That means fragile teams aren't potentially down three players on turn one, which would be even more disastrous with only seven on the pitch.

The smaller pitch makes slow players less of a liability, and the expensiveness of rerolls means skills that let you reroll, like Dodge, get even better. My beloved Halfling team finally has a place to thrive, especially since their Halfling Master Chef can steal precious rerolls from opponents.

You can learn to play Rumble Mode easily since the first chapter of the campaign, carried over from Blood Bowl 3, now defaults to it. The three beginner games you play as default Ussingen Rookies have become seven-a-side, which makes the second match against Chaos Chosen a bit more challenging—getting the assists you need on those Strength 4 Chosen felt trickier to me.

From there you can opt to play the rest of the campaign in either Rumble Mode or as traditional matches, and Rumble Mode is also available in Eternal League, competitions, friendlies, and basically everywhere. It'll be interesting to see how popular it ends up being.

I don't know if I'm hallucinating, but the AI seems better at handling the reduced scope of these smaller matches. Improving the infamously dopey AI is an aim of Warhammer: Blood Bowl, and while I've only had a few days with this beta it does seem a little better. It still throws the occasional ill-advised block—the skink who took on a mummy must have been feeling real lucky that day—but at least it picks the best block die when it has a choice. I even saw it attempt a pass instead of defaulting to a cage around the ball carrier no matter which team it's playing.

I'll need more time with the playtest version to compare, but my first impression is that the AI is slightly less bad, even if it sometimes attempts a risky play before doing something safe like standing up a prone player. Which, admittedly, I'm guilty of in the heat of the moment too.

As well as Rumble Mode, Warhammer: Blood Bowl incorporates the tabletop game's third season rules update. I'm a big fan of the way it punishes stalling, with bored audience members throwing rocks at players who could score but elect not to, and rewards you with a bonus 10 grand at the end of a match if you don't stall.

The new Secure the Ball action lets you pick up the ball on a 2+ if you sacrifice the rest of that player's activation to do it, while the passing rules have been updated to get rid of Wildly Inaccurate results as well as deflections, both changes that encourage actually playing the ball instead of just lining up two teams and hitting each other until the bell rings.

The way Most Valuable Players are selected is different too—instead of a completely random player on your team earning bonus Star Player Points, only the six players you nominate (four in Rumble Mode) can potentially earn MVP. It means you're not punished for having spares on your bench by having them soak up Star Player Points you'd rather see go to someone more useful.

It's still the same Blood Bowl, but with some interesting tweaks. Changes that affect the balance or play out over the course of a tournament, like the Hatred trait players can gain after being injured, will take more time to judge, but I'm positive about the rules update so far.

Other positives in Warhammer: Blood Bowl are a landing page with tiles that can be personalized so you can leap right into whichever mode or ongoing competition you've put a pin in, and a player advancement screen that highlights which three skills other players tend to buy in this situation, with percentages for each. Is everyone else picking Guard for their mummies? Yeah, pretty much. It'll save me alt-tabbing out to see what the internet recommends when I'm playing a new team.

The beta doesn't include either of the new teams coming to Warhammer: Blood Bowl, so I haven't had a chance to try the Tomb Kings or Bretonnians. It also doesn't have the shop or season pass, so how that'll be implemented—and if there are changes to how teams are monetized—remains to be seen.

Warhammer: Blood Bowl's playtest will be available to the public from October 7 on Steam. The full release is scheduled to be out by the end of the year.

Total War: Warhammer 3's Lords of the End Times expansion is huge, which is great for us but not so great for all the modders who need to update their work to be compatible with it. SFO Grimhammer 3, a popular total overhaul mod, isn't currently compatible with Total War: Warhammer 3 version 9.0, but its creators are working hard to get it there.

It must be galling then to see someone vibe-coding your mod to be compatible with the update, then reuploading it as their own—just another of the AI-coded submods of your work plastered across the Steam Workshop, usually with some ugly AI-generated artwork as the cherry on top.

"Due to the growing number of unauthorized reuploads of SFO: Grimhammer III," Venris, the mod's creator, posted on Patreon, "and more importantly, the use of AI in the process, I have deliberately corrupted the mod to prevent it from functioning with such unauthorized uploads. If this situation continues to escalate, I will make SFO: Grimhammer III private.

"SFO: Grimhammer is the result of nearly ten years of passion and love for this community and the fantasy world. As such, I do not permit anyone to take my work without permission. Especially not for AI-related purposes."

Venris concluded with the call to "Support modders, not AI" and a note that "SFO mods were, are and always will be free for everyone as long as I am here. No paywall."

I don't use SFO Grimhammer 3 myself, as a fairly vanilla player who sticks to camera enhancements and the like, but I understand the frustration. A look at recent mods for games like Skyrim or Project Zomboid shows a deluge of AI, with the comments on every one a list of complaints about how they don't work as advertised.

SFO's temporary sabotage seems to have had the desired effect of drawing attention to the problem, and Venris has now restored the mod to its previous state. "Thank you all for the support you have shown regarding the issue of my work being appropriated through the use of AI", he wrote in another Patreon post. "I appreciate both the supportive comments and the critical ones. Because of the discussion surrounding this matter, I have decided to restore a working version of SFO: Grimhammer III for game version 8.1.1 on Steam.

"I know that my actions will not stop those who choose to appropriate the work of other modders, but they have at least helped bring attention to a problem that is currently affecting the Steam Workshop of our beloved game. For weeks, the Workshop has been flooded with a wave of modifications created entirely using AI. I sincerely hope that the right people will take action so that we can all continue to share our work without fear of it being taken away by others.

"The use of AI in modding is a hot topic. I would simply add that AI should serve as a tool that supports modding, not replace it, and that is how it should remain."

Masters of Albion's 'New Beginnings' update launches today, and it overhauls and upgrades many of the original early access release's systems. The above video gives an overview of what's new.

I bought Masters of Albion when it launched in April. But after scoping out what's new in this update, I feel the moment that I and, no doubt, many other PC gamers have been waiting for has arrived: it's the moment when Peter Molyneux's final title has properly started to take form and genuinely recapture the god game magic of old.

Here is what's new in Masters of Albion, with commentary from Peter Molyneux on each new feature. This is followed by my personal take on the New Beginnings update.

Engine performance just doubled

Nighttime gameplay is overhauled

There's a brand new, card-based Arcadium

Product orders now are narrative lead

The design table has been reworked

The Orkenstone now warps the landscape

The god hand has been upgraded

Masters of Albion's start has been enhanced

Mysterious new colossal structures now exist

My take on New Beginnings

Speaking candidly, before the New Beginnings update I struggled to recommend Masters of Albion to most PC gamers. And this was because, at launch, I felt the game was lightweight, even for an early access game. It had plenty of god game systems, sure, such as building and settlement construction, product manufacturing, and combat (strategic and action), and yes, there was the famous god hand of old to wield, but much like the game's rudimentary opening, the well of what you could actually do with those systems soon ran dry.

Be that the repetitive nature of product manufacturing, the eventual grind of nighttime, or the limited way in which you could impact the world with your god hand, what you could do made you recall Molyneux's great games of old, such as Dungeon Keeper, Black & White, and Fable, but you were left wanting more, as the systems were not as complex, fleshed out, or varied.

Molyneux has since described the original release of Masters of Albion as an 'initial sketch' of a game, and in many respects that is to be expected from the very first version of an early access game, but when you're trying to combine multiple parts of other genres together for your game, individual genres that in single-genre releases tend to flesh out their core loop at the earliest moment as it is all they deliver, rather than just a facet of what they deliver, it feels a harder sell to convince gamers to get invested when your game's systems start off in a more unfinished state.

To me, this ability to combine multiple genres together has always been where Molyneux has been at his creative, magical best, delivering unique experiences not offered elsewhere. But combining genres also poses its own problems, with the two most pressing being the depth of the systems and how they interact. You need the systems, such as city building and RTS combat, to be good enough to stand on their own and combine into something new, as otherwise the draw for gamers to just go play the single-genre game that does, say, RTS combat better will be too strong. Molyneux hit this problem in Black & White 2.

The good news is that the updates that New Beginnings bring all seem to directly address these two fundamental aspects in both fleshing out the bare-bones original early access release, or overhauling its core systems for the better, while adding extra interactivity and strategic weight. And I genuinely think those changes shift the game up to a whole new level. Suddenly Masters of Albion feels like a proper PC release and, while far from finished, is now in an early access state where I feel I can recommend it to god game fans, as well as PC gamers interested in getting a taste of this old-school PC gaming genre.

The game's engine optimisation is also a huge deal. This was my number one criticism from playing the game at launch. Despite having a powerful gaming PC, I struggled to hit 30 fps at times, despite the game not being a AAA graphical powerhouse. A much higher fps is going to make a big difference.

Finally, what I consider to be the really tantalising addition in this update, though, is the appearance of these mysterious colossal structures that dominate the skyline—especially because they are called out in the New Beginnings press release, which asks if they are "a link to the past or a foreshadowing of the future?" This, along with Molyneux's cryptic commentary above, indicates that Masters of Albion could very well be heading towards introducing Black & White-style giant avatars in a future update. If these are added, and we continue to see this level of acting on community feedback to refine and upgrade in-game systems, maybe Masters of Albion really will evolve into the ultimate god game. And that would be a fitting swansong for the man who created the genre.

I cannot stop thinking about this user review for Star Wars Zero Company written by someone horrified to learn turn-based tactics games exist.

Today Creative Assembly dropped a video summarising all the tweaks coming with the Shogun 2 remaster. One of the coolest additions for me, was that we're getting updated cinematics in traditional Japanese woodblock style.

Don't worry, though, there's also a toggle that lets you revert the cinematics back to the originals if you prefer the nostalgic experience, so you can still enjoy your Shinobi fumbling assassinations in the funniest ways possible.

Warhammer 40,000! It's absolutely everywhere. You can't leave the house without almost stepping on an ork (which hurts even worse than stepping on Lego) these days. It's on your table, in your book shops, even on the TV, but the place you're most likely to encounter 40k is on your PC.

Since PC Gamer is, humbly, the global authority on PC games, we naturally have some thoughts on 40k. So I've gathered my fellow 40k freaks, Jody and Sean, to share our strongest held beliefs about Warhammer 40,000 and its PC game adaptations. And you can express your agreement or outrage by voting "good and pure" or "heretical" underneath each opinion.

Warhammer 40k is silly but the videogames take it way too seriously

Warhammer is deeply rooted in satire and parody. It's incredibly silly. This might be a touch more overt in the fantasy universe, but 40k certainly isn't meant to be taken seriously. We are talking about a setting where humanity is ruled by the corpse of psychic Jesus, and where space fascists fight space elves and frequently annihilate entire planets.

It is incredibly, wonderfully dumb.

But often it's presented with a straight face. It can sometimes seem like we're meant to just find all this edgelord stuff incredibly cool, rather enjoying it for the absurdity. And this has largely been promoted by Games Workshop, but I would love for the adaptations to embrace this seemingly forgotten side of 40k—to acknowledge the silliness or use the setting to say something, to dig back down to its satirical roots, even if it's just so we can have a good laugh. I mean, c'mon, the first ever inquisitor depicted in 40k was called Obiwan Sherlock Clousseau.

The Space Marine games kinda suck

When my former colleague Robin Valentine gave Space Marine 2 a score of 60% in his review last year, he got a lot of shit for it. Allow me to humbly offer an alternative perspective: he was actually incredibly generous.

I will never understand the love for either Space Marine game—because they're bad. Sure, they look great, perfectly capturing both the 40k aesthetic and the hefty feel of the tank-like Space Marines. But they are a chore to play. With the campaigns being as short and linear as they are, there's just no excuse for the endless repetition. It turns out there is a limit to how many times you can execute a tyranid or an ork before it becomes rote. If you've played either game for 30 minutes, you've seen everything.

These are dreary, po-faced games that, in a sane universe, would at best be considered briefly fun diversions that never actually go anywhere. And it's wild to see Wolverine—the punching bag of the moment—getting so much flak for being only a bit more rudimentary than Space Marine 2, a game that is inexplicably loved.

We need more 40k RPGs and fewer strategy games

Please put down the lasguns. Look, I'm a strategy boy. I love Dawn of War, I love Mechanicus, and Total War: Warhammer 40k looks like it might be the best thing Creative Assembly has ever made. I don't want any of them to go away. But I have played so many 40k strategy games, both on my PC and my tabletop. Now I want something different.

I blame the Black Library. I only started reading 40k novels a few years ago, but nearly every book has made me think, "Damn, this would be a cool RPG." Not a strategy game.

Rogue Trader may have been rough at launch, but after putting around 150 hours into it since then, I can safely say that it's one of my favourite CRPGs. Thank goodness Dark Heresy is on its way. But being the greedy lad that I am, I want more! 40k may have started as a strategy game, but it's the setting that's given it this incredible staying power, and an RPG might just be the best way to experience it.

Games Workshop needs to give Wolf Guard Terminators their thunder hammers back

My Wolf Guard Terminators are my pride and joy. My big, burly vikings stride into battle with thunder hammers and storm shields, and have done for years. But no more. Thunder hammers are out. The new WGT models might as well be a completely different unit, and my OG termies are now heretical. And I know what Games Workshop is planning: "We'll just sell them Wolf Guard Assault Terminators later and they'll lap it all up." It suuuuucks. Just give us back our thunder hammers, you dorks.

We need more 30k videogames

If 40k is the depressing state of the Imperium after enlightenment went to shit, 30k is the powder keg moment that set it on that irrevocable course. Despite the book bloat, the Horus Heresy is such a fascinating period, like watching a car crash in slow motion as the Emperor's meticulously laid plans collide with the unrestrained ambitions of the Primarchs.

There's something so 'original sin' about the heresy, such a sense of grief as you witness what was lost forever for the sake of arrogance. 30k is also a period between periods. Unlike 40k, where most of the Imperium's xenos have been eradicated, the Great Crusade has humanity encountering (albeit murdering) all sorts of weird and wonderful aliens as it tries to unite the disparate human worlds cut off during old night.

It's just such a bloody good story, and frankly, perfect fodder for any number of videogame adaptations. It's the boiling point of thousands of years of human ambition coming to a head, but also hints of a distant past you rarely get to witness in 40k games. Shadowy cabals of now extinct xenos, Perpetuals, Thunder Warriors, where the Emperor came from; how the Imperium came to be and what it was like before eternal war overtook the galaxy.

The first Warhammer 40k TV show should be Gaunt's Ghosts, not Eisenhorn

There's been all sorts of buzz the past few years about Henry Cavill's 40k TV show with Amazon. I'm cautiously optimistic. 40k is a tough setting to adapt, but if done right, this could lead to a veritable renaissance of grimdark media where we see many of our favorite Black Library books adapted for TV—the audience is certainly there.

And speaking of favorite series, most people are convinced Eisenhorn should be first, but I think Gaunt's Ghosts would make for a far better TV show. I love the Eisenhorn books, particularly the follow-up Ravenor series, and like most fans, I'm still reeling from the cliffhanger at the end of Penitent as I anxiously await Dan Abnett getting time to write the third book in the Bequin trilogy.

Eisenhorn is a great little bit of sci-fi noir, as the eponymous inquisitor travels across the Imperium with his band of operators, but by comparison, Gaunt's Ghosts and its story of the Tanith regiment is far more human and relatable, and also fits the whole 'death march' structure that's become so popular in modern TV.

I'm not the first to point out Gaunt's Ghosts is effectively Sharpe set in 40k (as someone who's read all of both I can tell you it's an apt comparison), and the Sharpe books already made for an excellent TV series back in the '90s with Sean Bean. Gaunt's Ghosts has some properly fantastic twists and turns, intimate character moments, but also more action than Eisenhorn, especially in terms of big battles, which are a vital part of 40k—it's the perfect TV show package.

You don't need to read the Horus Heresy

The Horus Heresy is framed as one of those must-read book series for 40k, but a large portion of it is extremely missable, if not straight-up bad. Don't get me wrong, some of its novels are excellent, but for each of those, there are at least two samey short story collections and one adjacent book that does nothing to move the series' overarching narrative, or is actively retconned later (see: The Outcast Dead or Damnation of Pythos).

It's no wonder Games Workshop decided to leave the bloated series after 54 novels and start the Siege of Terra, in what can only be described as an attempt to get on with it. But here's the thing: you don't need to understand the entirety of 30k, the Great Crusade, and the Horus Heresy to understand 40k. The key events of the heresy are easily summarised and 40k is fundamentally more of a tone than it is some rigid narrative construct, one which you can experience in all sorts of different games and books set in the period.

I think the real wonder of this setting is found in hopping around like a tourist, playing games and following your curiosity, versus trying to frontload the history of the Imperium to your brain, which is definitely a mistake I made when I first got into 40k. If you're going to, read the first three to five novels, and then pick and choose, browse some summaries, and follow the narrative threads you're curious about, but there's really no need to read it all unless you're obsessed with all things 40k.

Space Marine (the first one) is great actually

I'm glad we've got games about the Adeptus Mechanicus and ork fighter pilots now, but it's Space Marines who move units and if we're going to have games about them I'm glad we've got decent ones. Relic's original really understood the assignment from the word go, with an over-the-top introduction that lets you be impossibly badass, leaping onto an ork ship from orbit to kill its pirate captain then crash it into the ground and walk away like a boss.

That's soon followed by a quieter scene where you meet the ordinary troopers trying to hold the planet and they treat you like some kind of angelic herald in power armor, a real evocative bit of worldbuilding. The combat, throwing away all the era's rules about cover-shooters to reward you for executions instead of hiding behind waist-high walls, is great fun and basically created everything that's good about the Doom reboot.

I'm less hot on Space Marine 2, which focuses on co-op to its detriment. Too many objectives feel like they'd be a lot of fun with friends to split the tasks ("You look after that, I'll cover you!") but are a chore with NPCs. It's still a fun romp though, and the bit where you raise the banner is properly rousing stuff. Would I play a Phoenix Wright-style game about necrons in petty claims court? Yes. But I will also play games about stompy lads with boltguns, because if I didn't think the cover of Space Crusade looked badass I would never have gotten into Warhammer 40,000 in the first place.

The tau are boring

40k got a few new armies in third edition. The necrons ended up becoming central to the setting, and the dark eldar had been hinted at previously so it was a no-brainer to add them. The tau were initially a rougher fit, and still are. Though the initial concept was a sci-fi equivalent to Warhammer Fantasy's lizardmen, they ended up being retooled to fairly blatantly try to cash in on the popularity of mecha anime. They've never really found a niche in a setting that owes more to Dune and 2000 AD than it does to Macross.

Writers like Simon Spurrier tried to give the tau some depth (in his books Xenology and the adaptation of the videogame Fire Warrior), but whether they're actually goody two-shoes or secretly mind-controlling jerks who just pretend to be goody two-shoes, they remain a bit bland compared to the more baroque and weird factions. They did give us one good thing, and that's the introduction to Fire Warrior voiced by Tom Baker (above), which remains a brilliant way to be introduced to 40k.

Owlcat's implementation of the Rogue Trader rules is unforgivably awful

I can't think of another RPG where I've felt more disconnect between how much I enjoyed the storytelling and how much I hated the systems than Owlcat's Rogue Trader. Even as a diehard turn-based tactics enjoyer I find the combat boring, and I've never been less happy to level up in an RPG than I was in Rogue Trader, knowing that it meant I'd have to fiddle with a bunch of nothingy upgrades for every single member of my party.

I hope Dark Heresy is better, but I'm not sure the people who thought the way Rogue Trader played was OK can be trusted with it. Even if they do buck the trend and release a game that isn't a mess of bugs at launch, which I have doubts about as well, I suspect the system side of Dark Heresy will be a chore I suffer through for the sake of the writing and characters.

If you told me 10 years back, when I started playing Total War: Warhammer as a brighter-eyed and bushier-tailed strategy gamer, that we'd eventually reach The End Times period, I wouldn't have believed you. But here we are: three games, 110 legendary lords and factions later, Immortal Empires has successfully sliced and diced the best bits of Warhammer Fantasy and chucked them in a big cooking pot of delicious fantasy goodness.

It's both the biggest and best Total War campaign Creative Assembly has ever attempted and you can now play it for just $9 (£7.49) by purchasing any of the characters from the Lords of the End Times expansion. Originally, you had to own all three games, then that was softened to just the third instalment, and now all you need is Boris, Thanquol, Nagash, or The Glottkin, though this version of the campaign doesn't let you play everyone.

It's funny, though, while The End Times are a desirable era for a strategy game about bringing chaos to the world, or throwing back an endless tide of destruction, they were supremely unpopular in Warhammer Fantasy. How do you end a setting with 30 years worth of characters and lore? The answer is not well. But that's the genius part of the Lords of the End Times' expansion fantasy—you can rewrite the whole thing.

One of my first campaigns in the expansion was playing as the Fay Enchantress—effectively Warhammer Fantasy's version of the Lady in the Lake—who was really done dirty in The End Times lore, being sacrificed to resurrect Nagash. Instead, I fought my way to his Black Pyramid in the Land of the Dead and crushed him in a climactic final battle. Revenge is sweet.

It's easy to see why so many disliked The End Times. Besides its inconsistencies and u-turns in established character-defining lore, so many beloved figures ended up dying off screen, or were reduced to mere mentions summarizing where they happened to be when the world literally tore itself apart, like a tick-list of who's dead—spoilers: it's everyone.

But you can change that now. Maybe you don't like what happened to Volkmar or Balthasar Gelt? Maybe you want Karl Franz to win against The Glottkin? Or maybe Grimgor beats Archaon in this timeline? Maybe you just want to kill Mannfred over, and over, and over, and over (I know I do). This expansion's greatest trick isn't portraying the end of Warhammer Fantasy, it's letting you subvert its fate endlessly, forever. It's officially the end of The End Times.

A big part of that fantasy is obviously the long-awaited endgame scenarios. After 10 years, Archaon finally has a proper Chaos invasion, and having played it, I can confirm it's quite scary. The Everchosen rallies every Chaos-aligned lord behind him and is functionally immortal until you destroy his invasion fortresses dotted across the map and weaken his Chaos host. But every settlement he razes devastates provinces and stays razed until you defeat him, meaning you're on the clock in terms of stopping the world's transformation into a hellscape.

There's also the Great Ritual of Nagash and the Skaven Vermintide, if you prefer your apocalypse undead or rat-flavoured. Hell, you can even have them all active at once if you want the most loreful version of The End Times. HELL, you can even become the endgame if you're playing as Archaon, activating the Chaos invasion when you grow powerful enough and setting about your task bringing ruin to the world.

It really is the cherry on top of the mouth-watering cake that is Immortal Empires. This isn't the end for Total War: Warhammer, either. Though Creative Assembly is still working on issues with campaign AI, and factions like Bretonnia sorely need a rework to catch up with others, there's still the promise of more characters, units, and campaign support in the future. As someone with 3,212 hours in this trilogy, $9 seems like a pretty good value entry point for what I'd consider to be the greatest rendition of Warhammer Fantasy's world put to code.

You'll know this frustration if you've ever been part of the community around a game that has both singleplayer and multiplayer modes. People who prefer one to the other are always convinced the other cohort doesn't exist. "Nobody plays this game in a different way to me and my friends, and anyone who says they do is lying."

In the case of the Blood Bowl videogames, the fact the CPU's tactics are so rudimentary has always given people who prefer the multiplayer mode ammunition for claiming the other half doesn't exist. Now we've got proof they're actually the majority. As Cyanide programmer Mathieu Valero recently told Wargamer, between 70 and 80% of Blood Bowl 3 games were played solo in Eternal Leagues.

This came up in the context of Blood Bowl 3's imminent replacement by Warhammer Blood Bowl. One of the improvements, Valero suggests, will be the AI. "We didn't have an AI—now we do", as he put it. "There are still a bunch of factions and builds that it's more able to play well: you want to give it Guard and Block, and don't go fancy with the combos that a human would be able to do", he went on to say, but "give something reliable to the AI, and you're gonna have a game to play".

Valero is candid about the state of Blood Bowl 3 at launch, saying, "It was a mess, like there's no two ways about it." As well as the AI, Blood Bowl 3's ugly menus are being replaced. "The UI has been significantly revamped," he says, "first and foremost the homepage, which was a gigantic waste of space, now it's going to be a customizable set of tiles." No more hunting through submenus for the season you were halfway through: "when you go on the main page of a competition you can pin it to your home if you wanna go back to it."

Warhammer Blood Bowl is being published by Slitherine, and will be a free upgrade for owners of Blood Bowl 3. It' s currently planned for release by the end of the year.

Back when the Lords of the End Times expansion was revealed, Creative Assembly also announced that anyone who buys a single lord in the new DLC (costing $9 on their individual store pages) when it releases on September 24 will unlock Immortal Empires, Total War: Warhammer's trilogy-spanning grand campaign which comprises all content from the past 10 years of development.

But what does buying one of these lords actually get you?

No matter who you buy out of Boris, Thanquol, Nagash, or The Glottkin, you'll get the free faction of Bretonnia, their core unit roster, and their four legendary lords:

• Louen Leoncouer: The king of Bretonnia who starts close to the Empire.
• Alberic De Bordeleaux: A duke who starts in a colony on the western continent of Lustria.
• The Fay Enchantress: A spellcaster who starts in southern Bretonnia.
• Repanse De Lyonesse: A questing knight who starts in the southern desert of Araby.

They're all fun campaigns with varied start positions, so you'll be fighting lots of different factions.

In terms of all the other free content that's been released over the years for Immortal Empires, you'll only get the Free-LC associated with the race you purchase.

The good news, though, is that works with other DLC, too. If you bought Aislinn as an individual lord from Tides of Torment, for example, (also $9) you'd get Imrik and Alith Anar as Free-LC legendary lords for the High Elves. This is worth remembering if you want to unlock lots of content and campaigns for the cheapest price, though make sure to keep an eye out as the DLC (and base games) regularly go on sale.

Boris Todbringer

If you buy Boris, you'll get all of his Middenheim faction units, Emil Valgir as a hero, the core Empire unit roster, but you'll also unlock access to the Empire's Free-LC, which includes:

• Gotrek and Felix: Two legendary heroes you can recruit via a quest battle.
• Ulrika Magdova: A legendary vampire hero you can unlock during the campaign.
• Jade Wizard, Grey Wizard, and Gold Wizard: Wizards for the lore of life, shadow, and metal who you can recruit.

Since the Empire never got a Free-LC legendary lord, besides Bretonnia, Boris is the only campaign you'll get to play. Still, the Empire is very fun and you can, of course, confederate Karl Franz and Elspeth Von Draken nearby, plus Volkmar the Grim in the southlands, Balthasar Gelt in Cathay to the east, and Markus Wulfhart in Lustria to the west, provided they all survive long enough for you to encounter them.

Thanquol

If you buy Thanquol, you'll get access to his units, Skreech Verminking as a hero, the core Skaven unit roster, but also their Free-LC:

• Tretch Craventail: A cowardly legendary lord who starts in the Darklands to the east of the World's Edge Mountains.
• Skaven Chieftain: An anti-large hero you can recruit.

Skaven, in general, are super fun to play. There's also nothing stopping you confederating Ikit Claw in Skavenblight to the west, Queek Headtaker in the Badlands to the south, Throt the Unclean in Kislev to the north, Lord Skrolk in Lustra to the far west, and Deathmaster Snikch in Cathay to the far east, again, as long as they survive until you reach them.

Nagash

Definitely the most bang for your buck if you enjoy undead. As the Lord of Undeath, Nagash gets units from all across the undead race's unit rosters, such as Tomb Kings, Vampire Coast, and the Vampire Counts. He can also confederate a number of undead legendary lords and heroes from other factions as his Mortarchs.

In terms of Free-LC, he also gets:

• Neferata: A new Free-LC legendary lord arriving with Lords of the End Times, Neferata also benefits from the Vampire Counts race rework that's dropping alongside the expansion.
• Ulrika Magdova: Since she's a vampire, you can recruit this legendary hero as part of Neferata's campaign.

The Glottkin

If you buy The Glottkin, you get their units, four legendary heroes, and the core Nurgle-focused, Warriors of Chaos roster, but also some Free-LC:

• Harald Hammerstorm: A vampire-hating legendary hero for the Warriors of Chaos.
• Karanak: A giant three-headed hound of Khorne legendary hero.

Honestly, I wouldn't recommend the Warriors of Chaos as a starting faction in Total War: Warhammer. They don't have a particularly traditional playstyle, especially with all The Glottkin's plague-focused stuff. Since they can't confederate other Warriors of Chaos factions either, you won't even have a chance to yoink other legendary lords and try them.

The Undead Legions don't have a tech tree. Instead, Nagash—the first and most powerful necromancer with the biggest hat and a goatee made of bones—has a personal web of enhancements called the Black Pyramid. When I saw this in the preview build I sent a screenshot to my coworkers who also had access to the preview and said, "This looks like Path of Exile."

They said the same, and so has everyone playing Nagash while streaming the Lords of the End Times DLC ahead of release. It's an unavoidable comparison when you see this multipath maze of upgrades so twisted it has its own search bar. It really does look like it came from the kind of action RPG you put 500 hours into then leave a negative review of on Steam.

While some branches are dedicated to improving specific troops and characters as well as your economy, plenty are direct buffs for Nagash himself. The nodes that connect those branches are also buffs for Nagash, so even if you dedicate yourself to activating nodes that let you summon every troop type in his expansive roster—he's got access to all three of Total War: Warhammer's undead flavors, the Tomb Kings, the Vampire Counts, and the piratical Vampire Coast—you'll inevitably be Nagashmaxxing as you go.

In no time at all Nagash becomes an absolute beast on the battlefield, casting Abyssal Swarms that create a vortex of bats, which don't harm his own troops but absolutely mince everyone else, then floating in to slice up the survivors with a sword the size of a train while his armor reflects projectiles back on whoever made the mistake of firing them.

Nodes on the Black Pyramid let me add spells to the Books of Nagash so he casts them passively, just lazily sucking the life out of enemies while also bashing them with his blade. Though to get the Books of Nagash I also have to find them out there in the world. Each of the tomes is held by a rogue army because Nagash loaned them out in the distant past and, like the world's crankiest librarian, it's time to collect.

Nagash also has to round up his mortarchs, the nine legendary lords and heroes (and one follower who acts more like an inventory item) he delegates to. These squabbling vampires, necromancers, and reanimated corpses have demands to fulfil before joining, like securing the lost fastness of Nagashizzar and activating 50 empowered sigils in the Black Pyramid. Adding them to the roster one by one feels like I'm slowly becoming Warhammer's most powerful Pokémon master.

What makes them and the Black Pyramid necessary is that when you play Nagash almost everyone hates you. Every time you perform the Ritual of Undeath to spread the Land of the Dead it comes with a diplomatic penalty because for some reason the neighbors don't like it when I turn my backyard into an ashen wasteland where the ground heaves with souls of the damned.

I have to do that to increase the cap on the number of necropolises I can build, which I need to activate more sigils on the Black Pyramid. They're also the only buildings with a decent defensive garrison, while everything else is a piddly little burial mound, mausoleum, or pirate cove that's easily taken by my enemies—who are almost everyone, because of the diplomatic penalties I keep accruing. It's a vicious cycle.

Nagash is the pointy end of an empire that is constantly on the verge of collapse, economically and diplomatically. He's a one-man army blender, but he can't be everywhere at once. After I recruit Luthor Harkon the vampire pirate as a mortarch I gain his holdings all the way over in Lustria, but both the dark elves and the skaven want to take them and if I send Nagash to help, the core of my lands will be hollowed out by the enemies we've got at home.

When the End Times come it's kind of a blessing. As the name of the DLC suggests, Lords of the End Times drops an enhanced apocalypse on your campaign—if you're not playing as Nagash there's a chance he could be yours, in which case good luck—and in my case it's Archaon and his Chaos invasion. He rocks up with five fortresses and 50 (!) roaming armies, which makes everyone else suddenly change their priorities and want to be friends. Suddenly, I'm the most popular girl in school.

Playing as Nagash is a precarious balance. You get to feel OP but also threatened, tearing up opponents when the big guy arrives but with an economy that means defensive armies are often blobs of whatever bony boys you can afford. I've loved it, but I'm also dreading having to face Nagash in my next campaign. He's going to absolutely shred me. Maybe it's not too late to send this soup back.

Crusader Kings 3 will finally let us play as the pope in the By God Alone expansion, launching on September 30. The power! The pageantry! The blood boys! Wait, what?

OK, so history has given us a lot of weird pope stories. One of them relates to the declining health of Pope Innocent VIII. As the story goes, in 1492 three boys were hired to bring the pope back to health with their blood. All of their blood. It went badly. All three boys died, of course, and so did the pope.

This was long before physicians understood the circulatory system, or even knew it existed, and some versions of the tale have Innocent VIII literally drinking from the lads. It's apocryphal. Obvious nonsense, and likely propaganda. But the story has gone from a tall tale full of inconsistencies to the first example of blood transfusion. It's not true, but it is compelling.

One of the reasons for that is the modern trend of wealthy psychopaths hiring blood boys to claw back their youth. The idea that the rich and powerful, the Silicon Valley execs, are literally feeding on us.

As The Guardian put it in 2024, "What history can teach us is that finding a miracle cure for ageing has long been one of humankind’s most cherished dreams. And wealthy, white men have often been at the forefront of this quest—despite the dubiousness of the effectiveness or safety of anti-ageing treatments."

Now, Paradox games can get pretty weird. You can, for instance, eat the pope. And with the By God Alone expansion allowing you to play as the pope, you could theoretically turn him into a cannibal. Justice at last. But blood boys? Nope, that's not on the cards.

A trio of Paradox devs were asked, and while they did have to check—implying that it's not outside the realm of possibility—this is not a feature in By God Alone. But there's a practical reason. "Innocent VIII is at/past the end of the CK3 timeline, so they wouldn't be appropriate anyway," Paradox says.

"Inappropriate due to realism," joked Paradox PR manager Jesse Henning, who had to ask the devs this absurd question on my behalf, "not due to atrocity."

Maybe Europa Universalis 5 will add the feature.

More papal weirdos

Endless Legend 2 is finally leaving early access, and if you've not lost a multitude of days to this elaborate 4X, well, what are you doing with your life? Anyway! Now is the time to rectify this terrible mistake.

There are a lot of reasons for Endless Legend 2 to be on your radar. There's the elaborate, story-driven campaign where you'll juggle your faction's personal quests on top of the big, overarching story; the new city-building mechanics, which allow you to build settlements and then connect them to other cities, making megacities that span multiple provinces; and tidefalls, where the ocean retreats and reveals new realms underneath, maintaining the brilliant exploration phase throughout the entire game.

For me, though, the main hook continues to be developer Amplitude's talent for designing brilliant asymmetrical factions. Faction design is really what separates Amplitude from its contemporaries and predecessors. It's been leading the pack in this regard for a while, to the point where even Firaxis started borrowing ideas for Civ 7. Though that didn't quite work out for the Civilization studio. But for Amplitude's games, it's what makes them truly sing.

With Endless Legend 2, however, things are a bit different. Where the first game gave us a bunch of brand new factions that didn't really play like anything else, Endless Legend 2 gives us a mix of old and new factions. Thankfully, Amplitude hasn't lost its touch—even the returning factions feel novel and bespoke.

Endless Legend 2 takes its asymmetry very seriously. This is not a case of getting a few unique units or buildings. The differences between the factions are fundamental. In many ways, they are playing very different games as they try to dominate the wet, wet world of Saiadha.

Take the Kin of Sheredyn. This lot are kinda like militant paladins, and they're very much worth considering if you love to turtle up, hiding from the planet's many dangers behind indomitable walls. The more fortified you get, the more toys you have at your disposal, as well as economic bonuses. They've also got magical powers. Really this is what remains of their tech, as a former space-faring people, but there's a fantastical bent to them.

While the Kin chill behind their walls, the Sandshapers are unrelenting expansionists. And this doesn't just mean building lots of cities. It means completely changing the world to suit them. They are fuelled by sand. But this damp world is devoid of sand. Thus, the Sandshapers must terraform the planet and then feed on these new deserts. It is a completely different way to play the game compared to all the other factions, and I confess I've not quite got the hang of them yet.

But I love that! In most 4X games, you can kinda just wing it no matter who you pick. In Endless Legend 2, you need to throw out the rule book and start leafing through a brand new one whenever you take another faction for a spin.

This goes a long way to making the seemingly small faction roster of six feel a lot meatier. But that number doesn't quite paint the full picture. With Endless Legend 2, Amplitude has introduced the concept of rogue factions—new race variants that put a fancy spin on the existing ones. So far, there are two of them. One for the Kin, and another for the all-consuming Necrophage hivemind.

The rogue factions are a great example of Amplitude finding novel ways to make interesting choices even when there's an overlap. So while the Order of Zelevas shares a lot with the Kin, especially its militant focus, it actually plays very differently. It's expansionist for one. Where the Kin benefit from focusing on the capital, making it as fortified as possible, the Order strike out and get rewards for controlling more territory. It even has different mechanics for unit recruitment, where soldiers are exclusively purchased instantly for dust, Endless Legend 2's main currency.

With a greater need for dust, the Order must become an economic powerhouse as well as a military one. In turn, this means you'll be building your cities in new ways, following a different strategy compared to a Kin player.

All of these differences are just the starting point. The choices you then make in regards to research, unit upgrades, city development, diplomacy and what minor factions to assimilate turns each of these predefined factions into something that's uniquely yours. And none of this would matter without a compelling campaign. When you throw these weirdos together in a constantly shifting world, that's when Endless Legend 2 starts to become something truly special.

Endless Legend 2 leaves early access on September 22, and you can grab it now on Steam.

There has been no drought of good 4X games over the past decade. Part of that has been the steady work of Amplitude, whose Endless series has become a stalwart part of the strategy scene. Endless Legend 2 further cements Amplitude's legacy as a great 4X developer, delivering the studio's trademark creativity and standout visual design in a modernized package.

The original Endless Legend was a shot in the arm for a 4X genre that had gotten pretty stale. If you'd asked me in the years afterward if I wanted more Endless Legend, I'd have said yes. In the years since, many of its innovations—and those from sibling series Endless Space—have become standards in the genre. You might expect that to have dulled some of the charm. 12 years later, though, I still want more Endless Legend.

Sciences fantastical

I wanted more Endless Legend because there's never enough good science fantasy. Not the Star Wars kind, though that's fun too, but the kind where it's sword and sorcery with a technological flavor. Where it's mostly monsters and wizards. Bows, not blasters.

So I'm glad that we're back to Endless Legend's worlds of crashed starship survivors building robotic golems and battling with titanium swords and wielding magic that might just be nanotechnology. The setting and its weird people are just as good as the first time, though a bit more scientific-feeling. No dragons, for example, or elf stand-ins—instead we've got evolved desert lizards, coral robots, and sand spirit genies. It's another rich world that lets its developers break the rules of the genre in interesting and creative ways.

The new world of Saiadha is familiar in one important way: Like Auriga of Endless Legend, Saiadha is dying. This time though it's because the Endless, an ancient race, sealed something away beneath Saiadha when they terraformed it from a planet of desert dunes into one of storm-wracked seas and isolated islands. Now that something is coming back, which means the oceans are draining away into the planet's core.

Every few dozen turns a monsoon comes, shrouding the world in storms, and at the end of that monsoon season comes Tidefall: The shoreline recedes, unveiling sunken landscapes and ancient technologies that are now ripe for your faction to colonize and exploit—a perfect setup for a genre about expanding and building.

Aesthetics fantastical

Endless Legend 2 continues the tradition of the first game in another way with one of the most pleasing, coherent aesthetics in the entire strategy game space. The painterly color choices across terrain and units, both matte and gloss, make different areas of the world and the new biomes that emerge from the ocean very distinct.

Endless Legend 2 also makes very good use of texture on terrain to convey types of earth, sand, grass, stone, or even a field of vast living circuitry. My major critique is that the lighting is quite flat—it really only changes during monsoons—and something more dynamic or directional might have helped highlight the models and environments. Better to have simple lighting than effects that muddy the visual environment, though.

While it's still a best-in-genre user interface, interacting with Endless Legend 2 doesn't feel as aesthetically pleasing and crisp as the first game. The redesigned resource displays, menus bar, and action wheels are good, but the use of symbols on the map for cities and armies rather than clear, obvious text labels conveys less information while making the player do more work to understand what they're looking at. I had issues distinguishing the symbols for cities, armies, and resource locations until I learned where each was located. A temporary annoyance, but bad friction nonetheless.

The highlight for many will be yet another standout soundtrack from Arnaud Roy. Ethereal at times—subdued and ambient—it makes extensive use of a crystal organ. What most impressed me was how it changes as you go, avoiding repetitive loops and adapting dynamically to the screen you're on or what's happening in a battle round. Opening a diplomacy screen, for example, seems to dull out or soften the bass parts so you can hear the faction leader characters speak clearly.

Play fantastical

What may disappoint some about Endless Legend 2 is that many of the first game's signature innovations have become routine. Ideas like changing or terraforming the map, or your cities expanding over large regions, have been adopted by many others in the genre. The signature Amplitude resource system is present in full and simple to understand: Incomes for cities—FIDSI for Food, Industry, Dust, Science, and Influence—with tradeable luxury resource stockpiles for upgrades and everything else. Some might be bored of it, but it works really well, and I don't think you should mess with a good system.

What is still superb is how Amplitude wants every faction to break the rules in some way, repeating only a few tricks from Endless Legend or Endless Space. Particularly fresh is how Saiadha's receding oceans play into the genre tropes of a 4X.

The genre is at its best during two phases—the initial exploration and expansion, and the secondary squabble and race over who will control resources and which factions will actually fight with each other for them. Endless Legend's system of neutral territories is perfect for this, as you can stake claims by building camps, but must be wary of attack from enemies or marauding minor factions who can burn those down without declaring an official war.

The worst part of most 4X is when the map stagnates, empires get huge, and you engage in a grind toward whatever finish line you're aiming for. In Endless Legend 2, every time the seas recede and new land appears, the shorelines change—previously isolated territories may connect to each other, precious deposits or strategic resources may appear, and new dungeons for your heroes to delve or undiscovered minor factions may show up. Tidefall means your previously safe border may become vulnerable, or that your worst city is now part of a rich new frontier. In short, it throws you back into the most exciting and interesting parts of the 4X genre multiple times throughout a typical length game.

Tactics fantastical

The changing map also means your armies are in constant motion. You always want them moving from place to place, scouting out new territory, gathering curiosities, and either fighting or doing quests for neutral minor factions. At the same time you need them to guard your borders against potential aggressors, or against the terrible Doomwraiths that come each monsoon season, and you want them in position for the next tidefall. Where your military units and scouts are just map decoration in some 4X games, in Endless Legend 2 they're hooked into every part of the game loop in a way that feels like part of the exploration and wonder of a good fantasy story.

For all that, the tactical combat is perhaps less rich than I'd like it to be. The positioning elements of the turn-based fights are as good as ever, especially because of how it happens across the natural game map. You carefully position your armies to attack enemies from favorable terrain. As a faction like the Tahuks, who rely on ranged combat and want to exploit chokepoints, or the Sandshapers, who want to fight on desert terrain whenever possible, controlling space by positioning is still very good.

What leads to it feeling less rich is that it's very tightly wound—damage numbers are such that fights are nearly equal exchanges unless you outnumber the enemy 2:1, and scraping out an advantage often feels like exploiting the system by stacking buffs or abusing the terrain.

That said, 4X games are rarely well-tuned, but I found that the difficulty settings in Endless Legend 2 actually worked very well on their defaults. Higher settings actually delivered greater difficulty in consistent, measured steps, and the highest difficulties were so rough that you could end up in wholly unwinnable starts at times, which paradoxically I'd count as a real success.

That success, however, is still achieved by inflating the AI factions' abilities with bonus resources rather than making them better at playing the game. So sometimes the only way to win those tight tactical combats against a stream of armies you could never out-produce was by abusing the heck out of a system.

Weirdos fantastical

The factions are the highlight of this game, as with any Endless game, because of how asymmetrical they are. Each of them breaks or ignores some fundamental game mechanic.

Whether it's the Children of Sheredyn who'd rather build a fortress than a public plaza, or the Sandshapers, living mineral constructs who can't farm and must scrape together rare resources and terraform the world back into desert in order to gather the minerals they need to produce new population. There are even two "rogue" variants of factions that invert their primary playstyle—the defensive Sheredyn become an aggressive expansionist legion, the devouring Necrophage become an enslaving swarm of cyborgs.

There's less extremity than in Endless Legend in places—no faction can move its cities, for example—but there's still wild stuff in here that would be seen as unacceptable in other games. The friendly Aspects, a symbiosis of living corals and robotics, can spend their copious influence to force treaties like peace or trade on other factions. The Necrophage can only have one city, their hive, and are always justified in declaring war on others. (They're hungry, OK?)

There's just not another 4X where you can play as religious fanatic lizards who use a solar mirror laser to turn the world to glass. I appreciate that.

When I got to play a sliver of Company of Heroes 3's dynamic Italian campaign for the first time, it was hard not to be impressed. The team had taken all the best parts of Company of Heroes 2: Ardennes Assault, expanded it, and then added all sorts of novel new ideas. It felt like I was playing Total War: World War 2.

A year later, once I'd been given unfettered access to the campaign for my review, I was less impressed. Player feedback had inspired Relic to remove one of the new features I dug the most—controllable detatchments—but there was a larger, more fundamental problem: the dynamic campaign wasn't dynamic. The fascists largely sat back and let me liberate Italy.

The RTS battles remained incredible, and the second more traditional campaign was excellent, leading to me giving it a score of 82% in my Company of Heroes 3 review, calling it a "failed experiment but a great game". Broadly, though, the player reception was not great, and user reviews on Steam continue to sit at Mixed.

"We set out to build the biggest Company of Heroes game ever," Relic CEO Justin Dowdeswell tells us. "More factions at launch. Two full campaigns playable at launch. I think it was an ambitious goal we set, and that showed up in some of the issues of launch around the level of polish and some of the bugs that the players were encountering. We didn't quite land it."

The Italian campaign was conceived early in the game's development, but actually getting it to work was a "stumbling block" that never quite got resolved, Dowdeswell says. "Yeah, we bit off more than we could chew. The idea was great. The spirit of it was good. The team was energised. It was just more than we could get done in time. And it wasn't nearly as polished as it needed to be at launch."

Relic thought, or at least hoped, that everything would fall into place eventually. "For so many of us in the industry, things come together kind of late in the project," Dowdeswell says. "So when it's not there and you still have time, there's this belief: well, we'll get there, we always do. And this one, we didn't."

When that didn't happen, Relic had to deal with the fallout. "It's disappointing for sure," Dowdeswell says. "It's so much work. A big team spent years and years making that game, and to see it not land well with players, it hurts.

"Obviously we spent serious amounts of time in postmortem discussions: where did we go wrong? What can we do to fix it? And just taking the time to be really thoughtful about what the top issues were that we needed to address, and when we could get them addressed by. So that was really the focus. I think we got over the initial shock quickly, and then it was just heads down. Let's work on these problems and find ways to turn it around, basically, knowing we want to do that quickly."

But was there a way this could have been avoided? At the time, Relic thought it was doing things right: bringing in content creators, modders, competitive players and other members of the community to chat to the studio and, eventually, play the game during development.

"So I think that was good," Dowdeswell says. "But by the time we got to the place where we actually were ready to start sharing software, some of those decisions were so far back that it was too late to reverse them or change them, and it was also too late to really course correct by the time we knew the game had to come out."

This was all years ago, but to Relic's credit it hasn't given up on Company of Heroes 3. On its second anniversary, Company of Heroes 3 2.0 arrived with lots of free improvements and additions, on top of premium DLC. And earlier this year Relic launched Final Stand, a standalone wave-based roguelite. Unfortunately, like the base game, it's sitting at Mixed on Steam. Later this year, we're also getting the 3.0 update, which will include additions to both games.

Perhaps more exciting is the prospect of the original Company of Heroes returning in the form of a remaster, Company of Heroes: Definitive Edition, with enhanced textures and lighting, quality-of-life improvements and a 64-bit upgrade. It's due in 2027.

Following its split with Sega, Relic is now independent, but it remains dedicated to Company of Heroes. And while the latest iteration may have not quite panned out, I remain convinced that nobody does WW2 RTS battles quite like this lot.

Total War fans are eating good recently. Lovers of fantasy have the Lords of the End Times DLC for Total War: Warhammer inbound, historical fans have Medieval 3 on the distant horizon, and even enjoyers of grim dark sci-fi have Total War: Warhammer 40k likely dropping next year. Well, it gets even better.

Today, Creative Assembly announced that Total War: Shogun 2 is getting a remaster on October 13. Widely considered to be one of the best Total War games (especially its Fall of Samurai expansion) Shogun 2 originally came out in 2011, so it's starting to show its age a little bit.

Total War: Shogun 2 - Complete Edition includes all three campaigns (Shogun 2, Rise of the Samurai, Fall of the Samurai) alongside every faction DLC which was sold piecemeal, but also a range of other improvements, including:

• Full Japanese and Chinese voice and text localisation
• Improved visuals, lighting and shadows
• 1440p and 4K UI scaling
• Modernised controls
• More than 50 newly playable factions
• Integrated Mod.io support
• 64-bit upgrade
• Ultrawide monitor support
• Colourblind accessibility options

While I don't actually think Shogun 2 has aged as poorly as some other Total War games due to its simple visual style, its controls definitely have, so that's one thing I'm personally very excited for. There are also apparently "over 50 newly playable minor factions" in this version.

It's hard to say whether this just means all of the factions who were previously unplayable across all three campaigns, or whether it's including the factions that were sold as DLC before. Still, it's going to be a lot of content.

Those who own Shogun 2 already will receive legacy DLC from the original game at no extra cost, which I'm assuming means all of the campaigns and paid factions. Owners will also get a "75% time-limited loyalty discount" on the new edition, so not free, but all Shogun 2 players will be getting something either way.

I've got to say, I'm pretty hyped though. Shogun 2, especially Fall of the Samurai, is one of my most played Total War games. What'll be even more fun is the potential for a multiplayer revival—Shogun 2 has a feature where other players could drop into your campaign to battle against you as an enemy army, so maybe years later it'll actually have enough players to function again, not to mention the popular Avatar Conquest mode.

The main thing preventing me from playing Star Wars Zero Company in its iron man "beskar" mode is cowardice, but the second thing preventing me from doing that has been the state of the game at launch. I've had it crash on me a few times, and the thought of my one and only run being lost because of a mid-save crash is enough to keep me playing with iron man off—even if Zero Company is much easier than XCOM and actually losing seems unlikely.

Fortunately, a 1.1 patch is here, and the first patch note is "Fixed various crash issues." Following that, "Fixed an issue where Beskar saves were temporarily deleted" and "Fixed a crash issue for Beskar mode."

There's also a fix for "an issue where shots can be missed, even when the chance to hit is 100%." I've been assuming that ZCOM was rounding up the numbers and actually I'd been missing 97% chance shots the several times I completely whiffed a point-blank sure thing in my playthrough, so it'll be nice to actually land those attacks instead.

The other main bug I experienced was overwatch not triggering even when enemies jog through multiple targeting cones on their turn. That doesn't seem to have been addressed, although several other bugs involving overwatch triggering against units outside the targeting cone or behind solid objects have. Maybe I'll wait one more patch before turning on the beskar mode then.

Bit Reactor, the studio that created Zero Company, reportedly furloughed most of its staff shortly before launch, and has been operating with a skeleton crew since then. Which explains why it's taken two weeks for some fairly fundamental issues to be addressed. Here's hoping some of those staff can get brought back on to help speed up the rate patches come out.

Despite more than a year of updates and at least one massive overhaul, Civilization 7 remains as stubbornly divisive as ever. May's enormous Test of Time update brought significant mechanical reworks and a fresh influx of players to Firaxis' latest entry in the 4X series. But with Steam reviews still sitting at 'Mixed', with 51% positive, it ultimately did little to shift player opinion.

This is partly because numerous aspects of Civ 7 are still rudimentary compared to previous games, including the ability to wage nuclear war. While Firaxis' latest allows players to drop atom bombs on their enemies via World War 2 bombers, its final, modern age ends in 1950, meaning many advanced technologies, including nuclear submarines and ICBMs, are not featured in the game.

Fortunately, this is going to change. Alongside the release of update 1.5.0—which adds features like improved resource generation and an Earth map where your faction starts at their historically-accurate location—Firaxis outlined its update plans for Civ 7 over the next year. This includes another free update that will finally drag the game into the age of the A-bomb.

The update is called Arc of Tomorrow, and Firaxis says that it will be "even bigger in scope" than May's Test of Time patch. Introducing a fourth Act to Civ 7 that extends the game's timeline from 1950 to 2050, Arc of Tomorrow will bring a host of new features and play opportunities to the experience.

This includes "expanded nuclear gameplay" that introduces new units and what Firaxis describes as a "fun twist" on mutually assured destruction, plus atomic-era diplomacy options that will let players call for nuclear disarmament or escalate warhead production and send the doomsday clock spinning toward midnight.

Alongside nuclear weapons, the update will also extend Civ 7 into modernity in other ways. Firaxis says it will add the ability to transform settlements into City States, then use these to engage in proxy-wars to avoid battling empires directly, essentially letting you engage in Cold War-style conflicts. It also introduces the ability to manufacture advanced resources like enriched uranium, and a system called "Great Works of Film", where film crews can scour the globe for ideal filming locations, presumably for cultural benefits.

Like Test of Time, Arc of Tomorrow will be free for all Civ 7 players. Unlike Test of Time, Arc of Tomorrow will likely be released alongside Civ 7's first major expansion—Earthrise. As the name suggests, this will focus on humanity's exploration of the stars.

Interestingly, your stellar endeavours will run throughout the game rather than being squashed into an end-game Space Age, with players able to chart the night sky in the age of antiquity and even name celestial bodies. As technology advances, you'll be able to launch your first orbital missions in the modern age, before establishing your own space agency to venture out into the solar system.

Firaxis says that both the Earthrise expansion and the Arc of Tomorrow update will be released sometime in 2027, and that the announced features are still in development and subject to change. In the meantime, if you're on the fence about Civilization 7 (and you certainly wouldn't be alone) the base game is currently free to play until September 10, so now would be a good time to see whether its structure works for you. If you're taken with it, then the full game is 50% off until September 17, down from $70 (£60) to $35 (£30).

The Labor Day weekend is upon us (in Canada and the US, anyway, and we'll be sure to spare a thought for our UK colleagues who will be working on Monday) and holy cow, it is about time. If you find yourself in need of something to do, here's a thought: Play Civilization 7, because it's free to play on Steam until September 10.

Civ 7's had kind of a rough go of things since it launched in early 2025. It made some big changes to the formula that didn't go over well with a significant portion of the fan base, the UI was almost universally unpopular, and performance was dodgy.

Firaxis has been banging away on it ever since, to mixed results: A major update released in May brought a big bump in player numbers on Steam, but the reactions expressed via Steam reviews were almost literally split down the middle. Civ 7's Steam rating remains "mixed," with only 48% positive user reviews, while concurrent player numbers on the platform are still running neck-and-neck with the 16-year-old Civilization 5.

Civ 5 is much beloved but I imagine Firaxis and Take-Two would like to see people move on.

Ah, but here's the counterpoint: It's free. Just go around to Steam and click the "Play Game" button, and after some requisite amount of downloading, you're playing Civ 7 without spending a penny. It's hard to go wrong, really.

If the past year-and-a-half of updates have got Civilization 7 to a point where you think to yourself, 'Yes, I would like to play this game all the time,' you can also pick up the standard and deluxe editions for half price until September 17: That's $35/£30/€35 for the former, and $50/£45/€50 for the latter.

The Civ 7 development team (a small part of it, anyway) will also be discussing what comes next during a livestream from PAX on September 5—you can catch that on YouTube, Twitch, and Facebook.

One of the significant differences between most historical Total Wars and the Warhammer games is that the factions aren't comparable with nations. In Total War: Warhammer 40,000, the Space Marines and Astra Militarum, for instance, are effectively two branches of the same military.

So when I was playing Total War 40k at Gamescom as the Ultramarines, I noticed that my settlement garrison was full of just ordinary soldiers—members of the Planetary Defense Force. These units only served to defend the settlement, like a normal Total War garrison, but they weren't the same units that I could recruit as a Space Marine faction.

"The way that the Imperium works together is going to be very important," Dave Petry, battle product owner, told me. "And working as a Space Marine with local planetary forces and governors to be able to get the support that you need in order to be able to be that tip of the spear, we want that to be the case."

How the Imperium works, and your relationship to it, is still a work in progress, but Petry added that Creative Assembly has been playing around with concepts like "gaining support to be able to bring along units with you to fight your battles". So we might be able to bring in some meat shields from the PDF, or units from the Astra Militarum, to fight alongside our Space Marines.

I already saw a hint of this in the demo I played. In both the medium and massive-sized battles, my Space Marines arrived to find the Astra Militarum already fighting orks. I wasn't able to control them—they were just an allied force—but hopefully this is just a taste of something meatier.

Petry also teased what sounds like a reputation system. "Collaborating among the Imperium is something we really want to be able to do, and managing your reputation in the Imperium as a Space Marine is also something that's very important. Like not doing things that look too much like building an empire or becoming too powerful." So you'll need to keep the Imperium happy and avoid being accused of heresy.

Creative Assembly wants to "fill the galaxy out," says Petry, so we can expect to see other elements of the Imperium appearing. I'm really keeping my fingers crossed for some Adeptus Mechanicus fun in the near future. And the studio has already been teasing other Space Marine chapters, like my beloved Space Wolves, as well as xenos threats like Genestealer cults.

The good news is that you won't need to buy three games to see it all this time. Unlike Total War: Warhammer, Total War 40k is going to be a sandbox that Creative Assembly keeps adding to, rather than a series of separate games.

Hard experience has taught me that I am not, in my heart, a Rainbow Six Siege guy. In fact, I'm not really a Rainbow Six guy. The series' hardcore-ish squad-based first-person gameplay just never jibed with me going all the way back to 1998, when a five-year-old Josh got shot to death by eco-terrorists in about 0.3 seconds and promptly decided to play something else.

So colour me surprised that my brief, hands-off Gamescom demo with Rainbow Six Tactics not only blew my hair back, it quickly became one of my most-anticipated games of the show, and precisely because of the ways it blends together familiar XCOM-ish tactics gameplay with, well, a whole buncha Siege stuff.

United colours

Here's the pitch: a bunch of characters you last saw executing people in Siege have signed up for a new Rainbow organisation, under the command of Paul Bishop from Rainbow Six Vegas. Bishop is a bipedal breeze block who you, notionally, play as, but you only 'play' him in the way you play the commander in XCOM, from what I've seen. For the most part, you're either touching up Rainbow's base or giving orders in the field.

'In the field' was where we found ourselves at the demo's start. The Rainbow gang have infiltrated an industrial dock. Their aim is to make their way across it and into a warehouse at the other side.

This bit? All very XCOM (or, indeed, Mario + Rabbids, which several R6 Tactics devs worked on). You're moving your fellas about a field, setting up overwatch zones, and using their special abilities to take down foes. For instance, one of the characters in our demo squad was Montagne, who more-or-less functioned as a piece of moveable cover—the semi-circle area from which he could painlessly take attacks marked on the ground around his feet.

Also on our roster: Siege's sniper Glaz, who in Tactics can shoot in a great long line that can take out multiple enemies, if you rack 'em up. The game has no fog of war in its outside areas, making the guy with a gun that shoots really far something of a force of nature.

So far, so much a perfectly cromulent Rainbow-Six-flavoured take on XCOM-style tactics, but it's when the gang got to the warehouse that R6 Tactics began to show its hand. Our demoer did not just pile up her troops around the building's entryways and go—which is what I've done for years in all games remotely like this.

Instead, it all got very Siege. First up, the team deployed drones—the same little wheeled drones you've deployed in countless Siege matches as the attacker—to scope out the warehouse interior and pinpoint enemies. Unlike the outside world, interior spaces very much do have fog of war, and properly reconnoitering them looks, well, pretty important. It's a neat wrinkle in a familiar loop, and turns XCOM-style scouting (the process by which you send one fast trooper dashing off to see what's up before having them dash back) into a more fleshed-out phase of the operation.

It's rather important you do it properly, because the next thing we saw was R6 Tactics' Breach mode. Rather than kicking the doors of the warehouse in, our demoer plotted out every member of the team's moves and attacks ahead of time, using the interior map established by her earlier drone reconnaissance. Once it was all plotted out, she hit go, and everyone moved simultaneously, the squad taking up their assigned positions and shooting several people in the face along the way, in ways that probably aren't in-keeping with official military rules of engagement.

Some more Siege: plenty of the roughhousing had impacts on the warehouse itself. Shots and explosions destroyed parts of the level they passed through, with one in particular from Glaz seeming to pass through a flimsy wall and out the other side, into the waiting skull of someone who assuredly deserved it. This is, I'm not afraid to say it, cool as hell, and a smart transplant of one of Siege's most interesting features into a new arena that's nonetheless wholly suited for it.

And then? Well, the Scooby gang found a man with a beard and some plot and had to lead him to safety—out of the warehouse and into a waiting boat. This was mostly a replay, mechanically, of the demo's opening, with the added complexity of spending accrued 'Order Points' to buff the team.

These are small-but-handy things—more damage, increased movement—that could be pivotal to the flow of battle if used right, and the rub is that your enemies get them too. As you faff about with beard-man, trying to get him and your squad to the boat, a turn-counter ticks down in the lower reaches of the screen, indicating when your foes will next get to buff themselves. It's not a major thing, but it's smart: another sign that the people making Rainbow Six Tactics have put proper thought into the overall flow of gameplay.

It might have been a relatively quick glimpse, and I still have a lot of questions (like what the HQ half of the game is like), but as a starving XCOM fan I was absolutely intrigued by what I saw of R6 Tactics. Between this and Star Wars Zero Company, I feel like I'm eating better than I have done in years.

With Total War: Warhammer, Creative Assembly designed a trio of games, each with their own bespoke campaigns, but the core of the series quickly became the mode now known as Immortal Empires—every single faction and lord in one massive sandbox. And that's been a big inspiration for Total War: Warhammer 40,000.

At Gamescom 2026, battle product owner Dave Petry told me that the plan was to make the initial release of Total War 40k the "bedrock" upon which Creative Assembly will continue to build, rather than splitting it up into a trilogy.

"We're going to have major releases," he told me, "we're going to update this game with some significant stuff in varying sizes, but we're looking at what Total War is and looking at things like Immortal Empires. Like the true experience is the sandbox. That's what we want to build, and that's what we want to continue building on, and bringing that into one place so that there are so many different ways that players could enter and still get to experience the whole thing without being siphoned off and only getting to experience a part of it.

"We just felt that was super super important, and it also puts us in a position to build better together, and to work on the same thing in the same space with the same problems, and just keep making it better together with everyone. So yeah, it felt like the right thing to do, and it's just such a huge galaxy to fill. So it made sense to treat this as sort of like that bedrock to start building a new future."

Creative Assembly has already been teasing what might be added to the sandbox after launch, too.

Initially, we'll have four customisable factions: Space Marines, Astra Militarum, Aeldari and Ork. Compared to fantasy Warhammer, that's a pretty tiny number, but we can expect other Space Marine chapters to come down the line. Space Wolves are already confirmed, which is all I really needed to hear. But Genestealer cults are also on the table, and of course Chaos is always waiting in the wings.

Total War 40k is due in 2027, and from the hour I played at Gamescom, it's shaping up to be something pretty special.

With Afterworld, Paradox Development Studio is giving the post-apocalypse the Stellaris treatment, turning the end times into a ludicrously elaborate sandbox where you can live out all sorts of apocalyptic fantasies—whether you want to create a freewheeling band of road warriors or a new American empire.

I went to Sweden to play an alpha build of this ambitious behemoth last month, and I've been able to keep playing at home since then. But this is a Paradox game, so I still feel like I'm barely scraping its dusty, radioactive surface.

Here's a bit of what I've been getting up to, across multiple playthroughs:

• I made a band of alcoholic mutant cannibals, stole some bikes, and conquered Florida.
• I embraced the religion of the highway, creating a tribe of zealous petrol heads spreading their beliefs across the wasteland.
• I teamed up with an ancient immortal to help rebuild America, betrayed him, and tore the continent apart with our brutal civil war.
• I created a docile empire of slaves by making everyone addicted to drugs.
• I became a cheese magnate.

Even in this alpha build, with its single origin and only one major threat, there's plenty to do—enough to give this would-be conqueror a bit of a headache, frankly. OK, before I get too far ahead of myself, here's the setup.

Leaving the vault

You are a band of survivors in the North American wasteland. Like Stellaris, you'll have a variety of starting options—your band's origins—but in this build there's only the Shelterborn. Think Fallout's vault dwellers. This gives you a bespoke starting scenario, where your vault is about to go kaboom and you've got to find a new place to live on the surface.

Unlike Stellaris, however, these origins let you give some input. In the Shelterborn origin, for instance, you get to decide how your survivors handled food riots, and if they want to rebuild America or dominate what remains. Your choices determine the character of your band and their starting resources.

From there you'll build and upgrade settlements, join up with other bands, explore ruins, create laws and belief systems, and butt heads with powerful dominions—sprawling empires ruled by immortals who were born before the collapse of civilisation. Dominions are a bit like Stellaris's fallen and awakened empires, in that they are established and immensely powerful right at the start of the game.

Afterworld's alpha purposefully puts you right in the path of its sole dominion, ruled by Citizen Farouk. He's just a responsible patriot who wants to rebuild America. He's even going to hold an election to pick the 'president of presidents'. Sure, he's going to make sure it's him, but you can trust him. Definitely. 100%.

Refusing to join Farouk always leads to war. At first he just sends other bands who have joined him to do his dirty work, but eventually he gets sick of the disrespect and sends in the big guns. Huge, mechanised armies that you'll have no hope of fighting off until the endgame. Joining him doesn't mean you'll have to be loyal, though.

I refused to pay his tithes, rejected all of his requests, and slowly built up my own power base. It wasn't until I became pretty powerful myself and stood against him in the election that Farouk truly woke up, kicking off an apocalyptic civil war that I've so far not been able to win. This isn't just because Farouk's armies are massive and much better equipped—it's also because I really hate fighting wars in Afterworld.

The UI and map just aren't up to the challenge of making these big fights easy to parse yet, and the Whac-A-Mole problem that appears in a lot of Paradox games is so much more pronounced here. War just feels too much like a grind. That said, most conflicts I became embroiled in ended swiftly. It's incredibly easy to just steamroll foes if you've got some bikes and guns.

Fighting is further complicated by Afterworld's multitude of manufacturing and supply chains. It's an evolution of the Hearts of Iron 4 model and is actually the one part of Afterworld's warfare that I like. Every single weapon and vehicle that you use must be either built or found, and then you also need to keep manufacturing fuel and bullets, which require both resources and buildings.

End times economics

In this way, Afterworld evokes logistics-heavy city builders and survival games, and it makes creating and maintaining a well-armed force feel like a real achievement—one that you're rewarded for, as all this equipment will make it incredibly easy for you to expand if you have conquest in mind.

Even if you're not set on a path of domination, however, the resource economy will still be central to all of your playthroughs. Resource scarcity is one of the main drivers behind exploration and conflict, and so many of the decisions I made came down to a need for more fuel or batteries or simply food and water.

But this isn't a survival game, and Paradox has been a bit more generous due to this fact. If you don't have enough food or water, it isn't the end for your tribe. It just stunts population growth and harms the health of each individual band in your tribe, which makes them more dissatisfied with the way things are being run.

Finding the resources you need, either through theft or exploration or settling a region that naturally produces them, is only half of the puzzle. You'll need other resources to build ways to extract those resources or manufacture them into something more useful, and then you need to consider what bands are running the show.

While you start off with a single band, you'll end up juggling a lot more of them in your tribe, and every single one of them is treated as a separate entity with their own characters, beliefs and skills. You can choose where they sit in the tribe's hierarchy, and give them territory to govern. If you've got a band with a green thumb, then, you'll want to put them in charge of your tribe's bread basket.

Once a band is under your control, you are in charge of its progression, and I found myself compelled to create a list of things I needed and then pick bands to take care of those things, always choosing the option that enhanced their ability to do so whenever they levelled up.

It's a level of population management that I haven't encountered in other Paradox games before, and I appreciate the level of fine control it offers. It also works well for this zoomed in setting. You're not trying to conquer the world or a galaxy—you've just got North America to worry about. So this granularity feels manageable.

Another significant difference compared to most of Paradox's games is Afterworld's pace. You can finish a game in a weekend. Within a couple of hours, you can go from being a one-band tribe scrounging around for food and water to a burgeoning empire. And the randomness of exploration means that your tribe's warriors could be decked out in plasma guns and accompanied by mechs while you're still figuring out the game's basics.

Snowballing

You can definitely become too strong too quickly, so there's some balancing required, but I hope Paradox maintains some of the random leaps in power. It feels true to the post-apocalyptic genre. A band of nobodies discovering some pre-fall tech that catapults them into the limelight is a fun trope, and given the shorter length of a playthrough, the randomness and surprises feel crucial.

Paradox says it's aiming to make Afterworld its most accessible grand strategy game, but at this point it's hard to see. This is largely down to the build being alpha. The UI is still in flux and is missing a lot of the informative tooltips that bless other Paradox games, and it's not yet intuitive. Afterworld lets you do so much, but finding out how to do anything requires a lot of effort.

Combined with the lack of tutorial or any real onboarding, it's impossible to say if Afterworld is going to be accessible or not. Though there is one feature that I think is moving things in the right direction, and that's the tech tree.

Instead of seeing the whole tree laid out before you, or getting a random selection of techs to choose from as you do in Stellaris, the tree is revealed through exploration. If your tribe encounters a river, you'll learn about irrigation, unlocking the appropriate idea in the tree. If you meet another tribe and they've established a religion, then you'll discover the organised religion idea.

The system also benefits from the map's procedural generation. While the terrain and geography are immutable, you'll encounter different tribes, resources and dangers when you start a new run. So you'll always be able to find that river and unlock irrigation, but other experiences will be random. Just because you've discovered something, however, it doesn't mean you can start researching it.

I wanted to turn mutated trees into steel, for instance, and had discovered the forestry tech tree, but I couldn't start researching the technology without passing a law regarding the exploitation of our forests—which I couldn't do because the council was largely opposed to switching from hunting to logging. Bribes, promises and threats couldn't net me enough support. But then came a rebellion, some upheaval and some new blood at the top of the political hierarchy, and the new folk liked my ideas a lot more.

Not being able to do stuff because of council opposition was frustrating, but I do love the law system. It's another example of Afterworld doing exciting things at a granular level. If you want your tribe to be clearheaded, for instance, you can ban all intoxicants—or you can ban them for everyone but your slaves, so you can keep them docile. Yes, you can be a real prick in Afterworld.

Embracing a belief system allows you to further define your tribe, and while Afterworld stops short of letting you design a custom religion from scratch, levelling up your belief allows you to select a variety of perks that add new facets to your tribe. Beliefs can also create a lot of welcome friction. Your tribe might include various faiths, which don't always get on, and the faith you've embraced might occasionally be at odds with your laws and goals.

Also, yes, you can worship carburetors or books or whatever ancient relics you'll find in the wasteland, or they can be given to bands to increase their standing within the tribe. Some of them even have a practical use beyond using them to exploit the faithful.

Afterworld boasts some of Paradox's most interesting systems, and it's left me genuinely excited to watch it develop. But I don't think the team has quite found the fun yet. It's fascinating and ambitious and often feels like an entirely different approach to grand strategy, but I've spent most of my time with it just troubleshooting and getting lost—in ways that are more frustrating than satisfying.

But even as I've been playing, Paradox has been tweaking. With the feedback the studio has been getting from press and content creators—some of them putting over 100 hours into it already—the devs have a lot to work with now. So there's reason for some optimism. And, importantly, there's already so much good stuff in here.

When Total War: Warhammer first debuted, I was much more into the wargame setting's sci-fi counterpart. This would be cool if Space Marines were in it, I remember thinking, somehow unaware that Total War: Warhammer would end up being one of the best strategy games on PC. Not that my theory was wrong: Space Marines are finally in Total War, and it is, in fact, cool. Just ask the folks who picked this year's Gamescom award winners: it won best PC game.

It's the third award Sega took home this year, along with best audio for Alien: Isolation 2 and best lineup for its whole gaggle of games. It's easy to see why, particularly in the case of Total War 40K—PC Gamer's Fraser Brown said it took a mere hour of playtime to cement the game as the highlight of his year. "It's immediately obvious how special Total War 40k is—I don't think a tutorial has ever made me giddy before," he wrote.

According to Gamescom's website, the winners are chosen "by both an expert jury of gaming professionals and the community." In other words, it was a favorite among both professional nerds and the pro bono sort.

If it wasn’t clear before why people have been so vocally insistent that this game should happen ever since Total War first embraced fantasy, it should be now: there are many ways to adapt Warhammer 40,000's galaxy-spanning eternal war in videogame form, but Total War's combination of scale and gruesome, exacting detail seems a particularly good fit.

Warhammer thrives on extremes, and a game where I can watch a single ultramarine hack an ork to bits up close then immediately zoom out to see an enormous whirlwind of violence in wide shot is an exciting prospect indeed. As for whether that'll pan out into a good game once it finally releases, we'll have to wait and see.

Star Wars Zero Company is enough like XCOM that everyone's been calling it ZCOM, but there are some ways it isn't quite XCOM enough for me. For starters, the radial menu you use to select each character's actions, a controller-friendly system that flings all your abilities out in a circle around the active character like a medieval jailer's ring of keys.

The first time I panned over to find an enemy I wanted to attack and then had to pan back to the character I'd selected to pick an attack off their radial menu I found myself wishing for a more traditional way to play. And look at that, there it is in the options menu. Go to the Gameplay section, scroll down to Ability Selection Style at the bottom of the General area, and bump it from Radial over to Linear.

That puts moving and shooting and overwatching and etcetera onto a numbered row of boxes down the bottom of the screen where God intended, getting them out of the way when you're trying to line up the perfect angle to punch someone into a wall from. There's also a Hybrid option if you're indecisive and feeling a bit "¿Por qué no los dos?"

I'm still in the early hours of Star Wars Zero Company, but playing with a mouse and keyboard, Linear Ability Selection just feels better. Between this and the fact you can bother a gonk droid, maybe it is a 90% masterpiece like Ted says.

Creative Assembly dropped a whole bunch of new information about Total War: Warhammer 40,000 at Gamescom this week, and yeah, this all sounds amazing. But what is it actually like to play?

I got an extended look at a preview build yesterday, where I was able to spend an hour exploring a slice of the tutorial, a little bit of the campaign, and finally a huge late-game battle, and oh boy. Folks, it's incredible. Total War: Warhammer 40,000 was, hands down, the coolest thing I saw at Gamescom.

Even in the tutorial battle, which starts you off with only a few Ultramarine units, it's immediately obvious how special Total War 40k is—I don't think a tutorial has ever made me giddy before.

Yes, the massive-scale scraps are one of Total War 40k's big hooks, but the smaller battles are actually great at showing off what sets this game apart from its predecessors. My tiny army of Intercessors—just some basic dudes—ended up feeling as powerful and versatile as a standard, full-featured Total War army.

As the green tide of orks charged towards my position, I stuck my lads behind some cover and opened fire. But they weren't just firing their basic bolt rifles. Units have multiple wargear options, so my small Ultramarine army made up for what it lacked in numbers with the diversity of its arsenal.

Grenades were getting tossed out, for instance, or launched from grenade launchers, leaving big holes in the ork horde. The devastation left behind was stunning. When a few eager orks managed to make it to my fortified position, it became a melee scrum, with my Intercessors proving that they can rack up the kills even when they aren't shooting.

And that's just the tip of the bloody iceberg. The variety of weapons represents the greater range of tactical decisions you'll need to make, depending on who your enemy is. Against orks, for instance, autos can be handy, letting you mow them down when they come into close range—which is where orks naturally like to be. But if you're fighting the aeldari, you'll benefit from long-range weapons, like the stalker bolt rifle.

Every unit still has a primary function, but this system just nudges them slightly beyond that function, giving them a few more options. So an Intercessor unit might not be the best choice for taking on some light vehicles, but with their grenade launchers they are more than capable of standing their ground and melting metal.

When another group of orks appeared, I decided to call in reinforcements. Assault Intercessors. I aimed their drop pods right at the green mess, so when they landed they took out plenty of extremely surprised orks. Then they just started hacking at them with chainswords, covering their armour in ork blood. In a matter of seconds, the orks were routed.

In the brief campaign slice, I got to create my own Space Marine chapter, decked out in red and gold, which I named the Blood Drinkers. [It has since been pointed out that this is the name and colours of as real successor chapter, that I created quite by accident.] The build didn't contain the full range of customisation options that Creative Assembly is planning—and we can expect even more after launch—but there were still plenty of colour and emblem options.

I didn't get to see much settlement development or management in this portion, as it's not ready for prime time yet, but I was still impressed with just how striking the campaign map looked, with its rotatable 3D planets and, when you zoom out, an entire solar system waiting to be played with. Creative Assembly's artists are firing on all cylinders. These are grimy, imposing worlds that look hostile to all life, but they're simultaneously gorgeous. And busy, too, full of geographical flourishes, gargantuan hive cities, miasma-filled forests, shipwrecks and wandering armies.

The campaign slice ended in a medium-sized fight, which I handled quickly because I knew I was running out of time and I desperately wanted to jump into the late-game brawl. I was not disappointed.

I was playing as the Ultramarines once more, arriving just in time to see the desperate soldiers of the Astra Militarum about to get overrun. While the Space Marines and Astra Militarum are separate playable factions, they are both part of the Imperium of Man, and thus work together. In the campaign, for instance, my settlement was protected by an Astra Militarum garrison.

Anyway! My buddies were in trouble, and the ork army seemed endless. I had some Predator tanks and Dreadnoughts at my disposal, but I was still fielding a tiny force—the rest of my units were up in space, waiting to be called down when needed. In another Total War, I might have been worried. But Total War 40k is eager to give you all sorts of tactical tricks to keep your warriors alive.

The cover system truly is a revelation. This isn't the first Total War to feature cover—that would be Empire—but this time it benefits significantly from an inherent dynamism. As buildings and walls get toppled, your cover disappears, but as the battle progresses you'll encounter new places for your troops to hunker down—a massive crater that just appeared, for example.

A greater focus on defense could have turned Total War 40k into a slightly plodding game, or made it static, even, with entrenched units taking potshots at each other. But the dynamism means that the battlefield is constantly changing shape, so you need to adapt on the fly throughout a fight. It was surprising to see just how much of the battlefield ended up being used. This is easily the most kinetic Total War has ever been.

You'll also have to consider how to beat cover. Positioning has always been critical to Total War's battles, but that truth is so much more pronounced here, when you've got opponents just chilling behind walls or in buildings. Thankfully you're spoiled for choice—you could drop some reinforcements behind them or on top of them; sacrifice some lower tier units as a distraction, while you send some Terminators in to flank the enemy; or you could just go all out, bombing the position or sending a war machine through the wall.

When Creative Assembly first introduced Total War: Warhammer, there were several game-changing features, but Total War 40k is next level. The Total War fundamentals have been preserved, of course, and I found that my familiarity with the series meant that, even with all the changes and focus on ranged combat, I was still in my element, but not a minute went by without me witnessing something or doing something that I've never experienced in a Total War before.

As someone whose dining table often hosts giant battles, I'm primed to love this stuff. I let out an audible whoop when I called in my beefcake Terminators, and watched orks getting completely squished as they walked into beautiful powerfists. Even if 40k isn't really something you've engaged with before, however, you're going to have a blast.

After the demo ended, one thing felt clear to me: I'd just played the future of strategy games. There were just so many "holy shit" moments. I may have only played for an hour, but I got a day's worth of fun out of it. My predilection for cynicism has been stomped by hefty Space Marine boots.

Picking the best starting class in Star Wars Zero Company is a little challenging when you haven't played any of the game yet. But don't worry: you can change your class specialization once you hit Cycle 3, which is very early on. After that point, you can also change the specialization and talents for hired operators too.

The only thing you can't tweak is named character talents, like Hawk's Fearless Leader. Below I'll offer my recommendation for the best starting specialization in Star Wars Zero Company, plus some options if you don't want to double-up classes with any of the named characters you initially team-up with.

Star Wars Zero Company best starting class

The best starting class in Star Wars Zero Company is the Scoundrel. This specialization has a great kit focused around making enemies vulnerable (for guaranteed critical hits), penetrating their defenses, and increased assist damage. This ties in perfectly to Hawk's Fearless Leader talent, which increases assist damage for the whole squad when they're present. Assists are free attacks that also generate advantage, so they're very strong.

While you can respec any character specialization when you reach Cycle 3, the first three companions you'll get are a Scoundrel (Kabb), a Soldier (Trick), and an Assault (Jae). Having two Scoundrels in a party isn't a bad thing considering Hawks will buff everyone's assists, and more assists are always good, but if you don't want to double up or change pre-existing character specializations, you could also take:

• Gunslinger
• Medic
• Heavy
• Scout
• Sharpshooter

I personally wouldn't recommend Medic or Scout. Medic is plain overkill early in the game when most combat encounters aren't that tricky (depending on your difficulty), and Scout is a class entirely about farming advantage, something you won't need to worry about much either in the game's initial missions.

Of the Gunslinger, Sharpshooter, and Heavy, I'd definitely recommend the former. Gunslinger is a strong early pick because of its ability to hit and finish off multiple enemies (getting you more advantage), plus its general buffs to ranged attacks. By comparison, Sharpshooter is more single-target focused, which can feel a bit limiting when you're not facing bosses or elite enemies, and the Heavy has more of a passive playstyle around taking hits and retaliating. This specialization works much better on an operator with the Taunt or Anticipation talent, allowing them to avoid or tank the damage better.

As you'll realise when you unlock operator recruitment, many of the best talents for recruitable operators are far more synergistic with specific classes than Hawk's Fearless Leader. Either way, don't be afraid to change specialisations often—it'll refund all of your Focus Points (apart from those in your character talent) so there's really no drawback to experimenting with party compositions.

It's unclear whether you can respec Hawks when you first start out in Star Wars Zero Company, but the good news is you can, and it's an entirely free process. You can change class, but also refund every Focus Point you've spent in its dedicated tree to start levelling another. Here's how it's done.

How to respec in Star Wars Zero Company

You can change your class once you reach Cycle 3, which is very early in the game. All you need to do is:

1. Interact with the Personnel console by the map table
2. Cycle right to the Focus Tree tab
3. Select Change Specialization in the bottom right
4. Pick whichever class you want

There's no cost to changing class and it will also refund all of your Focus Points, letting you respec entirely. The only thing this doesn't refund (if you're respec-ing a story character) is the Focus Points you've put into your talent at the top.

When you unlock recruitable operators a little later on, you'll also be able to change their talents in this same menu, letting you customise anyone you hire entirely. This means it's better to grab operators because you like the look of their character more than it is to recruit them based on their talent and specialization, which you can change at will.

While I do have some best class recommendations early on, it's well worth experimenting and playing around with different specializations. You can even change them on the initial story characters you work with like Trick and Kabb Uppercut, so team composition is always variable.

Picking the best talents in Star Wars Zero Company is something you'll start pondering when you unlock recruitable operators in the game. Each of these will have both a class and a talent, but the good news is that you can respec both in the change specialization menu once you've recruited them.

This means it's usually a better idea to recruit a character you like the look of, versus one with a talent you can tweak anyway. Some of these talents have a very clear and strong synergy with Zero Company's specializations, so I'll run through all available talents and talent levels below, plus give my top picks for each class.

All talents in Zero Company

There are ten talents available to recruitable operators in Star Wars Zero Company. These are:

The Bigger They Are…

This Operator's ranged and melee attacks deal +2 damage to elite and boss enemies.

• Level 1: +3 damage
• Level 2: +4 damage
• Level 3: +6 damage

Anticipation

This operator gains 1 stack of evasion (next attack is evaded). Once per turn.

• Level 1: Two per turn
• Level 2: Three per turn
• Level 3: You can use it on an ally instead

Cold-Blooded

Applies 1 stack of vicious (next attack is a crit) to this operator. Once per combat.

• Level 1: Two per combat
• Level 2: Three per combat
• Level 3: Applies two stacks of vicious

Taunt

Taunts the selected enemy. Once per turn.

• Level 1: Reduces target's damage by 2
• Level 2: Reduces target's damage by 4
• Level 3: Reduces target's damage by 6

A Life of Labor

This operator gains a bonus +5 health and +1 defense.

• Level 1: +5 health, +1 defense, +2 melee damage
• Level 2: +5 health, +1 defense, +2 melee damage, +2 critical hit damage
• Level 3: +7 health, +2 defense, +4 melee damage, +4 critical hit damage

Thievery

Earn an additional +150 credits when this operator completes a combat mission. Does not stack.

• Level 1: +200
• Level 2: +250
• Level 3: +300

Sabotage

Trigger an explosive object on the battlefield to detonate, immediately affecting any units nearby. Once per combat.

• Level 1: Two per combat
• Level 2: Three per combat
• Level 3: Unlimited uses

Espionage

Earn an additional +5 intel rewards when this operator completes a combat mission. Does not stack.

• Level 1: +7
• Level 2: +9
• Level 3: +12

Grit

Applies 1 stack of invulnerable (prevents all damage from next attack) to the operator. Equipping this ability also increases health by +2. Once per turn.

• Level 1: +4 health
• Level 2: +8 health
• Level 3: +12 health, two stacks of invulnerable

Fortitude

Increases defense by +2 while this operator is injured.

• Level 1: +3 defense
• Level 2: +4 defense
• Level 3: +6 defense, operator ignores chance-to-hit penalty from injury

Best talents for each class in Zero Company

Now we've gone through all the talents, here are the best ones to pick for each specialization in the game.

Personally, I think the top-tier talents for any class are Life of Labor, Anticipation, and Grit. The former grants an all-round stat boost that's useful to pretty much every class, while the latter two give you ways to straight-up avoid damage. Anticipation, in particular, lets you dodge three attacks per turn at its highest level, which is somewhat cracked.

There are some obvious synergies between talents and classes, though. For example, the Heavy—a class all about taking hits—benefits from Taunt, Anticipation, or Grit, because it gives them a way to mitigate the damage more. Single-target focused Sharpshooters also benefit from Cold-Blooded, since you can combine the guaranteed crit with their guaranteed hit ability, or The Bigger They Are… to make them better at picking off elites.

And for more support-based classes like Medic or Scout, you can give them a way to avoid damage when out reviving someone with Anticipation, or make them support your wallet, too, by having them farm credits or intel with Thievery and Espionage respectively. I like giving Scout the Sabotage talent, which is incredibly situational, but feels very thematic, like they planted explosives before combat began.

The Total War: Warhammer 40k Gamescom demo is underway, with lots of players getting their hands on the upcoming grimdark strategy game for the first time. Total War's content creators have been giving their impressions, but Creative Assembly also snuck in a new Alpha Strike livestream, and this is one of the biggest information drops we've gotten yet.

The stream finally reveals the campaign structure for Total War: Warhammer 40k, explaining that each solar system we fight through will comprise a campaign, as we battle across multiple regions on each planet. Once a campaign is done, we'll zoom out to the wider Crusade Theatre, where we can start a new campaign in another system, carrying through our characters and retinues. Apparently, there are about ten systems per theatre, culminating in a final battle on Armageddon.

It's not necessary to complete every campaign in a theatre, but it's already reportedly bigger than anything Creative Assembly has made before, including Immortal Empires. There were lots of other little information tidbits, too, including:

• Heroes will have 'followers' they can equip to change the unit composition of their bodyguard. Imagine something like the Imperial General's retinue in Dawn of War.
• All unit weapon loadouts are fully customisable.
• There are planetary governors who you'll have to appease to unlock certain diplomatic actions and support.
• Space Marines can co-opt Planetary Defense Armies from the Imperial Guard to follow them as backup.
• The Imperial Guard have a variety of structures they can build on planets (similar to forts or watchtowers in Medieval 2 and Rome Total War), including artillery batteries and deathstrike missile launchers.

One of the best and most loreful additions, though, is that you can place 'dead' Space Marine characters inside Dreadnoughts (1:20:41 in the stream).

"It wouldn't be Space Marines if you couldn't take the mushed-up, almost corpse of a Space Marine, stuff it in a big metal tin can, and send it back into battle as a Dreadnought," says Will, Campaign Designer on Total War: Warhammer 40k. "There will be a little mechanic where even if your character has died, they might continue to serve the Emperor in a slightly chonkier form.

"Dreadnoughts and Land Raiders as well, we're treating them more like characters. Like these are super rare, super powerful ancient creations that are really valuable."

For those unfamiliar with Dreadnoughts, they're effectively what happens if you attach an array of deadly weapons to a life support sarcophagus and give it legs. Most mortally wounded Space Marines who are interred in them gradually lose their minds as they turn to mush over the long centuries, repeatedly roused from slumber to face each new battle, or provide wisdom and ancient memories to the younger brothers of the chapter.

Still, knowing that one of my Space Marine heroes who I've battled with since my first campaign can stave off permadeath by hopping into a Dreadnought is a great feature. After all, it sounds like we're going to grow very invested in our small, yet elite, self-created Space Marine retinue as we fight across the many campaigns of the Crusade Theatre.

After lying fallow for over a decade, Heroes of Might and Magic is enjoying a bit of a renaissance. Earlier this year, Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era launched into early access and will hit 1.0 in 2027. And now it's going to be joined by an old friend with a new look. The series' golden child, Heroes of Might and Magic 3, is back. Again.

HoMM 3 Remake is actually the third version of the third game in the series, which was remastered back in 2015. At a glance, however, you could be forgiven for assuming that it's a brand new entry, as it boasts a new art style along with a few more tweaks. But this is still absolutely HoMM 3.

I took it for a spin over a couple of hours ahead of its Gamescom reveal, playing the simple campaign prologue and the Arrogance scenario—a popular map first introduced in HoMM 3: The Shadow of Death. It's a compact, well-paced adventure that I remember being a good place to start when you wanted to delve into multiplayer (or if you just wanted a fun comp stomp).

This remains true in the remake. It's a four-player deal, and each starting position is close to a second town of the same faction, rapidly expanding your ability to recruit big unit stacks and making it easier to support multiple heroes early on. With entrances to the underworld close by, and nearby shipyards letting you cross the tiny ocean, it gives you the full HoMM 3 experience extremely quickly.

I confess, however, that I did embarrass myself a little bit. It's been a while since I've played HoMM 3, but I've been playing Olden Era in early access, so I expected to crush the AI. Unfortunately, I spent too much time just mucking around and fiddling with my army composition, so by the end I'd been outpaced by my computer opponents. I'm still convinced I could have clawed my way back, but we'll never know.

So this is largely the game you'll remember, but with some convenient quality-of-life improvements. Of particular note is the ability to see movement ranges for enemy troops, letting you identify which of your units might be at risk on the enemy turn—something that exists in the later HoMMs, but not HoMM 3 or its 2015 HD remaster.

If you don't remember because you never played the original, here's the skinny: you command heroes and their armies as they scoot off on grand adventures, hassling monsters, conquering towns and gobbling up resources. Inside those conquered towns, you can construct a plethora of buildings—most of which can be upgraded—allowing you to recruit more units and heroes, as well as unlocking new spells.

Each day lets your heroes travel a specific distance, and as time moves inexorably forward, your recruitment pool and treasury will expand, allowing you to field larger armies and more heroes. You'll eventually have hordes of dragons, giants, angels and demons ready to smite your foes in grid-based battles.

The hallmark of the series—and 3 in particular—is how easy it is to get to grips with, which belies its impressive depth. There's an accessible lightness to the proceedings, accentuated by a frequently whimsical tone, that eases you into a level of complexity that would otherwise be daunting. There are so many layers to juggle—economic management, big-picture strategy, tactical combat, RPG systems, and then the literal layers, as you try to conquer both the overground and underground regions.

HoMM 3 was exceptional in 1999, and age has not tarnished it.

The most obvious change in the remake is the art style, and this is something I'm a bit more ambivalent about. It's vividly colourful, fantastical fare, with units that are considerably more detailed than its predecessor's. The combat animations are cracking, too, making each attack more dramatic and weighty. The quality is there, then, but I fear the soul might be lacking.

OG HoMM 3 simply had a bit more character, with big, bold monster designs. It veered towards the cartoonish, certainly, but these goofy-looking units had a lot of rizz. The remake may have smoothed out the edges too much, aiming for fidelity over personality. And this is more obvious because we have another modern HoMM with which we can compare it.

HoMM: Olden Era's mere existence makes this remake pretty unusual. Olden Era is a completely new entry in the series, but it's obviously a spiritual successor to HoMM 3, both mechanically and aesthetically. It feels like a natural evolution. So it does feel bizarre to see it now sharing the limelight with a remake. There's just a heck of a lot of overlap.

Still, after waiting over a decade for more HoMM, I'm not going to turn my nose up at two coming along at the same time. HoMM 3 Remake launches next year, and Olden Era should be leaving early access then, so tactics nerds will have plenty to keep them occupied.

"But why?" That's the question I kept asking myself as I played through a few skirmishes of Game of Thrones: War for Westeros, an RTS based on HBO's TV show. It's a competent, workmanlike creation that nonetheless fails to capture any of what made the show and the books that inspired it such a phenomenon.

It just feels so ill-timed, too. It's not due out until 2027, but Game of Thrones concluded in 2019, with a final season that even GoT defenders such as myself had to acknowledge was a bit of a dud. These days, HBO is busy with its prequels: the plodding but still entertaining House of the Dragon, and the delightful, brisk A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.

Instead of giving us something new, or even current, War for Westeros returns us to the fight for the Iron Throne. You can command a tiny Kit Harrington, listen to narration from Charles Dance, or enjoy a rendition of The Rains of Castamere while you build another mine. These touchpoints are too recent to engender feelings of nostalgia, but not recent enough that they elicit much excitement.

Now, don't get me wrong. GoT provided us with some of the greatest battles to ever grace our TVs. Even as the story went off the rails, the muddy brawls were a sight to behold. There's plenty for an RTS to take advantage of—but this style of RTS fails to play to the strengths of the source material.

GoT's gargantuan pitched battles call to mind the epic scale of Total War—it's no surprise that there are several GoT Total War mods. War for Westeros, meanwhile, has been fashioned in the mould of Age of Empires, or its fantasy cousin, The Battle for Middle-earth 2.

You plonk down buildings that generate resources, which you can spend at other buildings that spit out troops or let you research upgrades, and then you send your army to capture territory or boldly torch your opponent's HQ. You can build fortifications and siege engines, but most of your conflicts will be between generic soldiers, sometimes led by heroes drawn from the show's roster of important folk.

It's fine, I guess. There are certainly worse GoT games—most of them on mobile. But War for Westeros is so straightforward and plain that I probably would have had more fun with something uniquely awful. A bawdy brothel management game with Littlefinger, perhaps?

Where Age of Empires had a multitude of bespoke civilisations to play around with, and The Battle for Middle-earth 2 was full of exotic fare like giants and goblins and horrible spiders, War for Westeros is simply full of dudes. Squads of spearmen, squads of swordsmen, slightly smaller squads of elite Night's Watch warriors.

The full game will feature four factions, but I was only given access to arguably the dullest: the Starks and Lannisters. No dragon-loving Targaryens or hordes of the undead for me. Of the two, the Starks are the most conventional, though they can field direwolves, as well as troops drawn from the Night's Watch and the Free Folk. The Lannisters, meanwhile, are more economy-focused, featuring quirks like a debt mechanic that allows you to quickly fund expansion.

So there's some asymmetry, but that's par for the course. And at least where the Starks and Lannisters are concerned, the asymmetry is broad rather than exciting. It's hard to get pumped about one faction needing to spend a wee bit more gold to recruit their slightly better swordsmen.

OK, maybe I'm being unfair. There are more substantial differences than that. Like being able to recruit both Stark heroes' fluffy pets, which bumps the available heroes up to four (with a fifth locked in the preview build). That's double the Lannisters' roster. There are some more unique units, faction-specific upgrades and special mechanics—but they all fell a bit flat for me. It's all just very, very dry.

The nature of this type of RTS means that it's never going to give you memorable fights like the Battle of the Bastards or titanic Total War-style clashes, but after a few upgrades you can field some pretty meaty armies and get some big, messy scrums going. The rather plain aesthetic does mean that they aren't always the easiest to read, however, or particularly engaging to watch. That said, I am a fan of the physicality of the cavalry charges, which send any infantry units that get in the way flying.

The big problem is the lack of an obvious hook. This is an extremely conventional RTS, and while the genre isn't especially healthy at the moment, there are still plenty of alternatives. If you're in the market for something fairly traditional, Age of Empires 4, Age of Mythology: Retold or Tempest Rising have a lot more going for them.

The GoT skin is simply not enough to carry it, and there was little that felt uniquely GoT about the skirmishes I played. Perhaps the campaign will inject some much-needed flavour into the proceedings? The more exotic Targaryen and Night King factions might spice things up a bit, too. But so far, it's just very safe and predictable.

The Star Wars Zero Company release times are almost here, letting us step into the shoes of Hawks and their band of misfit operators as they try to eke out a living during the Clone Wars. As noted in our Zero Company review, it's "a new all-timer Star Wars game" that will appeal to both tactics fans and those desperate for more of the universe. Here's when you can play it.

Star Wars Zero Company release times for each region

The Zero Company release date for most territories will be August 27, though due to timezones, that'll push into August 28 for a few. Here are the release times for each region:

• West Coast US: 8 am PDT
• East Coast US: 11 am EDT
• UK: 4 pm BST
• Europe: 5 pm CEST
• Australia: 1 am AEDT (August 28)
• New Zealand: 3 am NZDT (August 28)

If you're unsure whether you can run the game, you can check its requirements on the Steam page.

Can you preload Star Wars Zero Company?

Yes, you can preload Zero Company as of *checks watch* right now. The game size is reportedly 34GB, which is refreshingly tiny in our current climate of frequently 100GB games, so even if you start preloading late, you should still get to play on launch, internet connection depending, obviously.

It's kinda weird that it took somebody this long to make a Star Wars squad tactics game, but studio Bit Reactor has, for all intents and purposes, knocked it outta da park. Star Wars Zero Company is a superbly executed⁠—if familiar⁠—tactics game, but it's also a new all-timer Star Wars story: I'm talking Rogue One, Knights of the Old Republic, TIE Fighter-tier.

Melt away everything else, and it's got a Terminator skeleton of pure XCOM, the trendsetting tactics series many of Bit Reactor's senior developers cut their teeth on. But the studio struck out from there into more uncharted territory: lavish production values, zoomed-in action game-style exploration, and some truly knockout set pieces and story beats.

Crucially, none of it came at the cost of challenge or crunchy complexity. It feels like Bit Reactor has pitched a big tent where tactics sickos, RPG storytelling fans, and Joe Sixpack cinematic console game-enjoyers can truly find something to love, not just tolerate.

Zero to hero

Zero Company takes place in the twilight of the High Republic, and sees you inhabiting a Commander Shepard-y point of view character, Hawks. Hawks is a disgraced former Republic officer and, at least in my save file, a Zabrak (Darth Maul guy) who delivers every line in a charmingly incongruous cowboy drawl. While Hawks has a largely set character, their gender, appearance, and dress are highly customizable, including your choice of combat class and Bit Reactor's admirable embrace of Star Wars' cantina-going humanoid aliens. I felt a sense of ownership of my Hawks the same way I do with Geralt of Rivia.

The entire cast shares a similar easy charisma, both in your home base crew and recruitable story-centric operators⁠—it's a winning, "family of friends" ensemble straight out of the BioWare playbook. There are a lot of comfortable Star Wars archetypes among them⁠—ponderous-but-loveable alien bruiser, uptight princess, and laconic bounty hunter, to name a few⁠—but, like the comfort zone combat mechanics, they're executed extremely well and belie surprisingly affecting twists.

There is some serious "Aerith dies in Final Fantasy 7" stuff in Zero Company's back half that knocked my socks off, and Bit Reactor went to such great lengths establishing a narrative status quo, the moments that upended it felt like I was getting smacked in the chest.

Even when the story's cruising at a relatively calm clip, your lovable crew can be at each others' throats. The cast has the sense of friction and conflict I'm always looking for in an ensemble, and the ex-Separatist characters are some of my favorites. Former bean counter and Zero Company operations lead Runa is abrasive, smarmy, and unpleasant in the best way, while Umbaran bubble boy Luco hates your guts, as well as those of your clone buddy, Trick.

Zero Company is basically Star Wars A-Team: You're mercs with hearts of gold who do private war stuff for the highest bidder, but in, like, a cool, fun, and ethical way. Galactic Republic Intelligence drops a fat contract in your lap to investigate a kooky cult (it's always a cult), leaving Hawks and crew to turn-based battle their way into saving the galaxy.

You gear up and manage your operation from the Den, a small but well-realized home base in an asteroid-bound smuggler city. From the galaxy map, you can choose to execute from a selection of text-based, noncombat espionage operations reminiscent of the War Table stuff in Dragon Age: Inquisition, while each "Cycle" (read: day) at the Den is capped off with a full-fat combat mission that moves time⁠—and, when appropriate, the story⁠—forward.

You explore the Den with full on, action game-style driving third-person controls, and this is one of Zero Company's neatest tricks. Every environment is as tactile and richly detailed as something in Jedi: Fallen Order, and major story missions even feature exploratory interstitials between the fights. But, as soon as combat starts, Zero Company seamlessly zooms out to a classic, tactical view.

The exploration gameplay is almost painfully simple⁠—interact with points of interest for small bonuses, otherwise you're mostly walking down corridors⁠—but I found it had a really outsized effect in this tactics game context. Even as a first attempt, it adds this revelatory immersive quality, while Bit Reactor managed a level of presentation and wow-factor that I'd love to see in other tactics games and CRPGs.

Squad wipe

You're limited to four squadmates on a mission, and can embark on a variety of odd jobs between main quest blowouts: Hostage rescue, steal the thing, blow the thing up, and the surprisingly rare "kill all the guys." Even on side missions, there's an impish, trolling quality to Zero Company's design that I always love to see.

Enemies will spawn just far enough away that you'll struggle to reach them on a first turn, but they'll have no problem counterattacking after you've committed. Reinforcements often spawn right in your path to an exfiltration, and it seems only enemy snipers have access to the really good rifles that can pinpoint strike you from across the map.

Zero Company's difficulty feels very well-judged to me: I felt pressured enough on Normal, but not overwhelmed. My guys would get downed here and there, but I only had to take a second try on one fight in my playthrough.

I'm a huge sucker for gimmick battles in a turn-based game⁠—the Iron Throne in Baldur's Gate 3, for example, or the flaming oil tower from Divinity: Original Sin 2⁠—and Zero Company's main campaign missions are consistently full of "oh shit" challenges that had me grinning. One of my favorites had me and my squad trooping out in explore mode down a suspiciously deserted catwalk with the MacGuffin of the day at the far end.

Once we grabbed the thing and the trap was sprung, enemies started filling in the path to the exit, and droid bombers began strafing the bridge in a turn-by-turn expanding killzone that pressured me to stay moving even as bad guy reinforcements blocked my path.

In other missions, things could get really weird: One memorable main story level gifted me a one-time, functionally invincible super-unit to clear a path as I had my normal guys follow along and complete objectives⁠—it felt like a reverse-escort mission in this delightfully surprising way. Another jaw-dropper, season finale of a mission hit me with what I can only describe as "Spec Ops: The Line type-shit," a simple-but-devastating mechanical twist that perfectly complimented the narrative one.

Buildy boys

I was surprised at how much RPG buildcrafting there is in Zero Company. We're not quite at Rogue Trader levels of spreadsheet psychosis, but there are some fun synergies to exploit. A little ways in, Zero Company introduces multiclassing, and then we're really off to the races.

My jam has been the Gunslinger: They get stronger the more attacks they make in a round, and also get a quickdraw ability that refunds its action point cost on a kill. Crowds of one-shot, dopey battle droids came to resemble juicy Thanksgiving turkeys to my quickdraw-addled mind, powering me up for DPS attacks on beefier foes.

Astromech droids are support gods in Zero Company, and I almost never went out without one. They can't make direct attacks, but they can refresh squadmates' AP and get bonus slots and uses for utility items like grenades. They're support-casters that feel like College of Lore Bards in Baldur's Gate or the Officer class in Rogue Trader.

In addition to Zero Company's main cast, you can hire generic mercenaries more in line with the anonymous, proc-gen squads of XCOM. I mostly stuck with the canon crew, but I was pleasantly surprised at how seamlessly the custom operators slot into the Den. They draw from a selection of "personalities," each with their own voice actor, and they can be found chilling around the Den like Mother Base soldiers in Metal Gear Solid 5. They even have relevant commentary on the story as it unfolds, and will converse with each other as well as the story squaddies.

Hanging over all of them is the threat of permadeath. I didn't experience its consequences directly in my playthrough, but even the threat of it lends each fight higher stakes⁠. I can't help but admire the chutzpah of hanging permanently missable story content on such a lovable, fragile cast. These systemic risks are also supported by the story in a really clever way: Some characters leave the stage in shocking, permanent fashion. It all contributes to a narrative that feels tragic and grown up in a similar way to Rogue One.

Complete package

Zero Company has been a treat from beginning to end, and I've found little to complain about. There's small stuff, some patchable, and some less so⁠; EA has indicated there will be a day one patch I did not have access to in the review period. My biggest issue: I'm a pretty anti-waypoint guy these days, and Zero Company's exploration segments are so linear, the ever-present Skyrim quest marker felt like it was leading me around by the nose⁠—I'm shocked there isn't already a toggle in the options.

I experienced two hard crashes in my playthrough, as well as one severe graphical glitch that required me to reload a save. Smaller issues popped up here and there: minor graphics hiccups, flickering UI elements, a long hang time while the game would try to resolve an enemy turn, but nothing I found particularly odious. I am sorry to say that Zero Company is not a Steam Deck candidate, and it's hard to see how Bit Reactor could make it fit that box. Bottoming out settings and maxing FSR resulted in a soupy, unparsable, 15-20fps mess for me.

Minor issues aside, Star Wars Zero Company is one of the best games of 2026 and a new all-timer Star Wars videogame. While I don't see it having the modding/sandbox "forever game" gravity of XCOM 2, it is excellent, substantial, and highly replayable. I've found it to be a mic drop of a debut from Bit Reactor, a sense that's only compounded by its crowd-pleasingly anachronistic price tag of $50.

The HD rerelease of Heroes of Might & Magic 3 from 2015 used to be the only way to get the strategy classic on Steam, leaving many players frustrated since it lacked the expansions and the random map generator. Ask fans of the series, and they'd tell you to get the original version from GOG instead.

So it should be an easy win for Ubisoft that the series' current owner finally decided to put the original version, complete with its expansions Armageddon's Blade and The Shadow of Death, on Steam at last. Its current user review rating of 80% negative suggests otherwise.

Fork out $10 for it and you'll find an install that's only 23.49 KB big, which gives a "dummy executable" error message when you try to launch it. Because Heroes of Might & Magic 3 on Steam does not come with Heroes of Might & Magic 3. Somebody forgot to include the actual game files with the game.

I'm sure this will be fixed soon, perhaps when France wakes up, but in the meantime the complete edition on GOG is still the best version and it's currently on sale for half-price. Here's hoping the upcoming remake has a smoother launch, you know, like one where they actually remember to include the game.

Humankind 2 was announced today at Gamescom's Opening Night Live showcase, and I have to admit that I was among those who raised an eyebrow at the announcement trailer and wondered: Is this AI generated? A number of commenters speculated that it was. (For instance, under this X post.)

Nope, says the studio.

"The Humankind 2 live-action announcement trailer was filmed at Nu Boyana Film Studios in Sofia using real actors, practical sets, and custom-made props created specifically for the production," developer Amplitude Studios told PC Gamer over email. "We will be sharing behind-the-scenes images from the shoot soon."

PC Gamer has seen a few of those photos, and they do indeed show actors on a sound stage with partial sets and a typical blue backdrop for compositing.

In my and the internet's defense, the trailer does have something of an AI look to it. From the fisheye perspective of recently-birthed infants, we're stared at uncannily by a prehistoric woman, a hollering Viking aboard a longship, an American settler in a wagon, and other new parents from throughout space and time.

In the backgrounds: a giant tornado, bandits on horseback, a nuclear explosion, outer space. The studio hasn't commented on how those special effects were created, but they may well just be old fashioned CGI. I've asked for clarification on that point, as the studio didn't say explicitly that zero generative AI was used.

As for the game, the first Humankind was decent—Fraser described it as "a solid 4X that could use a bit more personality" in his review—and the sequel will introduce "new progression systems, innovative features, enhanced visuals, a modernized UI, and gameplay improvements," according to Amplitude.

Humankind 2 will release on PC in 2027, and there's a Steam page with more information live now.

Paradox Development Studio is taking a break from conquering history and space, setting its sights instead on post-apocalyptic North America. Afterworld will see you take control of a tribe of survivors as you explore and conquer the ruins of the fallen continent. Which you might already know, after yesterday's leak. But now it's official!

Afterworld was just revealed during Gamescom's Opening Night Live, with a trailer that's evocative of both Fallout and Mad Max. Paradox has naturally put its own spin on things, however, with features like the Ancients, immortal leaders who existed before the collapse of civilisation, and who are now fighting to rule what's left using forgotten technology. They might cause some problems for you.

Like Stellaris, you'll be able to pick your tribe's origins, including a Fallout-inspired start that sees you leaving the safety of your bunker to begin a new life in the wasteland. There's a survival bent to the proceedings, with your tribe needing to scrounge up the bare necessities like food and water before it can start thriving. Unlike previous PDX games, you really are starting from scratch.

Eventually you'll be able to rebuild civilisation or create something completely new, founding new religions, establishing laws, and taking advantage of pre-Fall technology, like that big ol' spider robot from the trailer. With convoys you'll be able to set up trading routes and supply lines to keep your new civilisation ticking, and if things get too rough you can leave your home behind and migrate to a new land, or just become nomads or raiders.

Afterworld seems to be shaping up to be Paradox's most exploration-heavy grand strategy game—even when compared to Stellaris. Take the ideas tree, for instance. This is essentially your tech tree, and it's based entirely on what your tribe experiences.

Instead of seeing the whole tree laid out in front of you, or getting a random selection of techs to choose from, the tree is revealed through exploration. If your tribe encounters a river, you'll learn about irrigation, unlocking the appropriate idea in the tree. If you meet another tribe and they've established a religion, then you'll discover the organised religion idea.

This is also where the procedural generation can shake things up. While the terrain and geography are immutable, you'll encounter different tribes, resources and dangers when you start a new run. So you'll always be able to find that river and unlock irrigation, but other experiences will be random.

Afterworld's development is being led by Dan Lind, formerly game director on Hearts of Iron 4. But there seems to be plenty of concepts drawn from Paradox's other grand strategy games as well. I've mentioned Stellaris a couple of times already, but it looks like there's plenty of Crusader Kings DNA in here too. Even though you're running a tribe rather than inhabiting an individual ruler, it still seems like there are some RPG nods.

"Afterworld is Paradox’s first non-historical setting in a decade, and I can’t wait to see what stories our players will tell with it,” says Lind. "This is the first world we’ve gotten to build from scratch in a long time, and the first one we've had the pleasure of destroying before the game starts. The old world is still out there in fragments, waiting to be found. What comes after it is entirely up to the players."

I know a lot of PDX fans were hoping for a Stellaris-like fantasy game for the developer's next outing, but we've already got so many fantasy-themed 4X games—the post-apocalypse strikes me as a more novel GSG setting.

A couple of weeks ago I got to go hands-on with Afterworld, so keep an eye out for my preview soon.

Ubisoft has identified the peanut butter and jelly in its pantry, and believes they would make a mean sandwich.

Announced at today's Gamescom Opening Night Live show, Rainbow Six Tactics is an XCOM-style tactics game led by the folks behind another turn-based tactical adaptation, the Mario + Rabbids series. It's the first singleplayer Rainbow Six in 19 years and features characters from both Rainbow Six Siege and the Vegas series.

Though, Siege is really the source text: R6 Tactics' story centers around the rebuilding of Rainbow after the events of Siege Year 10 (a story that has been told mostly through seasonal lore videos), and its playable cast includes 15 operators hand-picked from the competitive FPS. A briefing shown to press ahead of ONL included Ash, Montagne, Glaz, Doc, Nook, Smoke, and Sledge. The roster is a mix of attackers and defenders from Siege, but the Tactics missions I saw were all centered on attacking fortified terrorists.

The briefing also made it clear that R6 Tactics will have no in-game store or live-service aspects—it's just a game you buy and play. Players will operate Rainbow from headquarters and deploy operators on counter-terrorism missions. Screenshots suggest there will be an element of operator development and base building similar to the XCOM series.

It'll also have "dozens of hand-crafted maps from around the world," not procedurally generated ones—though there will be some randomized elements like enemy and objective locations. Every mission begins with a realtime recon phase, in which drones are deployed to covertly learn the lay of the land just like in Siege. Then comes the entry phase: Players choose entry points for operators, lay down breaching charges on walls, and execute a simultaneous infiltration. From there, the action seemingly goes turn-based: The briefing mentions that XCOM-staple mechanics like cover, overwatch, and sightlines are crucial.

Operators will seemingly have unique abilities—I noticed that Glaz can take long-range shots from across the map with his sniper rifle, acing two lined-up enemies with a single shot. Nook's ability seems to help her freely move between sightlines, and it's a safe guess that Sledge can break open walls whenever he wants.

The Vegas connection, if you were wondering, comes with the campaign's main character (and new leader of Rainbow): Paul Bishop, the protagonist of both Rainbow Six Vegas games. The story is told through cutscenes between missions, and should be a gold mine for the Siege loreheads.

Rainbow Six Tactics is out in 2027.

Since the full reveal of Total War: Warhammer's new Lords of the End Times expansion, the content is coming in thick and fast. Last week, Creative Assembly showed off Neferata, the incoming Free-LC lord, alongside the extremely fun-looking rework for the Vampire Counts. This week we're getting more information about the new end game crises.

The latest livestream went deep on Archaon's new Chaos Invasion endgame, Nagash's Great Ritual of Nagash, and the Skaven's Vermintide. We got to a rundown of each crisis, saw differently devastated world regions and special devastated battle maps, and even got an introduction to new End Times units.

Most notable for me, though, was the news that The Vermintide endgame features a rat counter that shows how many Skaven you still have left to kill. "You can see an estimated number of rats" says Mitch Heastie, Lead Game Designer on Total War: Warhammer, during the livestream. "It is based on the actual numbers, like roughly."

The counter on the stream (at 40:37) reads 165,000 RATS, who make up 60 Skaven armies you'll have to defeat. The Vermintide end game does sound fun, though. You'll have to destroy Skaven Under-Cities before they blow up your settlements with Doomspheres and quickly recapture territory, as the rat men will keep spawning armies otherwise. There are also new buildings to help deal with the menace, and it sounds like there's a narrative component, as each defeated army helps you uncover the Skaven's insidious plot.

By comparison, Nagash's end game is more focused on the climactic final battle. As the Black Pyramid slowly travels to Nagashizzar, you'll have to mitigate the Lord of Undeath's conquests and weaken him as much as possible for that final confrontation. And of course, there's Archaon's reworked Chaos Invasion, where you'll have to defeat his armies and fortresses to weaken his ward save before he destroys too much of the world. Otherwise he'll be functionally immortal. Easy enough.

I've got to say, all of these updates alongside the Lords of the End Times content have me very excited to play on September 24. With the news that anyone who buys one of the expansion lords gets access to Immortal Empires, it's also going to be one of the best times to start playing Total War: Warhammer as well.

As we head into big gaming week™ there are lots of studios with secret projects whirring behind the scenes, waiting to be announced at Gamescom or Opening Night Live. We now know that Paradox is one of said studios, thanks to its own forum filters.

"Paradox Forum website seems to accidentally list the unannounced game's name in the Unreleased Game filters," one eagle-eyed detective pointed out (via DualShockers) on Reddit. In the accompanying screenshot you can see the keyword Afterworld appear beneath Unreleased Games and Prison Architect 2.

Paradox has also been hinting at something appearing at Gamescom: "What is happening across the Paradox Universe?", a social media post reads. "Find out more on Aug 25th." And players seem to think Afterworld is set to be the big reveal.

Since then, online sleuths have been digging deeper. The Redditor who spotted the game name on the forums finally struck gold on Discord, finding the unreleased server, which had the following description: "Lead a tribe of survivors, rediscover ancient technology, manage wasteland settlements and wage wars of conquest and political struggle in Afterworld, an original post-apocalyptic survival grand strategy game." Sadly, the sleuthing stopped there: "Edit: rip they kicked me :(".

On the Paradox forums, there's a mix of speculation, a few reservations, and some disappointment that it's not the fantasy grand strategy game that a lot of folk were expecting. "To be honest: I would have liked a more fantasy based setting," one comment reads. "But ultimately the quality of a game is decided by mechanics and not by the setting."

Another forum member expressed concerns that it could go down the Fallout route, by treating "civilisation as a sort of 'one and done' endeavour and have the survivors forever picking at the corpse of the old world instead of ever making meaningful progress in building a new one."

It's worth reiterating that this is all based on one brief description, accompanied by some art, so it's a bit early to draw any conclusions. We'll likely find out more in the coming days, with Gamescom officially kicking off on Tuesday night with ONL.

Yesterday we finally got to see a full reveal for everything arriving in Total War: Warhammer 3's Lords of the End Times expansion and it's a whole heap of content. We've got Nagash and his undead legions, a fully-fleshed out Boris Todbringer and Middenland, plus the Glottkin's putrid hordes, and the greatest of Grey Seers, Thanquol and his giant rat-ogre, Boneripper.

But nestled among the reveals was also the announcement that when Lords of the End Times launches on September 24, you'll no longer need any Total War: Warhammer games to play the huge trilogy-spanning Immortal Empires campaign, which is the best bit of the series. From the official DLC summary:

"In a series first, purchasing any of the [Lords of the End Times] content grants access to the colossal Immortal Empires campaign with no need to own any of the Total War: Warhammer games, making it a great entry point for new players."

The entry conditions for Immortal Empires—the grand campaign which compiles content from all three instalments— have softened over the years. You used to have to own all three Total War: Warhammer games, then it was just Total War: Warhammer 3, and from September, it'll just be any individual Lords of the End Times character, meaning you'll be able to unlock Immortal Empires for about $9 (£7.49) in perpetuity.

In fact, when the Lords of the End Times lords go on sale, it'll potentially get even cheaper. Content-wise, the base version of Immortal Empires amounts to 14 different factions, and 24 legendary lords, and that's not including all the Free-LC lords and heroes added over the years, plus entire free factions like Bretonnia, who also have multiple playable characters.

Alas, while expansion factions and lords are present in Immortal Empires, as it was previously, you'll still have to purchase individual DLC to play those—I recommend waiting for a sale and selectively picking up any extra races you're interested in trying after you've played the game for a bit.

You can currently buy Total War: Warhammer 3 for $9 in the 10th anniversary sale, but with this change in September, it'll actually be better content value to buy Nagash, Thanquol, Todbringer, or the Glottkin for the same price. You won't get the Realms of Chaos campaign, which is missable to be honest, but you'll get Immortal Empires, which contains its campaign map, plus one of the new DLC lords.

The same goes for Total War: Warhammer 1 and 2. The second game's Great Vortex campaign is a fun time, but its entire map is included in Immortal Empires. I've spent many hundreds of hours in every instalment in this series, but even I'll admit there's basically no point going back to individual games now Immortal Empires exists and collates all content.

And with its endgame rework plus all the new stuff, Lords of the End Times' release will be a great time to jump into Total War: Warhammer if you've been eyeing it for a while yet never made the leap.

As the prophesied hour approaches, we now know when the End Times descend on Total War: Warhammer 3. Today, in a reveal that arrived alongside a new cinematic trailer, Creative Assembly announced that its anticipated Lords of the End Times DLC will launch for TWW3 on September 24.

And in case you weren't familiar with how the End Times turns out for the Warhammer world, that's only good news if you're some sort of undead, or demon-thing, or rat-guy. However, given how prominently the new trailer features Grey Seer Thanquol, a skaven whose schemes are infamous for causing as much carnage—or more—for his fellow rat men than their intended targets, maybe everything will go fine in your personal campaign.

Provided he doesn't, you know, successfully blow up the moon with a big warpstone gun. Fingers crossed, I suppose.

To go along with the release date drop and cinematic, Creative Assembly also published a Lords of the End Times DLC overview, providing a summary look at the new gameplay that'll accompany its four new Legendary Lords.

For example, campaign playthroughs as Nagash, Supreme Lord of the Undead will involve gathering his Mortarch lieutenants and his legendary lost Books to finally ascend to godhood and reshape the world into a sort of global skeleton zone. As one-eyed coolguy Boris Todbringer, players will channel Middenland's battle fervor into empowering its Great Temple of Ulric, earning army bonuses in the process.

If you instead choose the Glottkin, the Rot-father's favorite special boys, you'll sow Gardens of Nurgle as you lay waste to the world, providing beneficial plagues and demonic Nurgle units from its festering depths. And as Thanquol, you will—as previously mentioned—scheme.

While Creative Assembly says those won't "always go according to plan," Thanquol will "see his grand and destructive plans realized" if you're able to manage the collateral damage caused by your plotting. How hard can it be?

The studio also promises substantial free game updates coinciding with the Lords of the End Times launch, including gameplay overhauls for Vampire Counts and Archaon, new end game scenarios, and reworked victory conditions for every legendary lord.

And, "in a series first," Creative Assembly says purchasing any Lords of the End Times DLC—either as a bundle or individually—will provide access to the massive Immortal Empires campaign mode, even if you don't actually own any of the Total War: Warhammer games. It's the most generous the end of days has ever been.

It's been a bit since I've fired up a new Total War: Warhammer campaign, but the End Times sound like the perfect time to ease back into some grand strategy. Lords of the End Times launches on Steam on September 24.

Bad news: Dawn of War 4 is no longer a mere month away. King Art Games' first take on the RTS series was due on September 17, but it looks like the war needs a bit more time to cook. It's been pushed back until December 3.

If you shell out for the Commander Edition, you'll be able to sneak in a bit earlier, though, with the three-day early access unlock letting you dive in on November 30.

"As we approached the final stages of development, we saw an opportunity to further enhance Dawn of War 4 and deliver the quality of experience we’ve always envisioned," said creative director Jan Theysen. "The additional time will allow us to continue optimising performance, resolving bugs, and applying further polish to ensure players have the best possible experience from day one."

Dawn of War 4's launch will be followed up by free updates with new maps, the return of Crusade mode, more commanders and a mission editor. Two story expansions are also in the works.

There are a lot of big games coming out between now and the end of the year, but this is one of the new releases I'm most excited about. The first two Dawn of War games are among the best RTSs of the 3D era, and King Art's work on Iron Harvest has left me confident that it can rise to the challenge of bringing the series back to its glory days.

Back in 2025, I got to play a skirmish, controlling the Blood Ravens in a big ol' scrap against the orks. And while King Art has made some tweaks to the formula, its closest relative is undeniably the OG Dawn of War. It was an absolute blast—one which ended in an orbital strike that took out the final ork base, while my beefy Dreadnoughts smashed any greenskins trying to escape their grim fate.

I've been craving more time with the game ever since, but I guess I'll need to wait a few months longer.

Star Wars Zero Company is giving the people what they want. And that is: more XCOM. The turn-based shootouts, perishable soldiers and those beautiful moments where you survive by the skin of your teeth because of judicious use of overwatch—it all unapologetically calls to mind the two games that have defined the modern tactics genre. It's what we've been waiting for.

I've played through 18 cycles of a preview build, and there were moments where it felt like I was checking out a Star Wars-themed XCOM 2 mod, but with huge production values. It is, at times, incredibly familiar. Which isn't surprising, of course. Developer Bit Reactor was founded by Greg Foertsch, former Firaxis art director, and a bunch of Firaxis veterans followed him to this new venture.

Risky business

But inviting comparisons with XCOM, especially XCOM 2, is risky. Look at what happened to XCOM: Chimera Squad. It was a genuinely compelling twist on XCOM 2, but the ways in which it wasn't quite as good as its predecessor were massively amplified by its association. After dabbling in Zero Company's early game, I can't help but wonder if this is happening again. It is very XCOM, but it isn't XCOM.

When it works, oh boy it works. In one mission, my squad was surrounded and outnumbered. My troops were in good positions, though, so I thought I'd be able to chip away at the enemy numbers. And then a series of shots with 80-90% chances to hit missed. All of them.

I was screaming at the RNG gods. Why would they do me dirty like this? After the enemy turn, every member of my squad had taken a battering. But it wasn't over. I had tricks up my sleeve, most notably some abilities that gave my squad extra action points and free shots. My next turn was going to be my time to shine.

Once I was in control again, I activated a backup ability, so when my clone buddy Trick fired at a Separatist, one of his comrades followed it up with a free attack of their own. Some deft repositioning also allowed one of my crew to get behind the enemy frontline, so he didn't have to worry about shooting goons hiding behind cover. But then I had a better idea in the form of a cover-destroying, bone-crushing grenade. Things were looking up.

My leader ability also meant I could dole out an extra action point to someone—which I gifted to the beefiest member of the crew, who then charged at a Separatist and beat him to death.

I'd prepared for the next enemy turn, too, by holding back one member of my squad in the previous turn. Instead of attacking, I taunted a big group of enemies and activated his retaliation ability—this meant that four enemies would exclusively target him, and every time they shot at him, he'd immediately shoot back.

By the time enemy reinforcements arrived, we'd cleaned up. They walked through a door into the combat arena, only to be greeted by three overwatch cones. Zero Company eschews XCOM's omni-directional overwatch, which feels restrictive, but appropriately tactical. Anyway, the Separatists were goners.

Damn did it feel good. I got that XCOM 2 buzz, but there were also some Zero Company-specific tricks in there too—particularly the flexibility and even greater emphasis on teamwork. That this is so present even in the early game, when the bag of tricks is at its emptiest, is reassuring.

The astromech droid class is a prime example of Zero Company's slightly different approach. These little droids aren't frontline glory hounds, instead filling a support role. It's another way to get extra AP, or revel in some squad-wide buffs, and their self-heals mean that, while they are vulnerable, they don't need to be constantly protected.

This class is made all the more interesting because Zero Company, like XCOM, makes each one of your crew matter, because you're only ever going to be fielding a handful of troops. So that astromech might be a lifesaver, but can you afford to go into a fight one gun down?

Unfortunately, my enthusiasm is tempered by all the times the fights feel like a lesser example of the XCOM 2 model. One where fog of war, patrolling units and surprise attacks are replaced by regular enemy reinforcements spawning in clearly defined areas, which has a devastating impact on the tension that's normally inherent in tactics games, and especially XCOM.

I confess I'm also getting pretty bored of the combat arenas, which tend to be small, mostly open spaces littered with crates. Zero Company has an entire galaxy to play with, but while there's a variety of tilesets with some cosmetic differences, most of the locations have already started to blend together.

This issue is exacerbated by the range of foes—people with guns, and droids with guns. There's the odd exception, and I know more exotic enemy types appear later on with greater frequency, but it still feels comparatively conservative for a galaxy where space wizards exist.

Then there are the problems with clarity and precision—which Zero Company is a bit lacking in. I've made far too many positioning mistakes because of this, and I've been disappointed to discover that Bit Reactor is clearly expecting us to use a gamepad. Zero Company is just unpleasant to play with a mouse and keyboard. In a tactics game, this is wild.

Midnight Snack

While the battles feel comfortably XCOM-adjacent, a lot of the most novel and forward facing elements draw from Midnight Suns, which Foertsch was working on at Firaxis before he left to set up Bit Reactor. The more concentrated theme of camaraderie, the pre-battle conversations with your squad inside a base you can freely explore—on top of some pre-mission exploration in the combat levels themselves—and the mid-fight team-ups all evoke Firaxis's heroic tactics game.

Some of these elements have a mechanical payoff, like the bonuses individual members of your squad receive from working together. But even the arguably fluffier parts, like the aforementioned conversations, or those brief moments where you get to explore an area prior to a fight, walking around as if you're in a third-person action game, make a significant impact.

The cinematic presentation and subtle nods to RPGs elevate the workmanlike tactical gameplay, ensuring that the whole feels richer. Zero Company has character and panache—of the kind you don't often see in a tactics game.

In most cases, though, it doesn't go as hard as Midnight Suns. The Den is so much smaller than the Abbey, the conversations are brief and the team-up mechanics—though extremely handy—are restrained.

There is one place where it goes harder, however, combining both XCOM and Midnight Suns in a way that makes the stakes feel so much higher. While Marvel's heroes could not be killed, any member of your squad, even the full-fledged bespoke characters, can die. We cared about our very mortal XCOM squads despite their lack of identity, filling in the gaps ourselves. But we don't need to do that here, and the risk of losing a member of the team feels so much more pronounced.

If permadeath isn't your bag, though, you can simply turn it off.

I've been a bit more down on Zero Company than I expected, but 18 cycles only lets you explore the tip of the iceberg, and I still think there's a lot to like here. Squad management and progression is really strong, for instance, and I've already had plenty of fun mucking around with builds, using different combinations of classes and weapons to create potent killers.

At the moment I'm really digging my pistol-wielding gunslinger. Pistols are pretty weak, but you can fire them more often. To take advantage of this and shore up the weapon's weaknesses, I've turned him into a crit hit monster—basically a sniper with a pistol. He's a bit soft, though, and I've been having just as much of a lark building indomitable tanks who soak up damage and dish it back out again to devastating effect.

So I've been having a pretty good time, then. Just not as much as I expected. And a big part of that is probably because I was expecting Zero Company to push the blockbuster tactics game forward a bit more. XCOM 2 is a decade old but has yet to be shoved off its throne—and to do that will require a boldness that I've not really seen here. Little of it feels like evolution, and in some cases it feels like a step back—albeit an enjoyable one all the same.

Hopefully it takes bigger swings later in the campaign. Otherwise, I think it might leave me pining for XCOM and Midnight Suns again.

Slitherine's turn-based 40K strategy game Battlesector launched with a campaign where you could play as the none-more-goth Blood Angels against the bio-horror tyranids. That was followed by DLC adding other playable factions for multiplayer and other modes, leaving players hungry for more singleplayer story campaigns.

With the Deeds of the Fallen DLC earlier this year we finally got our wish—a 12-mission narrative campaign where we got to play as the nuns with guns of the Sisters of Battle, up against the green tide of the orks. It won't be the last, as Slitherine has revealed in an updated roadmap.

Following a free update in October, presumably with more of the balancing patches and quality-of-life updates Battlesector has received since launch, the new narrative DLC is penciled in for "Q4 2026". It's followed by another free update in Q1 of 2027, and then another new faction DLC in Q2.

I've got my fingers crossed for an Astra Militarum campaign, but I'm just happy to see Battlesector continuing to receive new additions. It's been well-supported since launch, with entire new modes Daemonic Incursion, Planetary Supremacy, and the roguelite Crusade mode—which just hit version 1.0—added via updates.

If you've checked in on Worms creator Andy Davidson sometime in these past few years, you'll know he's been hard at work on Worms: The Director's Cut 1.5, an unofficial but nonetheless Team 17-approved expansion pack for the original strategy-party mashup's Amiga-exclusive sequel. The goods have finally arrived: you can download the whole thing for free now.

It's got over 40 custom levels, 50 new sample packs for your Worms' voices, new teams and terrain types, and so on. It's a collaboration with fan creators and the likes of legendary indie developer Jeff Minter, who was honored via a Llamasoft-themed level in-game. In an interview with Daryl Baxter, Davidson called the expansion a chance to "celebrate the Amiga."

"The expansion pack is a chance for people to enjoy the full package of DC, with all it could do. Rather than closing a chapter, I hope it gives the game a new lease on life," he told Baxter, saying work is underway on a site players can use to share custom levels. "It would be nice for a wider audience to get a chance to play DC. It’s the version of Worms I’m most proud of, as I feel it’s when the gameplay and humour really clicked."

Notably, Director's Cut never made it to modern platforms, but Davidson said in a post on X that the expansion will play nice with emulators if you don't have old hardware lying around. While working with such an old version of Worms—which as you may know, spawned countless sequels and spinoffs all the way through 2025's Apple Arcade-exclusive Worms Across Worlds—was a chance for Davidson to revisit his favorite take on the series, it was also a challenge.

As he told Baxter, "Going back to the original code did prove much more difficult than I imagined. There was a lot I just didn’t remember three decades on, and scrolling through the code I did wonder how I managed it all in the first place!"

Endless Legend 2 seriously impressed me when it launched in early access last year. And now it's poised to escape its development shackles and appear fully formed, as the 1.0 launch now has a release date.

On September 17, you'll be able to begin your conquest of Saiadha in earnest. And if you dipped in during the early access phase, you can expect to be greeted by quite a few new features.

The final major faction will be making its first appearance on that same day. The Sandshapers are the oldest civilisation on the planet and aim to terraform the rather damp marble into a lovely, dry desert.

They'll be joined by a bunch of starfish, though I assume they prefer to be referred to as the Mangrove of Harmony. This is a new minor faction with its own hero, questline and recruitable units and pops. It was also designed in conjunction with the community, so if you hate starfish, you know who to blame.

Finally, there's a new spin on major factions in the form of rogue factions—splinter groups with their own bespoke quests, stories and mechanics.

At launch, we'll get two of them: a conquest-loving twist on the Kin of Sheredyn known as the Order of Zelevas, and a Necrophage offshoot known as The Severed Claw, which can enslave other factions.

Last year I called it "an incredible 4X" even in its unfinished state. The foundations of greatness were already apparent, though I didn't quite vibe with the combat—as much as it was a clear improvement over the disappointing brawls of Humankind. After a year of tinkering, I'm eager to see how much Amplitude has improved on it.

So make some room on your calendar for alien weirdos and planet-spanning quests. That gives you a couple of months to figure out what faction to play first.

Nobody could have foreseen this.

Champions Tactics: Grimoria Chronicles, Ubisoft's NFT tactics game, will be shutting down in October, as announced on its website and its official Discord. If you need a refresher—I did, despite having previously written about the game—Ubisoft launched Champions Tactics in 2024, long after most of the tech-adjacent industries had relented on trying to push quarter-baked Web3 feature pitches and shifted their attentions instead to the emerging AI boom.

As hard as it is to believe, Champions Tactics was one of two NFT games that Ubisoft launched in 2024, despite previous fumbled rollouts of "pay-to-earn" features that prompted the VP of its Strategic Innovations Lab to insist in January 2022 that we simply "don't get" the value of NFTs. Surprisingly, that didn't stifle the backlash much, driving Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot to assure us all in September 2022 that the publisher was only "researching" further Web3 integration and would pursue it "when we have something that gives you a real benefit."

Well, we can see now how that turned out.

"Today, we’re sharing an important update regarding the future of Champions Tactics. After careful consideration, we have made the decision to sunset the game," Ubisoft said in its announcement of the upcoming closure. "The Champions Tactics servers will officially shut down on October 30. Until then, the game will remain fully playable, and our goal is to ensure that players can continue to enjoy the experience during these final months."

Champions Tactics had already shed its NFT features earlier this year, announcing in May that it would "progressively transition away from blockchain functionality" due to "upcoming changes to the blockchain infrastructure supporting the game’s Web3 features." In the following days, Ubisoft removed the ability to mint and sell its NFT characters—some of which had been listed on the Champions Tactics marketplace for over $63,000 shortly after launch.

It's unclear how many of those characters had ever been sold, or for how much—and once the Web 3 features were removed, each player's supposedly non-fungible characters were converted into thoroughly fungible ones. You know, like the ones that are in a videogame.

But don't worry, its heavily invested users didn't walk away with nothing. On May 21, Ubisoft announced that "players who reached Divine rank at least once during the last three seasons" will be eligible to receive free stuff in Might & Magic Fates—a digital TCG it launched in February that lets players earn and trade cards "through an external marketplace powered by Immutable's technology that will enable and secure these exchanges" and oh my god they're still doing this?

Before now, Champions Tactics hadn't occupied much of the public consciousness. It had previously only entered the news cycle when a matchmaking bug forced all its ranked players to spend their first weekend with the game continually connecting—and immediately losing—the same baffled, unkillable guy.

Looking at the Discord, it's hard to tell how upset the remaining Champions Tactics players are; mostly they've been arguing about whether or not the game was a scam. I think the results speak for themselves.

A couple of months back I was playing Bhashiva for the first time in Total War: Warhammer 3, having a wild time mauling enemy armies with my tiger horde. But then I fought a siege battle. Not only had siege pathfinding somehow gotten even worse with the update, but despite having spent over 3,000 hours in this series, I was seeing a new gate bug, effectively bricking my unit by perma-freezing them in a destroyed gateway.

Total War: Warhammer's sieges have always been the buggiest component of the games. Hell, the infamous "gate bug", where an enemy unit opens it, splitting your unit in-half, has followed the series through all three games at this point. Siege pathfinding is also notoriously poor. I basically never direct more than one unit through a gate at a time, because I know they'll inexplicably decide to climb the walls instead if I do.

And good luck getting those units off the wall. You'll likely instruct them to fight an enemy below, and return two minutes later to see they haven't moved a muscle. I've even seen heroes and lords fall through walls and out of existence while climbing them, which as you'd expect, is pretty detrimental to the war effort. Thank god that bug doesn't seem to exist anymore.

All of which is to say, I've grown accustomed to Total War: Warhammer's buggy sieges over the years, and I still love the series in spite of them, but goddamn am I excited to play a game without gates, or at least with gates so gigantic no unit is ever going to get trapped inside them. Though we haven't seen any of Total War: Warhammer 40k's sieges yet, I'm inclined to think that there probably aren't siege battles, at least not in the more traditional sense we've come to expect from Total War: Warhammer.

Warhammer 40k's sieges are usually of a monumental scale, with giant hive or fortress gates and bastion walls barring the way. There are even entire Space Marine legions who specialise in siegecraft, such as the Imperial Fists and the Iron Warriors, who focus on defense and offense, respectively.

However, once those walls are breached it's more street-to-street urban conflict, relying on positioning, cover, and chokepoints. We already got to see the importance of those elements in the first Alpha Strike livestream, but in a setting with no traditional siege towers, ladder escalades, and where sapping is somewhat redundant, I could see siege maps not having walls at all, and honestly, I wouldn't mind that.

Walls have become a bit of a crutch for Total War's sieges. You feel an obligation to defend them, but the truth is, overreliance often makes for boring battles. The most fun and tactically diverse parts of a siege are when you're in the streets, chokepointing, protecting command points, and cleverly cutting off the tide of enemies slowly filling your settlement. In fact, the only thing I personally enjoy about walls is occupying them with my missile units to turn fire against defenders.

If Total War: Warhammer 40k does have walls, it will make for some of the most punishing sieges in the series, considering the vital importance of cover when most units are range-focused. With airstrikes and orbital lances at our disposal, it would also be relatively easy to breach them (unless they're super tanky). More than likely, the lion's share of the fighting will take place in the streets and districts beyond the walls, which is what makes me suspect Creative Assembly might do away with them entirely.

Either way, it's unlikely that any of Total War: Warhammer's siege bugs will find their way into 40k, especially when the game is using the brand new War Core engine. Will there be new game-breaking bugs to contend with instead? Of course there will. At least, though, we can likely bid farewell to some of the siege niggles that have impacted battles for over a decade.