It’s hard to believe that Rome: Total War is almost four years old, let alone that the Total War series is not new anymore. Shogun: Total War debuted in 2000, was an instant hit, and Creative Assembly has never really paused since. Aside from a couple of ill-advised forays into action gaming (Spartan: Total Warrior […]

[Read more →]

There’s an interview with Creative Assembly’s James Russell up at IGN that adds some new details and the usual pre-release puffery.
Things to note:
The scale is a lot greater than previous Total War titles. The campaign map now encompasses not only the whole of Europe and the middle-East, but also North America and the Caribbean, and […]

[Read more →]

I loved the Kingdoms expansion for Medieval 2: Total War. It’s the model of what an expansion should be, I think. Now it has a patch.
Among the fixes:
- Dead wives no longer produce children in the Crusades campaign.
So no more zombie babies.

[Read more →]

My review of Medieval II: Total War - Kingdoms is up at Gameshark.
I loved this expansion. As good as Medieval II is, the Kingdoms pack adds more than enough variety, flavor and cleverness to keep you hooked for a while. There is some really nice stuff going on here, and adding the SDK means that […]

[Read more →]

For the last week or so I’ve been playing the Europa Barbarorum mod for Rome: Total War. Like many mods, it aims for realism before anything else, even to the point of giving each faction an overly “correct” name. Greeks, for example, are the Koinon Hellenon. The “rebel” controlled cities are given the somewhat anachronistic […]

[Read more →]

The PCGamer UK preview of the upcoming Empire: Total War is online, courtesy of Tim Edwards. Here are the highlights.
Formations are the new rock-paper-scissors of warfare. It’s all about arranging men in such a way as to present the most possible muskets at the line of enemy advance. “A square of men beats a cavalry […]

[Read more →]

Sometimes I wish I had a huge portfolio of developer interviews and features that I could dredge up to make up for new content.
Kieron doesn’t have that problem.

[Read more →]

Jason Ocampo has written an extended “first impressions” article on Empire: Total War. The highlights include a description of how the campaign scales in complexity as you move through it, giving you little to do and then more and then more. There will be a new engine and some new features, including garrisoning buildings and […]

[Read more →]

Announcement and screens here.
Now for the fisking.
Empire: Total War is set in the 18th century, a turbulent era that is the most requested by Total War’s loyal fan base and a period alive with global conflict, revolutionary fervour and technological advances. With themes such as the Industrial Revolution, America’s struggle for independence, the race to […]

[Read more →]

No, I haven’t got an early look. And I’m too busy in Beyond the Sword boot camp to go back to knights and archers and beehive tossers in beautiful 3D.
But Kieron Gillen’s preview is up at Eurogamer. It’s full of great bits, and is, as he notes, perilously close to a review. He makes at […]

[Read more →]