If last week’s chat about Total War Saga: Troy has got you itching to dip into The Creative Assembly’s back catalogue of Total War games, you’re in luck, as Humble are holding an entire week of Total War deals right now. With savings of up to 75% in some cases (plus a very tasty 25% off last year’s excellent Total War: Three Kingdoms), there’s plenty to get excited about. So let’s sharpen those deals swords and dive on in, shall we?

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After watching the trailer a bajillion more times, I am extremely excited for Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. It’s been around 48 hours since the announcement and I cannot possibly retain this state for much longer. By the time the Christmas-ish release date rolls around I will either have exploded like a poor little meat balloon, or gone full circle and lapsed into a coma. Like the engines of the Enterprise, she cannae hold – definitely not for around six more months, anyway.

Thank god that Vikings are an enduring and popular theme for games, then! I can inoculate myself against disaster by playing a few of these existing ones while I wait. Such is the versatility of Vikings that they pop up in almost every genre imaginable, too. So if, like me, you are already on the edge of your seat (and that seat is in a longship), here are some recommendations for varied and quality video games that will get you prepared for Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.

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According to the Iliad, the sacking of Troy only happened after a very specific set of things occurred in the right order. So, I asked Todor Nikolov, lead game designer at Creative Assembly Sofia, would players have to set up the same set of circumstances?

“You’re probably talking about the Trojan Horse?” he replied. HahaHAHAHha yes of course, that’s what I was talking about, it would be ludicrous to expect that a strategy game allowed players to plan for and/or orchestrate Achilles sulking and Patrolclus getting himself killed, and then Achilles going grief-berserk over his dead boyfriend. The topic had come up because we were talking about the just-this-minute announce new Total War Saga game, A Total War Saga: Troy. Guess where it’s set?

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According to an ancient Sussex proverb, there are as many factions in the 20-year-old Total War series as there are sand grains on a beach, as there are angels dancing upon the head of a pin, as there are grenadiers in the armies of his Imperial Majesty Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, King of Italy, Protector of the Confederation of the Rhine, Co-Prince of Andorra. This is providing, of course, the answer in each case is between 100 and 200, depending on whether you include the DLC and think Sicily is a real country.

From stinky hill tribes through trim Teutonic phalanxes to bawling rivers of undead, Total Warring has certainly come in all shapes and sizes. At a recent hands-on event for Total War: Three Kingdoms, a heinous idea occurred to me: why not confuse and upset all the developers in attendance (plus a couple more over email) by asking them to pick a favourite faction? The results, which involved surprisingly few headbutts, are below.

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Sound the horns, call in the bannermen, and prepare for the funeral rites. Fothad, governor of Circenn, is dead.

It s fine though, I ve got another Fothad. I ve actually got another two> Fothads, just sat around in my kingdom s court, the apparent result of some spectacularly uncreative naming conventions in 9th Century Scotland. It s not just Fothads that I rack up on my playthrough of A Total War Saga: Thrones of Britannia, either: I also pick up two Amlaibs one a general, one a governor a surplus of Ailins, and I m on my third Dubgall by the time I unite all of Scotland under my rule. I know it s the Dark Ages, guys, but can we come up with a few new names?

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Today brings a big new free update for A Total War Saga: Thrones Of Britannia, adding new Allegiance and Decree systems (well, new to Battlebrits but borrowed from earlier Total War games). Developers Creative Assemble have conceded that they got a little carried away stripping back the Total War formula (the Warmula, as I imagine the official term is) for the first of the new Saga spin-off series, see, so they’ve gone back to pack in more gameguts. Speaking of guts, Total War’s customary gore DLC is now available for Battlebrits too.

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The next update for A Total War Saga: Thrones Of Britannia will introduce an ‘Allegiance’ system, similar to Culture in Total War: Rome II and Religion in Twattila, and Throners can now test it out in a public beta build. The whole idea of the Total War Saga subseries is to streamline and refocus but developers The Creative Assembly concede that some changes left notable gaps in their first Saga. So, for starters, here comes Allegiance to make people say “Obviously we should burn the monarchy before it takes root but I will say this fella’s a good egg”, with kick-on effects for politics and provinces in the historical strategy game. (more…)

We’ve just passed the half-way point of 2018, so Ian Gatekeeper and all his fabulously wealthy chums over at Valve have revealed which hundred games have sold best on Steam over the past six months. It’s a list dominated by pre-2018 names, to be frank, a great many of which you’ll be expected, but there are a few surprises in there.

2018 releases Jurassic World Evolution, Far Cry 5 Kingdom Come: Deliverance and Warhammer: Vermintide II are wearing some spectacular money-hats, for example, while the relatively lesser-known likes of Raft, Eco and Deep Rock Galactic have made themselves heard above the din of triple-A marketing budgets. (more…)

Three weeks after its debut on Windows, A Total War Saga: Thrones Of Britannia is now out on MacOS too. If you already own The Creative Assembly’s latest historical strategy game on Steam, hey, you’ve now got it for Mac too; thankfully we’re long past the days when Mac ports were sold separately. And sure, Macs can boot to Windows nowadays, but it’s still handier to have a native version. Slip into your chainmail turtleneck to start building your empire and reshaping the history of Poundland. (more…)

Hallo! John’s away so I’m taking over for our latest weekly rundown of the biggest-selling games on Steam over the previous seven days. Familiar faces are here, of course, but the charts also include more survival games than I’ve seen in yonks. The slightest peek of sun outside and you lot start acting as if it’s the end of the world, eh?

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