Hands-On – Total War: Warhammer

I’ll be honest – I’m not intimately familiar with the Total War games. That doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate a good real-time strategy game when I see it, though, and it’s clear that Creative Assembly is putting a lot of effort into the next game in that series. This around, though, there’s a new twist in store for players as the series collides with Games Workshop’s Warhammer series for the first time ever. This creates some interesting new concepts for Total War: Warhammer to explore, and it does so while maintaining what players love about the franchise.

As you might expect, bringing Warhammer in mixes the gameplay up, and there are a few intriguing changes in store. There are four playable factions (the Empire, the Greenskins, the Dwarfs, and the Vampire Counts), each with their own special abilities. Also along for the ride are flying creatures – and yes, that means dragons. Some factions have hoards of zombies that will descend upon your forces, while others have access to powerful pieces of magic. If you keep up with this franchise, you’ll find similarities between Warhammer‘s world map and Attila‘s, the previous Total War game, though the former will have more diverse climates and terrains.

Representatives from Creative Assembly stressed how closely they worked with Games Workshop to integrate the Warhammer series into Total War while simultaneously staying true to both franchises. Ultimately, this means that the game is still Total War at its core, and all of the dense real-time strategy elements you’d expect to see are present and accounted for. Battlefields can be pretty chaotic, with units breaking out into brawls regularly. On a side note, if you have a good pair of headphones, use them; the sound design is aggressive and intense. If you’re a fan of either series, this one might be worth a look.

Total War: Warhammer launches for Windows on May 24th with an OS X and Linux release following soon after.