Total War: Warhammer Review

Total War: Warhammer is a turn-based strategy game with real-time tactical battles between armies. The other Total War games feature historical settings, Warhammer introduces a fantasy setting as well as characters from the Warhammer universe. These characters, which include monsters, warriors, and heroes, can be controlled by the player. The game features four playable factions at launch, which are the Empire, the Greenskins, the Dwarfs and the Vampire Counts. The Chaos faction was available for free to those who pre-ordered or purchased in the first week of release and subsequently available as downloadable content. The Bretonnia faction is available in custom and multiplayer battles with a reduced unit roster.

For those of you not familiar with the franchise allow me to explain. The Warhammer franchise belonging to the games workshop and is possibly one of the finest things to come out of Britain. It is a table top game where players build hundred upon thousands of miniatures to construct armies to do battle with friends and foe alike. While okay sure you may be sat there rolling your eyes, thinking it can’t be that popular. Well, wander into your largest population centre, whatever is near by and you’re more than likely to find a games workshop or two tucked away somewhere. However, if you don’t want to spend hundreds and thousands of pounds collecting your miniatures, building, customising and painting them then there is a solution. The newest total war game. Now while Warhammer games have been popping up left right and centre the ones I’ve really enjoyed has been this and blood bowl, (it’s like a sports game, with violence and murder).  So, it was released this year, pre-ordering came with the chaos dlc, allowing the player to play as the chaos faction, who play much like a marauding war band, while lacking cities to build more troops the faction do allow for camps to be set up and units to be recruited or replenished. I bought it not long after launch and didn’t pay for the chaos dlc, but I’m not really missing out in my mind. There is a myriad of classic races to choose to play as: Dwarves, Orcs (Green Skins), The Empire (Humans),  Undead (Vampire Counts) and Warriors of Chaos.

So the gameplay, right, After the fancy pants cinematic that lead onto some tutorials the game leaves you to fend for yourself holding one territory, usually wherever you took over during the tutorial. Depending on how you want to play you can immediately start forging alliances or, like I did, start raising a massive freaking army and getting stuck in to the treacherous gits with the audacity to claim lands rightfully yours as their own. Anyway, obviously each race boasts different units and play styles, like the vampire counts do not have ranged units but you can have vampires bugger off and take over capitals for you, or something to that effect. Like I said I just raised an army and got stuck in. The game like it’s predecessors in the total war franchise allows for auto resolve of conflicts that can result in and automatic win or a surprising defeat, my recommendation is to fight the battles yourself as I didn’t see much else of merit in the game play. That being said, I am very new to Total War so a lot of my frustration from my early stumbles through the game may be showing in this.  I barely levelled my general up and I imagine the game proves more interesting the more powerful your little dude is. Anyway, the co-op campaign mode saves this game, with an experienced player at my side things got easier. So beware the steep learning curve my friends who are picking this game up simply because it has Warhammer slapped on the title.

Graphics, seeing as a lot of this is taken from a birds eye view, it’s nothing terribly special, it  is a turn based game after all. But the effort they’ve put into the world map does deserve credit. The winds of change glitter across the map in rather pretty, shifting and twirling auroras. The game does allow for the player to alter camera angles, zoom in and out and roam above the battle field. Zooming in does reveal a new level of detail sadly a lot of the customisation and variety you’d see in the table top armies are lost as, lets face it, there is going to be stamped unit appearances with little variety. IE a battalion of zombies is pretty cookie cutter in their appearance while in the table top, if you want to spend the time loving embellishing each of these pieces, can be a mottled hue of rotten colours, it’s not great but the cinematic are nice and time was spent on creating the world, the battle grounds are also nicely varied depending on the region you’re warring in.

Sound, sound is going to be difficult. The game isn’t going to wow you with massive orchestral scores outside of whatever eye candy they are throwing at you to suitably align you to your chosen factions plight but I digress. There is the ambience you can expect just to continue the mood but it does all fade into the background as you meander about chasing down whatever coward is fleeing the oncoming tide of rotted corpses and lumbering cadaverous nightmares(again, I was playing the Vampire Counts) coming their way. The sound effect tied to engaging in battle, beginning the actual battle etc are stirring if a bit studio audience like in their canned sounds. Be it the roar of those charging into battle, the gallop of hooves or trotters (the orcs ride boars, adorable) or the clash of steal and the roar of fire, I’m fairly sure I heard screaming during a siege, writer shrugs. Again I’m not terribly familiar with the earlier Total War games but I have watched footage and friends play some of the older incarnations and the sounds have remained very much the same.

No doubt there is going to be a fiendish money grubbing amount of DLC to come with this game, introductions of other races like elves in all their maddening hues, the Skaven, goblins and the like. Plus, with the quest line for legendary items or mounts or whatever it’d be fun to see how the other races, progress, operate and play, but essentially this game is what it is. War simulation, personally I still prefer the Civilisation games to this, while yeah, all right, Civ’ isn’t a war game, doesn’t mean you can’t go to war, I do quite frequently and that is simply to break up the monotony but I’m getting off topic here. The game does score highly on the replay as there is no doubt countless ways to win the game, forging alliances or just taking a different path of wanton, often rampant, destruction and violence. Also the co-op campaign, just, yes, playing this with friends is highly recommended.