Since I’m apparently now RPS’ Radioactive Eastern Europe correspondent, I recently spent a couple of hours in Metro 2039, the gloom ‘n’ grit FPS sequel that Ukrainian developers 4A Games have explicitly styled as a return to the series’ roots. From what I’ve played, it is in fact as much of a hybrid as the mutated shrimp-insects that lurk in its Moscow sewers, reviving the claustrophobic tunnel dwelling of Metros 2033 and Last Light while keeping a few favoured twists from the more freely-roamable Metro Exodus.

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Dawn of War 4's Necrons are the hard nuts of Warhammer 40,000. Each one of their soldiers is a >soul trapped in a living metal body, practically immortal thanks to the faction's reanimation technology. Like a clothes moth infestation, once they've made their home on a planet, they're virtually impossible to get rid of. They lend themselves to wars of attrition, constantly expanding their borders while absorbing enemy attacks.

"Players love this type of playstyle," Dawn of War 4's senior game designer Elliott Verbiest tells me, "but it's something that isn't necessarily conducive to interesting multiplayer gameplay. It's kind of the same deal as rock, paper scissors where both players are just throwing rock over and over and over again."

To counter this, developers King Art Games have introduced a chink in the Necron's armour, and it's a very human impulse: greed.

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In Dawn of War 4, each faction can field a massive endgame unit that basically dwarfs everything else on the battlefield. For instance, the machine-loving techpriests of the Adeptus Mechanicus, they can airdrop a multistory tall mech from space. This Titan will then merrily stomp around the battlefield crushing everything in its way. However, of all the factions, the Necrons – Games Workshop's equivalent of The Terminator – can bring to bear the most powerful. Called a C'Tan Shard of the Void Dragon, this spearwielding megaunit is a machine-bound fragment of a shattered god.

Unlike the other faction's endgame units, which reserve their rage for the enemy, the Necron's big unit has as much hate for its masters as it does its enemies.

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