If you recently glanced at Total War: Shogun 2 and thought "gosh, lovely hip-and-gable roofs on that miniature of the temples in Kyoto, but this could really do with oh, let's say 50 additional groups of quarrelsome swordsmen", then congratulations, Creative Assembly are adding "50+" minor factions in Total War: Shogun 2 Complete Edition, an all-in-one remaster hamper due to launch on 13th October via Steam, Epic Games Store, Microsoft Store and GOG.

This fancified and expanderised, 64-bit edition of the 2011 strategy game will include both the Rise and the Fall of the Samurai DLC expansions, together with updated lighting, shadows and textures. Also: "modernised controls", which makes me frown a little in the absence of details, together with 1440p and 4K UI scaling, and Japanese and Chinese voice acting and localisation.

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Well, that report earlier this year was bang on the banana. A new StarCraft shooter, creatively dubbed StarCraft, has been announced for a 2030 release at this year's BlizzCon. Joining it among the headliners were Diablo 5 - which is due out in 2029 - and a new World of Warcraft branch dubbed WOW: Forever. Brave of them to name a Warcraft fork after the inevitable response which follows a WOW player revealing how long they've been playing the MMO.

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I remember once when I was a child, my uncle was visiting and completely unprompted (and kindly) he gave me a copy of one of the Total War games, I think the Rome one, you'll have to forgive my memory. I'd literally never played a strategy game in my life, but I gave it a go anyway, and quickly found myself thinking, "hey, where are the collectibles? Why's there no triple jump?" The onboarding process did not help me much, and after a failure of a battle where I lost everything, I soon gave up after. So it's because of not particularly strategic people like me that makes me understand why developer Creative Assembly want Total War: Warhammer 40,000 "approachable and accessible".

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The first time I lost my whole party in Dungeon Settlers, it was to a swarm of rats. I think we can all agree that getting killed by rats in anything remotely fantasy RPG-ish is an enormous faux pas. It's like spelling your own name wrong on your CV. It's like accidentally wearing your underpants on top of your trousers. It's like failing to become Thane of Whiterun.

In my defence, I was playing the game on Hard difficulty, and the rodents of Dungeon Settlers have a zoologically improbable habit of keeping company with stone golems. Ever tried to crack a stone golem with a wooden sword? I have found it inconvenient. In any case, while my party wipe was embarrassing, it was also excellently macabre in the fine traditions of Dwarf Fortress.

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Total War: Warhammer 40,000 feels like one of those games where you think to yourself, "wait, how doesn't this exist already?" There have been previous Total War: Warhammer games, three of them in fact, but all set in the original, fantasy setting, not the far flung futuristic sci-fi one. We still don't know when Creative Assembly's Total War: Warhammer 40,000 is coming out, though they have shared one thing that will be different compared to the previous Warhammer games: they have no plans for any sequels.

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Under Microsoft's ownership, it was probably a safe bet that Double Fine would never get to make a Brutal Legend 2, even in this IP-obsessed world we find ourselves in. However! Microsoft don't own Double Fine anymore, and so the once again indie developer can more or less do what they want. Which they're already doing, in fact, as they're currently hosting a game jam Kickstarter that includes a stretch goal that'll see them making Brutal Legend 2. If you give them $100 million.

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Earlier this week, South of Midnight developer Compulsion Games shared word that they now own all of the publishing rights to their games, a welcome update in light of the ongoing BDS boycott against Microsoft and Xbox. And now, another studio is joining the realm of boycott freedom, this time Psychonauts studio Double Fine, as CEO Tim Schafer has confirmed that they too now own the publishing rights to their own catalogue.

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Creative Assembly have announced a release date for Total War: Warhammer 3 expansion Lords of the End Times. Consisting of four new legendary lords, each with a distinct retinue, campaign and battle map abilities, it's billed as "the biggest DLC that we’ve ever released in the series 10-year history". It'll accompany another, reportedly gargantuan free update with yet another legendary lord, the Vampire Queen Neferata, together with a rework for the Vampire Counts and Archaon The Everchosen, some new endgame scenarios, and updated victory conditions.

There are over a hundred legendary lords in Twarhammer 3 at this point. I feel like the legendariness is at risk of being diluted. Can we organise some kind of spin-off game where every Warhammer army consists entirely of legendary lords? How about the legendary lords all go live on a big New England college campus and solve mysteries together? How about a Warhammer legendary lord adaptation of Guess Who?

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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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What do we want? The ability to be evil in video games! How do we want it? Designed in a way that's mechanically enriching! That's what I'm hoping Arise Dark Lord will be, anyway, a Frankensteinian mish mash of action, real-time strategy, tower defence and base building where you are an evil overlord who rules over a nefarious army and wants to kill all humans.

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My workers in Flow of War are tireless and uncomplaining, labouring away silently in the face of all adversity. Nonetheless, I can feel their seething irritation when I plant my fortress layout awry. Flow of War is a "classic RTS" with an economic element that mostly runs itself. You conjure a bunch of minions from your town hall, pop down templates for cropfields, forges, wells, and suchlike, and watch as your drudges get on with the building and resource-gathering.

Where you can contribute is in laying out those structures in an efficient way, so that your serfs accomplish as much as possible before the timer runs down and you have to fend off a fresh wave of attackers, emerging from hellportals around the map. After 30 minutes with the demo, I have mostly learned what not to do.

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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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I’d put my six-pounder anti-tank guns in the perfect position to halt the Tigers’ advance. The German tanks would have to cross the bridge, keeping them packed together, and the derailed train on their flank would keep them from spreading out too much before they came into range of my British gunners’ heavy ordnance.

Being the twelfth and last wave of this game of Company of Heroes 3: Final Stand, if I could put down the tanks' advance I'd win the match and take home a healthy bushel of perk points to upgrade my faction for future matches.

But then the blasted Luftwaffe arrived.

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