Total War: Warhammer III (PC, £49.99 or included with Xbox Game Pass for PC)
Verdict: Swords, strategy and silliness
Rating:
How silly Warhammer is, how gloriously silly.It’s a hobby that makes its practitioners paint tiny figures of elves and goblins, with names like Eltharion and Grom the Paunch, and then battle them across kitchen tabletops that have temporarily been converted into fantasy worlds.
That pile of books?It’s actually a hill. And my spiky man has taken it! But Warhammer has also been translated to computer screens – and nowhere more successfully than in the Total War games.
All of the silly stuff remains, right down to Eltharion, Grom, and more spiky men than you can count.
But here the hills are beautiful digital renderings, topped by castles and lashed by storms.
And now the third game has been released, with the (it must be said) silly title of Total War: Warhammer III.
You don’t need to have played any of the previous entries, nor indeed practised the tabletop hobby, to dive in here. In fact, Daftar Slot Online pains have been taken to make this one especially welcoming to new players, including the addition of a prologue campaign that sets out the basics.
Because the Total War series, having honed itself across numerous historical games, also does the serious things well.
You’ll spend a lot of time strategising over maps – building your towns and resources – before, when the time is right, moving your thinking to the battlefield.It’s tremendously rewarding.
And along the way, leading one of Warhammer III’s eight factions, you’ll also write stories.
Of the steadfast warriors of Grand Cathay. Of the corrupted followers of Nurgle.Of gods and monsters. It’s enough to make you reach for a paint brush and commandeer the kitchen table.
OlliOlli World (PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, PC, £24.99)
Verdict: Smooth skating
Rating:
I’m no arbiter of what’s cool, but even I know that a skateboarding game can get it horribly wrong.
If it uses the word ‘radical’ one two many times, or calls everything ‘gnarly’, then it risks being the try-hard at the skatepark.
What’s wondrous about OlliOlli World – among many things – is that it commits these infractions and seems to pull them off.
I mean, it’s set in world of Radlandia and has you seeking Gnarvana, and yet the eye-roll quotient is low.
It helps that OlliOlli World’s moment-to-moment gameplay, zooming around and trying to perform tricks, is so compulsive.
And its candy-coloured spaces are so beautiful and expansive.Much like a skateboard, just pick it up and go, go, go!