Dawn of War III's presence at PAX West 2016 made for the first hands-on gameplay opportunity available to the public. The game is true to the RTS genre, but mixes and matches components from the first two titles to make more of a “core” RTS game. This time around, Dawn of War III has added base building back in, meshing with a push for large army sizes and a battlefield littered with Hero and Super units alike.

Dawn of War III is a Relic game. Aspects of gameplay are distantly familiar to Company of Heroes, but Dawn of War's third iteration has distanced itself enough (while running on the Essence engine) to feel mostly unique in its mechanics. For our hands-on demo, we played as the Space Marines (Blood Ravens, sub-faction of Blood Angels) in a late-game campaign mission with access to hero Gabriel Angelos and Super Unit Titan (piloted by Lady Solaria).

Total War: Warhammer launched May 24th -- and it’s been a massive commercial success. In just three days, the latest Total War title has broken the sales records for all the franchise’s prior launches. Within a week of launch, Total Warhammer has already hit half a million sales, making it “the fastest selling Total War title on Steam.”

We’ve talked extensively about Total Warhammer with the team, specifically with regard to how the game makes use of DirectX 12. You can find some of that content here and here.

We spoke exclusively with the Creative Assembly team about its game engine optimization for the upcoming Total War: Warhammer. Major moves to optimize and refactor the game engine include DirectX 12 integration, better CPU thread management (decoupling the logic and render threads), and GPU-assigned processing to lighten the CPU load.

The interview with Al Bickham, Studio Communications Manager at Creative Assembly, can be found in its entirety below. We hope to soon visit the topic of DirectX 12 support within the Total War: Warhammer engine.

Total War: Warhammer demonstrates a natural, synergistic fusion of two genres -- the long-standing grand-strategy games, Total War, and even longer-standing Warhammer tabletop game. Campaigns in the Warhammer universe like Storm of Chaos have given way to Total War-like experiences; armies roam the world map, growing or unfurling (or ‘crumbling’) with wins and losses. At the same time, combat in Total War has kept its structure and mechanics: units travel in tightly-knit groups, facing and flanking are important parts of the battle, and strategic map utilization can make-up for troop count disparities. Then, of course, having a strong general and maintaining troop morale dictate most heavily the staying power of military forces.

All these points are shared by the Warhammer tabletop game. As much sense as the partnership makes, it marks an astounding new venture for the Total War team -- a first venture into a fantastical environ.

AMD just announced a partnership with Total War developers Creative Assembly, highlighting the game developer's move to implement DirectX 12 with the upcoming Total War: Warhammer Grand Strategy game.

Looks like Peter Piper decided to take a few days off, and all hell broke loose. Good job, Peter. Now five unfortunate souls have been thrust into the midst of one of the most brutal vermin infestations in Warhammer history!

That’s the premise of Vermintide: The End Times, developed by Fat Shark Games, and I couldn’t be happier.

It’s important to note that I am a little biased (a necessity of good game reviews), as I am a huge Warhammer and Warhammer 40k fan, but Vermintide is everything I could have asked for in a co-op survival thriller. From the very instant the game is loaded, I was filled with a sense of dread – every piece fits together to give the player a desperate, horror-filled experience without relying on cliché jump scares or a false sense of foreboding.

The upcoming release of Blood Bowl II just got a lot darker (and bit pointier) with the reveal of Dark Elves as a playable race. You can see a preview of their speed and underhanded tricks in the video trailer released by Focus Home Interactive, found below.

Having played Fatshark Games’ Warhammer: End of Times - Vermintide, I’m left conflicted. I played the miniatures game for years -- spending untold fortunes on it -- and the idea of a game set in an Imperial (the largest Human faction) city falling victim to a mass uprising of the rat-like Skaven sounds fun and exciting. Even more interesting is the idea of a game following the events that occur simultaneously in the miniatures game, as is the case with Vermintide.