So this will be about a great game called Terraria, specifically a guide for it. I will probably have to do multiple post about this as it is one of the most complicated games on the market, and while some may compare it to Minecraft,  a pro at that game like Dream or technoblade would probably have no idea what to do in this game. So here’s how you start. When making a new world, I would advise you to use a small world a normal and on crimson instead of corruption. Now, after spawning, chop down about 5 trees and find a flat area near spawn to build your house. Build a 9 by 5 wooden box. Then using your inventory craft a work station, after that  make 2 holes in your box and then fill the holes with doors you can create with your work station. Open one of these doors to go outside and find a few slimes to kill with you copper sword, because they will drop gel which can be used to craft torches. After crafting a table and placing it and the a torch, come out of your house and start running to one side. If you find another biome then run back to base. The do they other side. If you find a cave, then start descending, breaking every single pot and loving and destroying each chest. You will find a recall potion and after fully looting the whole cave use the potion and you will be teleported back to Spawn. At this point,  build another house like the one described earlier. Then start mining. The way you mine in this game is straight down, only wide enough for you to fit. After 10 minutes of this , use a recall potionThe using stone craft a furnace a turn all you ores into bars, make a anvil, then craft copper or lead armour. Next time I will tell you how to defeat your first boss, the Eye Of Cuthulu.

Dwarfs line the walls of the Everpeak, weapons ready. They fire bolt and lead at the incoming Orcs, but to the Giant lummoxing forward at the head of the green horde it may as well be a light smither of rain. The Giant crashes into the gates, stumbles back and crashes into them again. It bursts through to be faced by massed units of Longbeards, fearless Dwarf veterans, who mob the Giant like dogs harassing an elephant.

They win, because in the rock, paper, scissors of Total War: Warhammer the Longbeards' immunity to psychological effects makes them good at fighting fear-causing Giants. Slayers would be even better as they have the Anti-Large trait as well as Unbreakable, but this is a game where paper can beat scissors so long as there's enough of it.

Moldy Old World

Until now Total War has recreated historical eras, and so the tactics have been based on simplified versions of real-world tactics, whether deployed by Rome or Napoleon. Cavalry flank and race ahead to attack missile units before they get too many shots off; spears defend and resist cavalry charges; missile units pour volleys into dense infantry units as they slowly advance. Here, things are more complicated.

The Warhammer World is a fantasy setting, one loosely based on Renaissance Europe but with the fiction of J. R. R. Tolkien, Michael Moorcock, H. P. Lovecraft and Fritz Leiber funnelled into it through industrial pipes while copies of 2000 AD and heavy metal album covers are scattered on top. It's a mish-mash of everything someone at Games Workshop ever thought was cool, and it's both familiar and really weird. 

There's plenty of crossover between fans of historical wargames and Warhammer, as shown by two of the previous Total War games receiving fan-made mods that squeeze Warhammer armies into them. This is something else though, a ground-up alteration of the Total War formula to make it suit the fantasy setting of the Old World (and it's moddable too, so someone out there must be itching to reverse the trend and put historical armies back in). That formula comes in two halves. The first is a turn-based grand campaign about marching armies across a map and managing provinces through construction, research, and taxation, trying to balance the economy and people's happiness with army-building. The second happens when those armies meet and drop into a real-time, though pausable, battle.

In previous Total War games the factions played in a relatively similar way, but not any more. For instance, the Greenskins have a meter measuring each army's Fightiness. Win battles, and it rises. Lose, or squat in your hovels like a coward, and it drops. If Fightiness is high enough, and there are at least 17 out of a maximum 20 units in the stack, all that sweet victory encourages other Orcs to band together in a bonus force called a Waaagh! For other species buying and maintaining multiple armies is a huge expense, but for Greenskins can earn them free, which encourages a state of constant aggression that's entirely appropriate.

Dwarfs on the other hand have to keep track of grudges. They never forget a slight, carefully noting each in a massive book of bitterness. Any time their land is raided or attacked or Dwarfs are hindered in any way some scholar back at the capital sucks in air over his teeth and says, “That's going in the book.” While revenge earns rewards, having too many unavenged grudges drops public order as people lose faith in their leader. It breeds a playstyle all about defence, limiting fronts on which the Dwarfs can be attacked and only marching off to make new enemies when old ones have been thoroughly dealt with.

Meanwhile, the Vampire Counts rely on spreading corruption in the form of a grey, sickly taint on the map. Other factions suffer attrition when moving across corrupted land while Vampire Counts armies are diminished by marching across uncorrupted land. The Vampire Counts can also raise the dead to fill armies instantly rather than waiting (like in Rome II, armies are generated by generals rather than settlements, but cost extra away from the buildings that produce specialists). It's not as much of a game-changer as you'd expect. Unlike the Heroes Of Might & Magic games where the undead grow and grow as they incorporate the fallen into their hordes, Warhammer's Vampire Counts are still reliant on the old-fashioned way to get decent troops, though provinces where large battles have been fought provide a better class of corpses to recruit.

The final of the four playable factions (Bretonnians exist as NPCs but can be used in multiplayer, while Chaos Warriors are available free to those who pre-ordered or buy Total War: Warhammer in its first week and will be paid DLC later) is The Empire. Modelled on the Roman-German Empire, the humans are the most traditional faction, with starting units including crossbowmen, spearmen, and knights that will be more familiar to Total War players than Terrorgheists and Arachnaroks. Imperials get weirder as they go on, with Steam Tanks and knights who trade horses for eagle-headed Demigryphs while their leader Karl Franz can upgrade to a flying Griffon.

All these differences dramatically affected the way I played. As the Greenskins I fought just to keep armies Fighty and raided neighbors without regard for what they thought because that's a significant part of the Orc income even though it went against what I learned with other factions and my regular tendencies. It's not the kind of game where replaying as a different side means "focusing slightly more on missile weapons because they have +1 with bows". Each faction is almost a different game, and that's kept me interested.

Fantasy battles

There's variance between factions in both the turn-based campaign game and the real-time battles. Dwarfs don't have wizards but are blessed with plenty of artillery, and are generally more of a defensive, come-get-me-you-lanky-bastards force. Vampire Counts don't have missile units (not even skeleton archers), though their wizards have a decent Wind Of Death spell. For them it's all about lurching forward, targeting specific enemies with flying units and Black Knights while the skeletons and zombies shamble up to fill the gaps. The Greenskins have a bit of everything, but can be hard to control. When their Leadership drops due to being flanked or attacked by enemies who cause fear they have a tendency to scarper, but recover quickly and need to be shepherded back into the fray for wave after wave.

The effect of spellcasting on battles is less than expected. There's a limited pool of Winds Of Magic to draw from, with goofy blue haze wafting over the campaign map to show where it's strongest this turn, and individual spell effects feel slight compared to the impact of a flanking manoeuvre or well-timed charge. The Raise Dead spell can summon a unit of zombies out of the ground, which is suggested by the handy in-game guide as a good way of blocking a charge, but also works to bog missile units down or pull off a flank attack. Zombies are weak combatants, however, and the spell can only be cast if you're at less than 20 units. Plus, even if those fragile zombies survive they'll be gone at the end of the battle.

In the first trailer for Total War: Warhammer a single spell obliterated an undamaged Steam Tank, but things seem to have been toned down since then. That's for the best, as now spells are useful additions to the arsenal but won't win a battle on their own. It's something the tabletop game has struggled with in the past, with different editions of the rules swinging back and forth on how powerful magic should be, but I prefer it like this. One magical zap is no more effective than a volley of cannonfire. 

Most of the other spells are variations on projectile attacks, buffs, or debuffs, with flavour text to differentiate them—Goblin Shamans can cause distracting itchiness, while Necromancers make enemy soldiers age by years. There are magic items for your Lords and Heroes too, and banners to your troops, most of which give percentage boosts to abilities. Those Lords and Heroes are powerful combatants, though. Unlike in previous Total War games where the general led from the back, close enough to provide benefits but not close enough to be slaughtered, in Warhammer they're some of your best fighters. Though their loss is devastating to morale, and undead armies can crumble after their general's death, I charge in anyway out of both necessity and a desire to watch their animations as they wreak havoc.

The temptation with Total War is always to zoom right in and watch fights up close, and that's even stronger when it's Dwarfs with mohawks taking axes to looming Trolls. But it's important to keep an eye on the overall battlefield to ensure reinforcements are being dealt with, flying units aren't hassling your artillery, and so on. Tabbing in and out of a tactical view that presents the battlefield from far above with units as neat rectangular banners helps, and when I zoom back in to see melee devolve into a mess, units overlapping and soldiers clipping through each other, I do feel a pang for the straight edges and ruler-perfect abstraction of turn-based tabletop Warhammer.

It's possible to pull off amazing things even in the morass, though it helps to abuse the slow-motion button and give orders while paused, as you can in single-player mode. You can overcome odds that the auto-resolve option for battles isn't able to: outnumbered 10 to 1 by two Greenskin stacks I still won a narrow victory as the Vampire Counts even though my Legendary Lord Mannfred Von Carstein fell. It's a great feeling to pull something like that off.

Lords and quests

At the start of a campaign you choose which of two Legendary Lords will lead your faction, iconic Warhammer characters like Emperor Karl Franz and High Wizard Balthasar Gelt, with the other character becoming available during the campaign. Each has their own questlines to pursue, storylines that unlock special battles to earn unique artifacts. These quest battles can also be played outside the campaign in a separate mode of their own. You might be facing an army with four Shamans, or reinforced by Dwarf Gyrocopters, and your Lord begins each battle with a rousing speech. (This is the only time you hear speeches–unlike Shogun 2 you won't have to skip them before every scrap.)

Because quests are bespoke little stories separate from the campaign—you use your regular army but opponents are conjured up on the spot rather than drawn from existing enemies—there's a risk of them seeming inconsequential. But their unique nature, and the few paragraphs of narrative that come with quests, are reward enough that I probably waste too much effort chasing them.

Though early quest destinations are near the starting positions, they quickly pop up much farther away. Sending your Lord off with an army strong enough to beat them is a bad idea, as even with another powerful stack of troops at home it leaves you open to a concentrated attack, like a sudden Waaagh! Unlocking quests often requires sending your Heroes off to perform specific actions, too. 

Heroes are both tough individuals who can embed within your armies and agents who can deploy across the campaign map to perform specific actions. That map’s impressive in its detail, looking like cartography from the inside cover of  a book made real. Heroes assassinate and corrupt, damage walls and buildings, reduce income and public order, or improve those things within your own borders. Sadly there are no videos for Hero actions, none of those clips of a ninja or geisha doing something cool that the Shogun games had.

Nameless Heroes can die, but named characters are only ever injured and keep coming back. Sometimes this seems apt, and having to kill the Necromancer Heinrich Kemmler twice only to see him resurrect again was perfect. It's odder when Joe Random Minor Hero keeps coming back to annoy the same city even after I pay money and risk the odds to have him assassinated over and over.

It's not all about death. There are unique tech trees to research, buildings to construct, public order to maintain, and diplomacy to tinker with. Even the Greenskin tribes engage in limited diplomacy–though they don't make trade agreements they do negotiate alliances with each other and sometimes the Dwarfs tempt them with gold to buy peace. A lot of money gets thrown around on the diplomatic screen. It's easy to profit by letting one side of a war buy you off then waiting for the other to tempt you away, flip-flopping repeatedly with no noticeable impact on your standing. After a few Total Wars I've forgiven the weaknesses of the AI, but the talking heads on the diplomacy menu still feel daft.

Tonal war

Sometimes the Total War game underneath pokes through, creating situations that don't feel right for Warhammer. When Dwarfs defeat Greenskins they have an option to ransom their captives for cash, a decision I can't see either side agreeing to in the fiction. But there are times when the tone is absolutely right, as when the Dwarfs are given a choice to forgive a grudge but both the replies available are different wordings of “hell no.”

One of the most Warhammer-ish things about it is Chaos. After 20 turns warnings appear: Chaos gathers in the north. It's another 50 turns before I notice their effects, a spreading corruption like the undead's. As the computer turns whiz past, the pause while the Chaos Warriors move grows longer and longer as their numbers grow. It's past turn 100 before I engage with them, but by then the northern Old World is ruins, and Archaon The Everchosen leads a doomstack right towards me.

It feels strange to be worried about spoilers for a strategy game, but you should encounter Chaos for the first time for yourself. Games Workshop has told the story of this Chaos Incursion twice–the first time Chaos lost and fans hated it, the second time Chaos won and fans hated it. Now you can retell that story yourself. It's a story of nations squabbling when they should unite, but even as darkness draws closer the acrimony between me and my foes, combined with the desire to take their territory, stops me from committing to confederation. The end times came and I ignored them, pretending it wasn't my problem until it was too late.

The part of me that collected a High Elf army as a teenager wishes it was broader in scope (at least give us Skaven!) but there will be expansions to cover some of that and in previous games they’ve been handled well. Anyway, the best Total War games have been the most focused, whether on a single nation or a single general. Total War: Warhammer takes in a continent but tells one story, and it's potent because of that.

Steam is the Adobe Photoshop of video game distribution. Both apps are the leaders in their respective categories, both are massive in size and scope, and both may be intimidating to first-time users. Steam, however, is infinitely more fun to explore. Valve's PC gaming client offers a store, cloud saves, remote downloads, video streaming, and many other gamer-friendly features. The Steam app remains our Editors' Choice PC gaming marketplace, despite lacking integrated video recording capabilities and a way for its users to speak to a customer service representative should they experience a problem. 

The Steam Library

Steam offers mostly Windows games along with some macOS titles. Steam Machines may not have taken off, but you'll find Linux titles, as well. The free Steam app is a terrific way to buy new releases or preorder upcoming releases. If there's a major new PC game, Steam likely has the title—provided that the game's publisher isn't selling it exclusively from its own store. For example, you can only buy the Forza Horizon racing series from Xbox, Overwatch from Battle.net, Fortnite from the Epic Games Store, and Red Dead Redemption 2 from the Rockstar Games Launcher.

Still, Steam currently offers thousands of titles, ranging from simple arcade-like games (Pac-Man Championship Edition DX+) to simulations (Football Manager 2020) to AAA behemoths (Monster Hunter World). Of course, as Steam is a Valve product, it has titles you won't find in other PC game stores, such as Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Portal, and the recent Half-Life: Alyx. Speaking of that VR game, seeing as Valve produces one of the finest VR headsets on the market, you'll find plenty of virtual reality experiences on Steam. It has a variety that its competitors can't match. Even competitors with their own digital game stores, like EA and Microsoft, now sell games on Steam.

Steam's library goes back several decades, and it includes excellent classic games like Half-Life and Psychonauts. That said, the store isn't a comprehensive library of legacy titles (for a wider selection of older games, try GOG.com). Like itch.io, however, Steam has a wide array of indie titles. In fact when you purchase games via itch.io, what you are actually buying are Steam activation keys.

Buying Steam Games

Newer games are priced similarly to retail releases, with most big titles costing $49.99 or $59.99. Indie and older games can cost anywhere from $5 to $19.99, depending on their release date and popularity. There are numerous free-to-play games, too, like Crusader Kings II and Ring of Elysium. Steam's midweek and weekend sales reduce game prices by a great deal, but it's Valve's legendary, thematic Steam seasonal sales that feature incredibly deep discounts on individual games, publishers' entire libraries, or bundles of their top games. It was during Steam's Winter Sale that you could buy Marlow Briggs and the Mask of Death, the platform's best bargain-bin title, for just 99 cents. 

You’ll find plenty of great deals on Steam, but the truly frugal gamer should stay aware of all their options. Buying games on Humble Bundle (owned by PCMag’s parent company, Ziff Davis) can save you money, donate to a good cause, and still give you a Steam key, anyway. The Epic Games Store wants to be Steam’s biggest rival, and while Epic’s library can’t compare, the store frequently gives away the games it does have for free. For more, check out our feature on the best free games to claim.

There's another, riskier way to buy Steam games: Early Access. This section is the petri dish in which video games grow. You buy Early Access titles in unfinished form, so they may have more bugs and fewer features than completed, polished games. Fire Pro Wrestling World started as an Early Access title, and after a series of updates, moved to the regular store as a finished game.

Exploring the Steam Catalog

Steam's homepage pushes not only big-name titles, but also those that Valve's recommendation engine thinks would interest you based on your wish list, past purchases, and recent gaming sessions. One time after we logged into Steam, the application suggested taking a look at One Finger Death Punch (because we had just spent a lot of time playing fighting games) and Color Symphony (due to us playing other games listed with the Action, Indie, and Singleplayer tags).

If you want even more suggestions, check the Trending Among Friends section (which displays your buddies' favorite games, based on their hours logged), Special Offers (game sales), and Recently Updated (games that have received new patches or content).

One of our favorite recommendation tools is Steam Curators. This lets you follow a high-profile video game personality (say, Jim Sterling), a brand (PCMag), or a community (NeoGAF) for their insights. Unfortunate name aside, we particularly enjoy the /r/pcmasterrace group, which has a team that recommends only "the most worthy PC Games." We've discovered plenty of excellent titles via Steam Creators.

Alternatively, you can find a game's Metacritic rating on its store page if you want an at-a-glance aggregated review score from professional gaming outlets.

You can avoid the sting of buying a broken game by visiting a title's store page and reading user reviews. Well-received games are labeled Positive or Overwhelmingly Positive, while middle-of-the-road titles are tagged as Mixed. The gum sticking to the bottom of Steam's seat is the Negative and Overwhelmingly Negative games. From what we've read in the user reviews and Steam community forums, those tags are usually reserved for the most broken of broken games.

Steam’s robust set of community features is a huge strength. It makes the Epic Games Store seem unfinished in comparison. Unfortunately, all of this useful information makes for a very busy interface. You can reduce the interface clutter by opening the Preferences menu and checking the product types and platforms that are of interest to you. Steam also gives you the option to filter content by title or genre. If you're not an RPG fan, now you'll never see Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster or Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim in your feed again.

Subpar Customer Service

Thankfully, Steam lets you get self-service refunds for unwanted, recently purchased games, which is something that all digital download services should offer their customers. You must submit a request within two weeks, and your playtime must be under two hours. In addition, Steam now gives users the power to delete unwanted games from their accounts. Previously, you had to contact customer service to delete games. The customer service reps aren't rude or unfriendly; you simply can't get anyone on the horn, and it sometimes takes days for Valve to resolve a problem submitted by ticket.

Here's another example of Valve's frustrating customer service. After buying a game that didn’t download despite being listed in our account, we submitted a help ticket. It took Valve three days to resolve the issue. That's a long time to hear absolutely nothing from a company in regards to a billing issue. Valve needs to fix this, as soon as possible.

The Steam Engine

Steam automatically handles game downloads and installation, putting local game files in its SteamApps folder and getting them organized in the background. Large games can take an hour or two to download over fast connections, so prepare to keep your computers on if you plan to download the 80GB Death Stranding.

Steam lets you install games on multiple computers, but only one can be logged into an account at once. If you set up Steam Family Share, you can lend your games to others—an idea that Microsoft planned for Xbox One before console gamers' anti-digital-rights-management (DRM) backlash forced the Redmond-based company to ditch the plan.

Steam, too, employs DRM, as you must log into Steam to establish a license check. That said, you can play any installed game in Offline Mode. Steam's scheme is easily is one of the least offensive DRM implementations. GOG.com and itch.io, on the other hand, don’t apply DRM to the games in their catalogs, so you have the freedom to install your games on as many PCs as you see fit, without log-in limitations. That said, you won't see as many high-profile new releases there. Humble Bundle lets you filter searches by DRM options. The Epic Games Store doesn’t add DRM by default, but doesn’t stop publishers from adding their own DRM to individual titles.  Speaking of installing games, Steam lets you remotely install games using the Steam mobile app, a convenient ability the PlayStation app lets you do for PS4 games.

There aren't any major restrictions in regards to Steam Family Share beyond the five user-account limitation; borrowers get their own achievements and cloud saves, too. They just can't check out the game when the owner is playing it. If you're sick of having friends borrow your games, you can gift them games, too, or buy them digital or physical Steam gift cards. This feature also ties in with Steam's parental control functionality, limiting which users can play which games.

Steam offers matchmaking inside games and social media services outside of games, thanks to a Friends list with text and voice chat and support for Clans (groups of players). Friends can jump into each other's games, you can invite friends into your games, and Clans can organize group activities by setting up calendars and posting server IP addresses.

As you play games, you earn badges that you can keep, sell in the Steam Market for Steam Store credit, or trade for other badges. Once you get an entire badge set, you get cool rewards like user profile wallpapers and special showcase badges. This is not at all essential to the gaming experience, but it's a nice touch that gives achievement chasers yet another thing to hunt.

Steam lets you take a screenshot by tapping your keyboard's F12 key, but it doesn't record video. You’ll have to download a third-party solution. On the other hand, the Xbox app's built-in Game DVR tool lets you capture stills and up to four hours of video footage.

Chill Modes

Valve recognized gamers' desire to play games in the living room, so it created Big Picture mode. Designed for the lean-back experience, Big Picture caters to people who want to play PC games in the same way that they play console games. The panel-driven UI is quite different from the standard Steam interface, which makes it easy to navigate on a big-screen TV. In addition, Remote Play Together lets you play select local co-op games with friends via the internet. It's an excellent way to add online functionality to games that lack it, such as River City Girls. Even better, a friend can play with you without owning the game!

Valve's living room play doesn't end there. Steam now has a music player ("Dimensions" by Stellar Dreams makes for great writing music) and a slow-growing streaming movie catalog. Yes, movies. The selection is limited, but you can buy for $13.99 or rent the Keanu Reeves flick for $3.99. Not every movie has a rental option, though. is only available as a $14.99 purchase. Unlike Netflix, Steam lacks a monthly streaming plan. You have a 48-hour window to watch your rented movie.

We rented Darren Aronofsky's to test the service. The 1080p stream opened in its own window and smoothly played over a high-speed home office connection. The experience pleased, but we don’t recommend returning to Steam for movie rentals until there are more titles in the catalog. There are plenty of other, superior video streaming services available.

GOG.com has movies, too, but most of its catalog is devoted to nerd-centric topics. and perfectly sum up GOG.com's film offerings. Steam also sells productivity software like Camtasia Studio and GeoVox. Humble Bundle offers non-gaming entertainment and software, from video editing tools to manga drawing tutorial books, in its rotating set of charity bundles.

Steam Broadcasting lets you view friends' playthroughs or let others watch your sessions. To view a friend's stream, open your Friends List, select a buddy, and click Watch Game in the menu. Public streams are found in a game's community hub. In addition, downloading the Steam Link Anywhere mobile app lets you stream games from your gaming desktop or gaming laptop to Android or Raspberry Pi devices. Naturally, the quality of the video stream varies depending on the PC broadcasting the feed; We've encountered both magnificent and awful streams. Serious streamers should focus their energy toward a dedicated video game live streaming service like Twitch or Facebook Gaming.

Let Off Some Steam, Bennett

Valve's Steam service is a must-have for any PC gamer. Its great selection, recommendation features, and deals make it one of the first applications to install on any gaming PC. No, Steam isn't perfect, particularly in the customer support realm, but it's the best all-round PC game distribution service available. For that, Steam is PCMag's Editors' Choice for video game marketplaces on PC.

Doesn't Shoot The Bullseye.

If you’re looking to pay homage to Paladins, Warframe, Celeste or Jumper 3, then Karlson will be the result. Games by Youtubers is definitely a thing, but we’ve never seen anything like Karlson in this rope-swinging, milk-drinking, door-kicking and action-packed shooter that could well be improved over the years, especially with some neat level design but being a little too repetitive.
Each of Karlson’s levels has an objective of getting to a milk carton by shooting and swinging through plentiful obstacles and overcoming enemies that fire lasers at you relentlessly, mixed with some funky level design which can lead to some ultra satisfying parkour thanks to combining guns and platforming. Don’t be fooled by its looks, Karlson can be punishingly difficult. This deceivingly easy premise will require putting all your blood, sweat and tears into this formidable challenge. It would be nice if this game was deeply nerfed. Every now and then, some explosives can be found in each of the levels. Shooting these will cause the bomb-like canisters to explode. Granted, they may be pretty, but they’re really helpful. Still on the topic of them, Karlson utilizes in not to shabby visuals, especially being an indie game. But elsewhere, there are other areas of Karlson that miss the bulls-eye. The character animations are so laughably bad that when they die or sprint towards you, they ragdoll and tumble to the ground, but that never really hinders the gameplay. Also, it could’ve been more fun if the game wasn’t over the top repetitive.
Karlson is a fun, flashy and cool parkour game that requires your full attention to some crazy level design and some FPS experience. But because it lands in that awkward position of “Yeah, it’s fun” alongside being mindlessly repetitive, it’s hard to recommend whether to download this or not. Though the frantic FPS and parkour action was kinda getting me addicted.

It's my first trip across the ocean on my tiny wooden raft and I'm holding my torch nervously as I peer through the pitch-black night. I feel intensely vulnerable. I've never left my starter island before and I have no idea what's waiting out there in Valheim's massive procedurally generated world. After a long, tense night of sailing I finally set foot on a new continent, and immediately discover what looks like a village. That's a surprise—I didn't know there were villages in Valheim. The village is full of draugrs. I didn't know there were draugrs, either.

The mob of undead warriors bash me with axes and bombard me with arrows. I flee and sail home miserably with little to show for my hours of exploration save for badly degraded weapons and armor and a few draugr entrails from the two I managed to slay. I decide I'm never going back there. Ever. But the discovery of draugr intestines has given me a new recipe for sausages, so I stuff the rotting entrails with boar meat and flavor them with thistle in my cauldron. Then I eat them, my eyes widening as my health bar grows to twice the size it's ever been.

I am going back to the draugr village immediately. I need more sausages. I am now in the sausage business.
In Valheim, which is still in Early Access, you're a dead Viking warrior. Your soul has been deposited in the afterlife so you can battle the enemies of Odin, powerful creatures such as a towering giant made from tree trunks and a toxic swamp blob that emits great clouds of poison.
But before you can do Odin's work, you've got to do dozens of hours of your own labor: building a home, crafting weapons and gear, leveling up skills, unlocking crafting recipes, and slowly exploring deeper and deeper into the huge, dangerous world. It may not sound all that different from other open world survival sandboxes, but Valheim is an utterly engrossing experience that blends thoughtfully-designed survival systems with exciting RPG-like adventures, where each small nugget of progress sets the stage for the next.

Odin's blood
The sausages are a good example. Unlike most survival games, you won't starve to death in Valheim if you don't eat, but you absolutely need to eat. The right foods dramatically boost your tiny health bar and increase your stamina, so you won't get far without spending some time in the kitchen. The draugr village (I've now found and cleared out three of them) not only supplies me with sausage ingredients but some buzzing bees I can use to farm honey, which I can use for mead-making. Mead, which requires a few days of fermenting, can give me poison and frost resistance, allowing me to enter the toxic swamps and freezing mountain biomes. Which leads to new discoveries, which leads to new recipes, which leads to more new discoveries, And a whole lot of deaths along the way. There's not so much a difficulty curve to Valheim as there are towering, razor sharp difficulty spikes. That feels frustrating initially, but eventually, and weirdly, it becomes encouraging. Just setting foot somewhere you're not ready for, like that draugr village or a swamp crypt or a frigid mountainside, can brutally punish you, but also give you new goals and a tantalizing glimpse of future possibilities. When I first discovered a new biome, The Plains, I had roughly one second to admire the view and swelling music before a deathsquito buzzed across the screen and into my side, taking more than half my health away with one jab. I fled immediately, though I managed to kill the insect, gaining a needle, which gave me the crafting recipe for a deadlier type of arrow. I may not be ready to return, not for a long while. But I know I will, and I'm now eager to progress to the point where I can.
Strength in numbers
Playing with friends gives Valheim a wonderful communal feeling

I've split my time in Valheim between solo play and adventuring on a server with some other PC Gamer writers, and while they're both rewarding, playing with friends gives Valheim a wonderful communal feeling. We've built a small settlement with several buildings, we share resources and discoveries, take on boss fights together, and help each other out with personal missions and goals. 
One of those missions was a rescue and recovery operation. Steven had also discovered the Plains biome while on a long solo boating trip. A deathsquito fatally welcomed him to the neighborhood, killing him right on his ship, so after he respawned back at our base we both set out on a second ship to recover his gear and boat.

It was a long sail, made more complicated when a sea serpent, the first we'd ever encountered, attacked us in the middle of the night. While I shot the creature with flaming arrows Steven took us to shore, fearing our boat would be destroyed. Once on land we were mobbed by growling greydwarfs while the serpent continued attacking our ship. We finally, frantically, dealt with both threats and we set off again, only for me to realize I hadn't brought enough resources to build the fast-travel portal I had planned in case everything went wrong and we needed to return quickly.
So, we had to make another stop for me to collect wood in the darkness of night while Steven built a workbench to repair the damage the serpent had done to the ship. When we finally reached the area where Steven had lost his boat and loot, we crept along the shore slowly into The Plains, our eyes scanning the skies for more deathsquitos—to the point we didn't notice the little green goblin who came charging out, whacking us with its club and doing more damage than a twenty-foot troll does. The fucking Plains, man.

(Image credit: Iron Gate Studios)
After another mad scramble we killed the goblin, recovered Steven's gear, and had a delightful and peaceful sail back home, each in our own boats. It was a genuinely exciting adventure, with one extra bonus: I now had serpent meat, which gave me the recipe for serpent stew, a fantastic new health and stamina boosting food that has me sailing our boat aimlessly around just hoping to be attacked so I can gather more sea-snake meat. We're currently preparing to take down the next boss on our list, but I'm also planning to completely redesign my house, which was workshop focused, to be a more efficient food and mead preparation zone. Move over, sausages.
Not since survival RPG Outward have I been more aware of the importance of preparation before stepping out of the house: Carefully packing to make sure I've got just the right items in my tiny inventory. Cooking enough food and mead to boost resistances and lift stamina and health as high as it can go. Repairing every weapon and piece of armor and checking recipes for things I might need to craft on the fly. It makes a quick trip into the swamps for iron or an excursion into the mountains for obsidian feel like a proper campaign mission, even though there is no real campaign in Valheim.
Just reaching a boss with the resources you need to summon them is an adventure in itself
Bosses, however, provide some structure to the otherwise open-ended adventure. Finding them takes a ton of exploration, as only certain runestones will show their location on your map—and a boss might wind up several continents away from your starting island. Just reaching a boss with the resources you need to summon them is an adventure in itself. And the boss battles are long, challenging bouts accompanied by music and effects that really make you feel like you're in a dramatic showdown with angry gods. Each boss drops an item you'll need to begin the long process of preparing to take down the next one.
Valheim is a gorgeous game, too, imaginatively blending pixelated textures and fairly simple models and animations with beautiful lighting and environmental effects that make me stop what I'm doing to admire the sunset or bask in the daunting power of a thunderstorm. The only places I don't enjoy in Valheim are the subterranean zones. In the burial chambers, troll caves, and swamp crypts, the beautiful and complex procedural generation of the world is replaced with cramped rooms, narrow corridors, and ugly textures. But that's just a small blemish in a large world I'm still restlessly exploring.Under construction
Valheim feels refined and satisfying as it is right now
I've bought lots of unfinished Early Access games in the past decade, and loved plenty of them, but typically I draw the line at recommending them. It's impossible to predict exactly how long games will remain in Early Access, what direction the development will take during that time, what might change along the way and how those changes will make the game better or worse. Spending money in Early Access is a gamble, always, and while I do it myself, it's just not something I'm usually comfortable recommending to others. 
Valheim might be the rare exception. The game as a whole is not complete, but the parts that are there do feel complete, if that makes sense. I can see the areas in which I'd like it to grow, but Valheim feels refined and satisfying as it is right now. I've put 70 hours into it so far, and I fully expect to at least double that, and it's a $20 game. No matter what happens in Early Access, it's hard not to feel like I've already gotten my money's worth. 

Ensemble Studios has long since made a name for itself with its extremely popular Age of Empires series of real-time strategy games, so the company's latest game, Age of Mythology, seems risky. Not only is this the first Ensemble product to feature a fully 3D graphics engine, but it's also the first to stray from the purely historical context of Age of Empires and delve into fiction. In the game, you'll still find the sort of realistic armies of cavalry, spearmen, and archers you'd find in Age of Empires, but they'll be fighting alongside the likes of medusas, minotaurs, sphinxes, mummies, frost giants, trolls, and more. So don't expect Age of Mythology to help you ace any history tests. And yet, much like with the Age of Empires games, you still could easily end up learning a thing or two while playing Age of Mythology. While the game may not be a simulation of any battles that ever actually took place, it offers great insight into three core historical civilizations and their beliefs, which collectively helped shape much of the world as we know it. More importantly, Age of Mythology executes its concept extremely well, in a manner that should please fans of Ensemble's previous real-time strategy games as well as many of those who might have found the history-themed Age of Empires games a bit dry.

Age of Mythology doesn't make any huge departures from the conventions of real-time strategy gaming, but rather represents arguably the most refined example of the genre to date. If you've played any other real-time strategy game lately, especially Age of Empires II, then you'll feel very comfortable getting started with Age of Mythology, a highly complex game that will seem remarkably intuitive. If you've played a lot of Age of Empires II, then you'll get the impression from Age of Mythology that the designers spent their time further adjusting the gameplay conventions that they themselves have already helped pioneer and coming up with lots and lots of clever twists to give the game plenty of appeal, depth, and lasting value. You'll also note that Age of Mythology immediately comes across as a highly polished product--fully featured and carefully documented, Age of Mythology is also elegantly designed and surprisingly easy to explain despite its unusual concept.

Most real-time strategy games let you play as a certain number of different factions. In the case of games like this year's Warcraft III, the relatively small number of playable factions still makes for outstanding gameplay due to the very substantial differences from one faction to the next. Yet in the Age of Empires games, which featured numerous different playable civilizations, the differences between these were much less obvious--many of the factions shared units, strategies, and graphics. Age of Mythology essentially combines these two philosophies by offering you the chance to control one of three radically different civilizations--the Greeks, the Egyptians, and the Norse--as well as three different subsets of each one, based on these respective cultures' major deities. There's variation even within each subfaction--during the course of a match, you'll get to ally yourself with a number of different minor deities, each of which confers its own unique benefits on your civilization. And not only does allegiance with any of the game's deities give you special bonuses, but you also get a one-time-use miracle, a unique mythological unit of some sort, special technology, and more. The option to choose from three civilizations, nine major gods, and 27 minor gods adds up to a huge amount of variety.

At its core, Age of Mythology does play a lot like Age of Empires II, as well as other real-time strategy games. A typical match will still require you to spend considerable amounts of time and attention on gathering various resources and building up your civilization, then on producing vast armies, researching numerous technologies and upgrades, and commanding your forces in large battles. The game's resource model is very similar to that of Age of Empires II, with one exception. You once again need ample supplies of food to build new units and advance from one stage of civilization to the next, and food is once again obtained from hunting, gathering, farming, or fishing. You once again need gold to research new technologies and construct military units and structures, and gold is mined from clearly visible deposits you'll find scattered about each map. You'll also need to chop plenty of lumber. Stone, the fourth resource of the Age of Empires games, is not a factor in Age of Mythology, though there is a fourth resource: favor. Favor represents the powers of your civilizations' gods and is used for summoning your civilization's powerful mythological units, as well as gaining some divine technological bonuses.

One thing that each of the game's three civilizations have in common is that their temple is one of their most important buildings. It is there that mythological units are summoned and other divine enhancements are granted. However, civilizations each gain favor differently. Greek villagers can be ordered to pray at a temple, which gradually increases favor. Egyptian workers can construct monuments to their gods--four different, successively larger ones--that generate favor. And the Norse earn favor by waging war. Civilizations also each have different types of hero units available, which specialize in defeating mythological units. The Greeks have a handful of legendary heroes such as Odysseus, Jason, and Heracles. The Egyptians have priests and a pharaoh, a powerful leader that can be used to speed construction of buildings, increase production, or serve as guardian of his people. The Norse can produce innumerable helsirs, mighty warriors that are most favored by the gods.

The way that the different civilizations generate favor and the way they must incorporate their heroes into battle make for a lot of interesting gameplay right off the bat. For instance, the Greeks can generate favor pretty easily, but cannot have as many heroes in the field as the Norse. Meanwhile, the Norse can have plenty of heroes in the field, perfect for dealing with the Greeks' large mythological armies, but cannot earn favor as readily as the Greeks or Egyptians can. Furthermore, the different civilizations gather and use resources differently. The Egyptians don't build structures as quickly, but do not use wood for making them. The Norse use their burly infantry for construction, while their worker units are used only for gathering resources. The Norse also use oxcarts as mobile drop-off points for resources, rather than the stationary structures of the other civilizations.

Of further note, hero characters are the only ones that can retrieve relics that can randomly be found on most maps. In Age of Empires, retrieved relics generated a small but steady surplus of gold. However, Age of Mythology has a number of unique relics that confer dramatic bonuses. It's therefore more important than ever to actively scout the environment, if only to discover relics early on and keep them out of your opponents' hands. You also need to search for new settlements, since, unlike in Age of Empires II, you can't just plunk down a new town hall anywhere. You need additional settlements in order to grow your population limit, and in Age of Mythology, settlements are deliberately spread out so as to discourage overly defensive play.

It may be clear by now that Age of Mythology has a multifaceted balance system that's far, far more intriguing and complex than the relatively simplistic rock-paper-scissors balance systems seen in most real-time strategy games. Besides having different resources to manage, and myth units and hero units to summon, you also have a wide variety of conventional forces at your disposal, including various foot soldiers, cavalry, archers, siege engines, ships, and more. Some of these are specialized to be exclusively well suited against certain other types of units, and all can be upgraded. While myth units can often make short work of conventional forces--units like the cyclops and the minotaur can slay most human soldiers in a single blow--you absolutely need to balance your myth units with your standard armies. For one thing, myth units can't be produced as readily as conventional forces can. For another, conventional soldiers are well suited for overwhelming enemy hero characters, which, as mentioned, are the biggest threat to your myth units.

To make things even more interesting, as you advance through up to four different ages over the course of a single battle, you'll choose between two different minor deities at each of these points. While progressing through the ages was a purely linear affair in the Age of Empires games, having these options in Age of Mythology lets you play a little more reactively and puts a certain strategic consequence on being the first to advance in age. An expert player that learns of his opponent's allegiance with, for example, Artemis, the Greek goddess of the hunt, may then proceed to focus his efforts on training units that are effective against archers, since Artemis' powers bolster the Greeks' archer units. Of course, the player that advanced sooner should have a technological advantage to offset this.

Generally speaking, battles in Age of Mythology have a similar feel to those of Age of Empires II, meaning they're often big, brutal, and quick. Defensive structures and buildings aren't quite as resistant to damage here as in Age of Empires II, and that game's ubiquitous trebuchet is nowhere to be found. However, using long-range but vulnerable siege engines to crack enemy defenses remains a key aspect of gameplay in Age of Mythology.

The game uses a highly intuitive interface that's very similar to that of Age of Empires II and offers many of the same enhancements. Float your mouse pointer over virtually any object in the game, and you'll get concise yet thorough descriptions of what it is, what it does, and what it's good for. You can also access a technology tree that includes hypertext links to considerable amounts of historical information on all the game's units, gods, and monsters. During gameplay, automatic unit formations, good pathfinding, production and research queues, and generally intelligent autonomous behavior on the part of your units all help to minimize the amount of micromanaging you'll have to do. In another nice touch, units with special abilities use those abilities automatically--however, this can actually be used to the advantage of the player taking on those units, since he can force them to waste their special abilities on inconsequential targets. At any rate, despite all the automation, you'll absolutely need to make every moment of every match count if you plan to play competitively, and you'll have to balance overseeing your civilization with scouting and managing your battles. But at least you won't have to spend any time micromanaging any of your individual units.

Actually, one issue with Age of Mythology is that most of the units in the game appear very small, and hero units in particular--though they're distinguished with a slight glow--can be tough to pick out of the fray. Hotkeys are available for quickly cycling through all hero units, though, as well as for locating any idle villagers. For that matter, hotkeys are available for pretty much all the game's actions and can be redefined as you see fit. You can't simultaneously select as many units in Age of Mythology as you could in Age of Empires II, so you'll have to be prepared to use multiple groups of units simultaneously. But in another great touch, Age of Mythology visually represents your unit groupings with onscreen banners that indicate the makeup of that group--you'll be able to quickly distinguish your cavalry group from your siege engine group, for example.

Age of Mythology includes a linear, story-driven single-player campaign spanning three dozen missions, which let you control Greek, Egyptian, and Norse forces as you progress. Some decent-looking cutscenes using the game's 3D engine are used to drive the story along, which concerns an Atlantean hero and his legendary journeys on land, sea, and beyond. The mission variety in the campaign is good, and four different difficulty settings ensure that just about anyone should find a suitable challenge from the computer opponent. The campaign also does a fine job of introducing you to most all of the game's units and concepts contextually, or it'll at least give you some opportunity to play around with most of the units, technologies, and structures to get a sense of how everything works. While some of the campaign missions do feature some unusual circumstances or objectives that change, the game's story isn't incredibly engaging, not that Age of Empires II fans would expect it to be. These players will probably make a beeline for the game's random map mode, anyway.

The random map mode is much like that of Age of Empires II, except that it lets you choose from a significantly wider variety of settings, from the deserts of Egypt, to the frigid plains of Scandinavia, to the mythological Greek underworld. You can play with or against as many as 11 other computer-controlled players, and their behavior can be adjusted independently of each other. Different gameplay variations like those of Age of Empires II are available and include deathmatch (which starts you off with plenty of resources) and conquest (where only a military victory is allowed), while the default setting grants victory to whoever wins through conquest, through building a wonder, or through capturing all settlements. The robust, highly replayable random map mode will be the core of the game for many players.

For many others, online play will be the option of choice. Age of Mythology incorporates a much more streamlined, integrated multiplayer mode than that of Age of Empires II, and it's functionally similar to what's been found in Blizzard's and Westwood's recent real-time strategy games. Most notably, there's a feature that lets you automatically find a willing opponent looking for a similar type of match. We were able to quickly find online opponents at all hours, and Age of Mythology seems to run smoothly and stably in multiplayer over a decent Internet connection. Ensemble and Microsoft's service even tracks numerous statistics for each player and ranks them relative to the competition. Due to the complexity of this game and its broad range of options--and due to the inclusion of a complete scenario editor that lets anyone so inclined attempt to build a custom map or mission--Age of Mythology seems certain to enjoy the same sort of long life online as its predecessors.

Age of Mythology is a great-looking game, filled with bright colors and carefully detailed animations. You'll see Egyptian slingers whirl their weapons menacingly as they charge into battle. You'll see minotaurs gore their victims, sending their unfortunate foes flying. You'll see some impressive divine powers; Egyptian god Thoth's meteor and Horus' tornado are among the most spectacular. As mentioned, the game's units, and to some extent the buildings, can look a bit too homogeneous on first impression, but with time you'll learn to differentiate everything at a quick glance. And you'll consistently be entertained by the entire look of the game, which uses lots of ambient animations to make the world seem alive. Fans of classic films such as The Clash of the Titans and Jason and the Argonauts will note that Age of Mythology attempts to re-create the same sort of dynamic as the battles in those films. When you see a small band of human forces come across even a single myth unit in Age of Mythology, you'll just wince as the myth unit invariably deals grievous damage to its mundane foes.

Age of Mythology also sounds terrific. It has a stirring musical score that's distinctly different for each of the civilizations, and unit voices are done in the three cultures' native languages. The campaign's cutscenes are in English, but its voice-over is still very good, giving you a strong sense of the different characters' personalities even when the rapid-fire missions don't leave much room for development. Plenty of memorable audible cues are used to signify various in-game events deserving of your attention, and the sounds of battle are convincingly done, though a bit subdued much like in Age of Empires II. Those stepping into Age of Mythology after having played Warcraft III might miss hearing many different responses from each unit, but overall, Age of Mythology is as much a pleasure to listen to as it is to watch.

Of course, what's most important is that Age of Mythology plays remarkably well. Featuring lots of interesting, inventive design decisions, plenty of fun-to-use units, and tons of variety, Age of Mythology is the last real-time strategy game you'll need for a long time. It's a necessary addition to any real-time strategy fan's collection, and the game is accessible enough so that even those without much experience with the genre should be able to pick up and enjoy the game without getting overwhelmed. Novices and die-hard RTS players alike will all note the remarkable amount of care and quality that clearly went into every aspect of Age of Mythology--the sorts of things that have already established Ensemble Studios as one of the leading developers of real-time strategy games and that now reinforce the company's position as a leader and innovator in one of PC gaming's most competitive and most popular genres.