Rome: Total War

Historically inaccurate games, big ass news from the 2011 Tokyo Game Show, and Gears of War 3 thoroughly reviewified...

History and videogames have been intertwined since at least the early ‘80s, but at best it’s been a shaky relationship. Until fairly recently, concepts like “realism” and “accuracy” weren’t often a consideration, and they tended to be thrown out the window if a cool explosion or giant monster was judged more beneficial to gameplay. As technology has progressed, however, more of these games have been trying hard to be true to their historical roots – and, predictably, a lot of them don’t do so well...

What happened the day Rome: Total War went gold? Was there a flurry of champagne corks, or did everyone drag themselves home to bed? For most of the team the last day was mostly spent waiting. We were fixing the last few issues, making a build and testing it. Most people ended up just playing the game all day. We went round that loop a few times, but by late afternoon we were done. There's then a quite long process to go through to get the build out the door. All the variant builds have to be