Serrano

I'm a lot more optimistic at the moment than I was a few months ago. CA seem to be putting in a lot of effort with their community update videos and obviously the quality in Thrones of Decay and the Empire rework has been really high. It seems unlikely that they'd bother to throw this much effort into the game if they were about to walk away from it. They've mentioned wanting to update Norsca previously and now they're saying they want to revisit Bretonia too so all the signs point to CA and Sega still being serious about supporting Warhammer 3. Maybe they're planning less DLCs in total now but I think by the time they're done the game is going to be in a better state than it is currently (But I do think the game is already brilliant as is). Legend of Total War's rumour video had me worried they were just going to abandon the game outright.

I'm surprised they didn't get the Shadowrun licence renewed, I thought the last three games were well recieved? I guess the publisher wants to go bigger or something and make the next Cyberpunk. Their loss.

Company of Heroes is still looking and playing really good for a game released in 2006. I cannot believe it's been that long, I feel incredibly old.

I really enjoyed the Coteries of New York games, the first one had a bit of a slim plot but the art is super appropriate and atmospheric for the setting and they did a really good job with the cast of characters who really feel like they belong in the VtM setting. Shadows of New York was just chef's kiss. Loved the main character and the story was awesome, you had a good mystery that delt with a lot of the faction politics and it also had that bleak nihilistic element as well which fits in perfectly with Vamparism being a curse and not a fun existence. Apparently the third in the series will be the last one, which makes me a bit sad because these games filled the void for me now that LA By Night have stopped doing their show but if they stick with their tragectory then Reckoning of New York is going to be really good. I did enjoy Heart of the Forest, I'd been very curious about Werewolf at that point but had never seen a rulebook for it. I guess it was a good introduction to that world but it felt really brief and I didn't really understand the structure of a werewolf tribe and basically was left wanting more, it did help me understand what werewolves were in the World of Darkness though and I think it did a decent job of introducing the concept of Gia. I need to pick up the second one, I hope now that they've done some world buidling they focus a bit more on the plot and characters because I feel like the studio has it in them to make a great Werewolf game that's on par with the New York trilogy. I know visual novels have always been a niche market but I think Different Tales and especially Draw Distance are doing a great job with their iterations of it. I think if they added a good narrator and made a longer story they could tell a pretty epic adventure. We need more World of Darkness games, it's such a good setting.

_

I had a bit of free time the last couple of days so I decided to install one of the games I've purchased on sale and never got around to playing. I picked Company of Heroes. I think gameplay-wise it's held up pretty well, I've only spent a couple of hours with it but I'm having fun. The only downside right now is that it's been about 20 years since I've had to use the arrow keys to scroll around the screen and it's taking a while to get comfortable with that again. Relic are amazing though, I'd forgotten how much fun I used to have with the Dawn of War series. Dawn of War IV is long overdue, hopefully if Space Marine 2 does well they'll give Relic and the franchise the boost it needs to do another.

I never tried it myself but I remember seeing a YouTube video about an AI companion mod called Herika. Not only can you talk to her using your actual voice but you can actually *talk* to her. She's also surprisingly sassy. It uses chatGPT and it looks like a pretty unique experience;