Total War: Warhammer 40,000 wins best PC game at Gamescom

When Total War: Warhammer first debuted, I was much more into the wargame setting’s sci-fi counterpart. This would be cool if Space Marines were in it, I remember thinking, somehow unaware that Total War: Warhammer would end up being one of the best strategy games on PC. Not that my theory was wrong: Space Marines are finally in Total War, and it is, in fact, cool. Just ask the folks who picked this year’s Gamescom award winners: it won best PC game.

It’s the third award Sega took home this year, along with best audio for Alien: Isolation 2 and best lineup for its whole gaggle of games. It’s easy to see why, particularly in the case of Total War 40K—PC Gamer’s Fraser Brown said it took a mere hour of playtime to cement the game as the highlight of his year. “It’s immediately obvious how special Total War 40k is—I don’t think a tutorial has ever made me giddy before,” he wrote.

According to Gamescom’s website, the winners are chosen “by both an expert jury of gaming professionals and the community.” In other words, it was a favorite among both professional nerds and the pro bono sort.

If it wasn’t clear before why people have been so vocally insistent that this game should happen ever since Total War first embraced fantasy, it should be now: there are many ways to adapt Warhammer 40,000’s galaxy-spanning eternal war in videogame form, but Total War’s combination of scale and gruesome, exacting detail seems a particularly good fit.

Warhammer thrives on extremes, and a game where I can watch a single ultramarine hack an ork to bits up close then immediately zoom out to see an enormous whirlwind of violence in wide shot is an exciting prospect indeed. As for whether that’ll pan out into a good game once it finally releases, we’ll have to wait and see.