"After that business with hydrophobic invasion forces in Empire: Total War, it's impossible to sit down to review a new Creative Assembly creation without anxiety. Will I miss some grievous bug and end up looking like an arse? Should I sprinkle my paragraphs with verbal get-out clauses like 'appears to', 'from what I saw' and 'on the whole'? Am I destined to be remembered as the critic that failed to notice that all the horses in Shogun 2 only have three legs? It can reach the point where you wonder if you'd be better off phoning-in sick and letting the poisoned chalice pass to another poor blighter."