Hands-on with the 10-vs.-10 Total War: Arena multiplayer brawl

Sega’s The Creative Assembly studio is launching a closed beta test for Total War: Arena, a multiplayer-only game where ten players can take on ten in a massive ancient battle with thousands of soldiers.

The free-to-play PC online game is part of the Total War: Rome II franchise that debuted in 2013 and Total War: Attila that came out in January. I played the latter for more than 400 hours, as it was quite addictive. I had a hands-on preview of the Total War: Arena game with developers James Given, community coordinator at Creative Assembly, and Leif Burrows, map designer. The U.S. closed beta test is starting this week.

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Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.