Right away, you'll notice Age of Empires' beautiful
graphics. There are lots of details, and all objects are
exceptionally well drawn and animated. Most of the
terrain is blacked out when you start, but will become
visible as you move units around. You can choose
between several screen resolutions: 640x480, 800x600 or
1024x768. The music and sound effects are also superb.
Age of Empires is an open-ended game. You can choose
how to play. Do you want to play only for a couple hours
or a couple days? Do you want to conquer the world by
military means, live peacefully building your economy and
trading with other tribes, or perhaps both? Select between
campaigns, scenarios or random generated maps, which
can be customized (you choose size, type of terrain,
victory conditions etc.).
Research makes most games much more fun. Age of
Empires comprehensive technology tree is comparable to
Civilization's. As you move through time (ie. constructing
more buildings, harvesting resources and researching new
things) you'll be able to advance the state of your
buildings, weapons etc. When you advance from one age
to another (e.g. tool age to bronze age), most buildings
will change to a different, more modern look (like in
Civilization).
Although it depends on what kind of game you play, the
economy is usually very important. That means you have
to construct many buildings, such as a granary, barracks,
farms and market. Also, you'll need hunters, farmers and
fishing boats for food, miners for gold and stone,
timbermen for lumber etc. The variety of buildings and
other units is good.
Unlike Civilization, you have complete control over each
individual person here. Want a farmer to become a miner?
Just click on him and then on a mine. Age of Empires'
interface is real easy to use. And the game is real fun to
just watch, too. Everything look, sounds and seems
authentic - villagers chop down trees, outside the village
you'll spot gazelles, elephants and lions (try to hunt them!)
etc. etc. etc. The way it looks can remind of Settlers, only
much, much better.
One of the things that makes Civilization great is that you
play on the same map all the time. But with Age of
Empires' level of micro management, you of course can't
control the whole world. A map here only covers a small
area. You don't have dozens of cities, but usually only
one. This means proceeding from map to map, like other
real-time strategy games. Also, the technology span is
shorter. Age of Empires only covers ancient times. You
won't be able to build nuclear bombs or space ships (is
Microsoft planning add-ons or a sequel?).
Last year we enjoyed Civilization II a lot, except one thing -
no multiplayer possibilities. Fortunately, Age of Empires
has. You can play over the Internet (find opponents at
Microsoft's Gaming Zone), modem or a serial connection.
So what kind of machine does this require? When playing
at large maps with lots of things happening, you'll need a
fast (time to upgrade the one you bought last year...)
Pentium for everything to run smoothly.
The trial version (which this review is based on) you can
download now should keep you busy for at least a couple
days. It provides more gameplay than most other demos
I've seen lately. Not so strange - the more you play it, the
more you'll want to buy the retail version.
Everyone should give Age of Empires a try, but especially
strategy fans. Both real-time and traditional. I can't use the
"takes the best from two worlds" cliche, but the marvelous
mix Microsoft has come up with here makes them a
leader in strategy games, too.