![]() ![]() Issue them, which makes for frustrating, staccato skirmishes. It's also impossible to play a game without experiencing hair-tearing lag that has units responding to your orders just. ![]() However, this re-release is plagued with problems and games frequently drop due to syncing issues, regardless of how low each player's ping is. Millions of copies were sold and it's a game of many possibilities, with the option to randomly generate maps and host all sorts of team games. Every melee turns into an indistinguishable mess of units whose most distinctive feature is usually a covered battering ram trundling up to the nearest tower and poking away at the base of it like a small, self-propelled and sexually frustrated shed.Īge of Empires 2 is still played today, particularly online, and it's easy to see why. To destroy a field, soldiers will stride into the middle of it and hack away at the ground with their swords, which is slightly embarrassing to watch. Selecting any mass of troops and sending them into battle results in a conga line of soldiers marching their way to the war, occasionally doubling back on themselves for no apparent reason - and when they make it to the front line, the buildings they destroy don't so much collapse as disappear. Playing it at a much higher resolution is like watching it from a distance - from a point where it's harder to recognise how ugly it can be Units handle rather clumsily and sometimes double back on themselves. It just doesn't play very well, and its flaws are more blatant than ever before. Time has really moved on for strategy titles like this and the game's once remarkable features are looking more like historical artefacts. Otherwise, this might as well be exactly the same game we knew in the last millennium. The viewing area is bigger, the water is shinier and the fights are a little bit noisier. The idea behind this re-release is that many aspects of the game have been attended to, but the only appreciable difference is in the presentation. Now, to continue that lesson, here are a few other things that RTS games from the era would demonstrate: rudimentary animation simplistic AI poor pathfinding limited multiplayer. There are lots of factions to play as, almost everything can be upgraded or expanded, taking units and buildings through several historical ages, and all this is viewed from an isometric perspective. Away from the battlefield, non-military units shuttle natural resources to hamlets and castles, helping blacksmiths to equip more soldiers for combat. It's classic real-time strategy, a war managed through pointing and clicking, where one mouse movement can send legions of troops to their death. If you never knew the original, here's a brief history lesson. Age of Empires 2 HD is more of a museum piece than any kind of reincarnation or reinvention. Whatever their reason, the end result is the same. And I'll be honest with you, I've no idea why they've done this, although I might guess that it's to capitalise on that growing tsunami of nostalgia that has swept through gaming. It's as if Hidden Path, the developers behind this re-release, reached through a time tunnel and dragged the original game out, quickly brushing the thing off before presenting it for all to see. ![]() What HD really means is a much larger battlefield. In fact, this is almost the only thing that there is to know about Age of Empires 2 HD. The most important thing that you need to know about Age of Empires 2 HD is that it runs at a much higher resolution than the original game did. Now it has been reincarnated with this HD release on Steam. It was considered a classic at the time, during the era of the Spice Girls and Star Wars: Episode 1, and it sold by the million. Or at least, what seems to be old.Īge of Empires 2 was released in 1999, so it has 14 of those years to carry on its shoulders. Some classics find new life and new audiences as mobile or tablet games, while the past few years have seen an embracing of all that is retro, all the way back to the oldest of the old school, something that has been seized upon by a burgeoning indie scene. It's not easy to predict which games will age well, though many wear their years with a certain dignity. Those who can't speak on the talk shows those who don't sing, but simply stagger. No, I'm talking about the really old ones, squinting, confused as they're thrust into the limelight yet again. Not the ageing elite, the silver foxes whose wrinkles have become the service stripes of the industry, nor the bouffant divas who can still hit the high Cs. I'm at once reminded of old Hollywood stars being rolled out one more time. ![]()
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