Are you ready to conquer the world? You better be! Because Age of Empires is back, this is, of course, a remastered version of the original Age of Empires game. The game in which you develop your civilization starting in the Stone Age. Hunting and foraging for food and evolving overtime until you can sustain yourself with farming. But when a culture is thriving like that, other cultures tend to get jealous and hostile. It’s not easy to protect your people from enemies.
This game has transformed RTS games to what they are today. This is the game that got a lot of 90’s kids into gaming. I remember telling my parents that I had to play this game to study for my history test, yet it actually has thought me a lot about those times. Together with the school’s history class Age of Empires is my complete base of history knowledge.
As you can see in the picture above, the graphics have come a long way. The game looks so much better than before. However, it would be a really sad release if it didn’t. The detail in the water is very cool. The game is also optimized for the newer computer systems. Anyone who tried to install the old game disc in the last years will have noticed that it’s really hard to get it running smoothly. Well This game might be your answer, it runs perfectly and is just as fun as it used to be.
The controls and mechanics are still the same, for some of us this is a good thing, but we all know that the controls and mechanics of newer RTS games are of course much better so there is room for improvement. Age of Empires is the granddad of its genre, so it doesn’t really matter how they do it, it will still be very good.
Other things that really sparked my attention were the sound effects you hear when clicking on menu options. They are deafening, so loud. And when you start the missions a narrator will read your situation and objective out loud. It’s very cool to hear someone explain and give a perspective of where your civilization is and why it makes certain decisions.
This is the game I didn’t know I needed in my life. I loved the original back in 97 and when I started playing this one, I lost track of time completely. I played for hours without end and loved every minute of it. It’s really fun to play but it is of course nothing new. But for the acceptable price at which it sells at this moment, I think it’s more than worth it.
