Archived Review

Age of Empires 2

Well, game fans the time has come once again, or maybe I should say the "age" has come. Microsoft's Age of Empires 2 is out. I'm sure most of you know this already but there are always a few stragglers who haven't noticed. One of the more anticipated sequels in gaming today, Age of Empires 2 has been a while in the making, but definitely worth the wait. You take the reigns of 1 of 14 different civilizations from the dark ages to the imperial age, waging war with weapons of the era. Build your castle and your fortifications to defend yourself from enemy civilizations, or go on the offensive and conscript a massive army intent on destroying your adversaries. Level castles with powerful, long-range, trebuchets. Destroy stone walls and enemy buildings using battering rams and catapults. You can build a monastery that can produce healing monks who also have the power to convert enemy soldiers.

Right out of the gate this game has fun written all over it. If you were ever into the medieval scene this is certainly something you want to check out. Taking up where Age of Empires left off, AoE 2 starts you off in the feudal age with the possibility of advancing upwards in ages with more and more powerful means of attack, infrastructure, and research. You can play the game in many different ways. For those of you new to Age of Empires you are given a very informative tutorial that teaches you the ins and outs of running a civilization and how to manage your resources. You take the role of the Celts in the days of William Wallace and beat back Longshanks and his British forces. That's not the only historical battle you can play, though. You can play campaign mode, which allows you to take control of Joan of Arc or Ghengis Khan and fight the battles that made them historical figures. These missions can be challenging, to say the least, and some are downright tough. But hey, it's not as if ruling those civilizations was easy even for the rulers. While the scenarios are already set for the campaigns, you can also build your people up from scratch using the random map option of the game.

Choose your civilization, the number of players, the difficulty of the game, as well as the map size, type, and, most of all, resources. You can configure how many units you want to allow in the game, up to a maximum of 200. You can also set your victory requirements such as score, time limit, or just plain standard gameplay. The starting age can be selected as well. This is where a good deal of game time gets spent, seeing as how the campaigns don't really change much as far as combat or situations go. You can also select to play the game in Deathmatch or Regicide mode. Deathmatch requires that you kill every last one of the enemy, whereas Regicide can only be won by killing the enemy's king. You even begin Regicide maps with a castle and your infrastructure just waiting to be built.

The interface of the game has changed slightly - definitely for the better, though. You can now find idle workers with a click of a button and can use the mini-map in the bottom right corner of the screen to find or aid other players during the course of the game. Pathfinding in the game seems to be very accurate and your characters don't take strange routes to get to the easiest of places.

You can research the civilization you will be playing using the History section of the game, and can also look at their technology trees to allow you to best decide how you would like to proceed with setting up your civilization. Each civilization has unique aspects already built in to them. For instance, the Britons can build town centers at 50% less cost than an average society, build units at an archery range 20% faster than other civilizations and can build a unique unit called the longbowman who is an archer with extended range to his attacks. The Vikings, on the other hand, can build two unique units, one of which is an infantry unit which slowly heals itself. Their villagers also move faster than other civilizations' workers do at the beginning of the game, and their infantry in general have more hit points added to them throughout the ages. These same unique civilizations have some drawbacks as well. The Vikings can build many of the same things as the other groups in the game, but cannot research well enough to make gunpowder weapons available to them, for example.

Computer AI in the game gave me mixed feelings. When you are playing a single-player game on medium difficulty level and only have one computer opponent, all it seems to take to beat him is a moderate defense and some well-timed offense. A few catapults, some well placed trebuchets here and there discourage the enemy force or just downright kill them, and victory is within easy reach. When you start upping the numbers of computer opponents it begins to get a little hairy, however. The computer can team up on you with another computer opponent. It's easy to defend one front from the enemy but like Hitler and Napoleon discovered, fighting a two-front war tends to get messy. You can be especially hindered if you have few natural resources available. You can forge alliances with the computer as well, but if you don't select teams and lock them at the beginning of the game you must be very willing to trust in these so called "allies". Imagine my surprise when my Chinese ally, played by the computer, walked right through my gates and began slaughtering my villagers without any warning. DOH! Unless you are willing to get stabbed in the back, I highly suggest you play with locked teams on.

The graphics and sound in AoE 2 were impressive and fit well with the game's time period. It's filled with fine renaissance-style music that changes into a faster paced melody when you are being attacked. There are also some nifty preset sayings in the chat menu that can be used in multiplayer. Comments such as "You played two hours to die like this," or "Sure, blame it on your ISP" make for some amusing game time. Graphics are smooth and seamless. Visually this game has got to be one of the smoothest I have ever played. Your units look like they could really be moving around. The cavalry units in the game impressed me especially- for lack of a better phrase, they just looked really cool. The sails on ocean units really move and truly look like they are being pushed by the wind. There are even birds that fly overhead adding to the realism of this simple RTS game.

Now my favorite section: Multiplayer. I seldom find a game these days that I enjoy playing with my friends online. Tribes is always fun, but it just doesn't involve the same mechanics that a strategy game brings to the table. With strategy games, I'm always asking myself, "Am I going to flank him? Should I stay on the defensive or push my offense? Does he have any troops in reserve? Should I throw my reserve troops at him?" These can all be very critical questions with possible dire consequences in this type of game. The game runs very well in multiplayer with very little lag involved. Since the staff here at GW has gotten a hold AoE 2, there has been many a late night spent overthrowing the computer or each other in full-out brawls. So you get the same kind of thrill that I got out of it, I'll give you a little sample of a game that Rip(CEO Gamesweekly), Mackdaddy(Hints Manager), and myself played the other night. We began a simple Regicide game situated on the Black Forest map. It was the three of us vs. 3 of the computer's players. We began by fortifying our bases and exploring the map. We eventually got situated and then the first attack came. As a whole, we got caught with our pants down - Rip and Mack both had enemies invading their camps, and I was still making a massive fortified base. I had no army. Rip was able to fend off his attackers and secure his land by blocking up a hole in his defenses. Mack, on the other hand was being hit, and hit hard at that. In minutes his base's outer walls were breached and his forces were decimated in the ensuing battle that wiped out both his and his attackers armies. He was able to reinforce his defenses, but not enough to save him from being overrun about ten minutes later. We then all moved into my base and basically began to pick away at the enemy from there. We ended up losing overall, but it's got to be the most fun four hours I've spent on a game in a long time. By the way, the computer was set to moderate AI at the time we decided to go into this, if this helps you make up your mind as to whether single player might be challenging or not.

Also another addition to multiplayer and single player game types is the map editor. With the somewhat easy to use editor you can make maps that have preset advantages and disadvantages that really give players different perspectives. If the map is unique enough, it forces them to change their playing style. Overall the map editor is one of the easiest I have seen available to gamers today. It takes little skill to use, but isn't totally foolproof. Before you decide on making the be-all end-all map, make sure you've read the readme and manual for any problems you might run into. It's always best to be informed about what you are working on. Generally there is less confusion all around, and while playing the scenario it's good to know you won't run into any errors that could stop you and your game in its tracks. Map editors are not generally my forte, but I have seen some really decent maps made from those of you who really have the patience to sit hour after hour and place shrub and tree in very specific places.

The only technical problems I have seen in the game have been while in a multiplayer scenario. My computer tends to lock up entirely as far as Age of Empires 2 is concerned. All other programs ran fine, but I had to ALT-TAB out and close down AoE. Other than that, there is a little bit of lag while running multiplayer, but nothing that's not to be expected. When you have a computer tracking 700 individual units you have to expect a little bit of a slow game. The last thing I noticed is that when I installed the game, I had to correct the horizontal control on my monitor because the game was off center. All-in-all, there's nothing terribly wrong with the game that I've seen.

Age of Empires 2 is definitely a fun time for all. Or at least it's a fun time for the GW staff. I really haven't had a game get me so fired up in a while, and this one seems to be one that I couldn't go wrong with. If you were a fan of the original AoE, then you're probably going to love this sequel. Just remember that when you are building your people up from the Feudal age: Defense, Defense, Defense. Until next time, folks, please fight nice.

Written By Dave (Werewolf) Montowski (While not writing for this magazine, Dave is inspired by the Vikings in AoE2. He secretly wants to pillage CymanIce's dorm room to see what embarrassing dirt he can come up with about this weird person.)(not much... ~Cy)