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tvinay's Age of Empires II (PC)
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| [April 24, 2009 01:06:57 PM]
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Age of Empires-II is an RTS game published by Microsoft in 1998.
Game Play:
Like many RTS games you find yourself in control of a kingdom (and its people, both villagers and military personnel) which you are required to develop to withstand attacks from enemies, and also to counterstrike and destroy them. Some of the several buildings that can be built include: i) towncenter (used to create villagers and hold them in course of an enemy attack), ii) resource holding storehouses, iii) army buildings (used to create army and research new capabilities), iv) trade-center, v) Monasteries (to create monks and store relics, which are randomly placed in the map), vi) Castle (to hold the king), vii) Universities to research new abilities. Following are the several win conditions: i) destroy enemy kingdom or king (depending upon the option selected), ii) Fix a timeline, and player that has the maximum score (by the end of timeline) wins, iii) build either a Wonder (a building, it requires huge amount of resources) and hold it for 200 years, or iv) capture all the relics and hold them for 200 years (in both cases an year is decremented every 10 seconds).
There are two modes of play: Campaigns and Random Map. In Campaigns a predefined task, broken down into various stages, is assigned to a player who is required to accomplish the mini-goals to finish a campaign. In Random-Map players are allowed to select various options on the map (like: population, number of enemies or allies, wins condition, map structure) and try to build a kingdom with a goal of meeting the win condition. Two extra modes (sub branches of random map) include Regicide: where limited resources are provided and you are required to build the kingdom from scratch, or Death Match: abundant resources are provided hence you can right away start attacking.
The game starts with a load screen where you can select the various options mentioned above, once the game starts you see an isometric bird’s eye view of the map. Different resources are identified using variant sprites, and a thumbnail of the entire map is shown at the bottom which gives a broader overview of the map. The game ships with 5 difficulty modes: Easiest, Easy, Moderate, Hard, Hardest.
Analysis:
Game Play: I have been playing this game since 8 years and was never bored. I credit the RTS genre of the game for it. Every game is different as you try out different ways to kill the enemy. Even the options given to the players (for instance in terms of available military units) can make a significant difference to each play.
Sound: Pretty neat, and various music bits are assigned to indicate different actions happening; for instance when you are being attacked, or when a villager becomes idle.
Graphics: Age of empires does not demand high quality graphics as it’s a 2D game with a table-top view. However buildings are 3D models which mimic the real world. Overall, I will rate them good
Learning Curve: A separate section is dedicated for teaching how to play. Rather than having an exclusive (and boring, in my view) tutorial (for teaching) a player is required to finish mini-tasks which will eventually educate him (like a mini-campaign). In this way a player gets a feel of playing, and also learns about the game.
Multi-Player: Players can connect via internet or LAN, but looks like there are some issues with windows Vista.
Diplomacy: In Multiplayer mode players can talk to each other using chat window. One can discuss to make allies and target a specific enemy (may be someone who’s too good and growing fast, eventhough it’s kinda cheap).
Influence on our game: I took it as a reference when designing our Game2 for instance the concept of minimap is an inspiration from this game.
How does the game keep the players interesting? : You have to monitor your kingdom throughout the game play. For instance a villager becomes idle after finishing his assigned job, and then you are required to assign him a new task. In my view there won’t be a minute where the player can sit idle.
Final Thoughts: I would highly recommend it. Good way of spending a holiday. It requires a lot of time to finish the game, I remember me planning and spending weeks to kill my enemies.
Caution Note: HIGHLY ADDICTIVE.
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tvinay's Age of Empires II (PC)
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Current Status: Playing
GameLog started on: Friday 24 April, 2009
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