Friday 8 February, 2008

GAMEPLAY - A couple really innovative aspects of the game are the built in map editor and the campaign mode. The campaign mode puts the player in the shoes of a famous leader and takes them of expeditions with surprising historical accuracy. But in actuality, campaign mode is pretty boring compared to single player mode, which offers a much more emergent style of gameplay.
Another cool aspect of the game is the map editor, which lets the player build terrain, buildings, resources, and units. You can then play the map you have created against other empires. But for the casual player, single player would probably be the most enjoyable. Single player offers literally thousands of different game play combinations and a completely emergent style of gameplay which makes the game fun to play over and over again.

DESIGN - I was very impressed by the design and emergent techniques in AOE II. One large factor of the game design is resources. There are limited number of resources on the map, and the player must balance which resources he chooses to gather, what technologies he wants to invest his resources in, and what units to build with the resources he has. It may sound complicated but it is really just a simplification of a typical economy.

It was a good entry and is going in the right direction, but you really need to concentrate on what makes you like the certain aspects of the game, try to concentrate on the why. What makes this game different in your mind and why?