William H Gates III may well be the stepson of Satan, but by the horns of his adopted father, the boy's done all right for himself. No matter what gripes you have over Internet Explorer, DirectX or Windows, Microsoft's games have come on leaps and bounds since they released that soccer game a few years back.
Significantly, in fact, since Age Of Empires, Microsoft's steady stream of entertainment applications has generally been of a very high quality. And if Ensemble Studios' Age Of Empires II is anything to go by, Microsoft's next batch of games are going to be even better.
EARLY HOURS
Initially, after just a few hours of dabbling with the game, indulging in a spot of one-player skirmishes or dipping a toe into one of the five single-player campaigns, I wasn't too impressed. I actually blurted out - to my eternal shame - something along the lines that it was a bit shit. Then, as the hours rolled by, I gradually warmed to its hidden charms. I wouldn't go as far as to say that Age Of Empires II is the most addictive game on the planet, but I can certainly see myself playing it on a regular basis, at least until the next game appears in a couple of years' time - which I'm sure it will.
First impressions, then, are a bit 'been-there, done-that'. You collect resources (in this case food, wood, stone and gold), then you assemble buildings, spend resources on military units and then twat your opponent into submission, be they real or not.
However, it's not quite that simple. If we take the resource management side of things, it would be fair to say that Age II has no equal on PC. Getting food isn't just about sending your peasants off to gather nuts. You can herd sheep, hunt deer, pick berries, fish and farm. Then you have to build a mill to hoard your dead meat and fruit before it starts to smell. Likewise, you'll need a mining camp to stash gold and stone, a lumber camp for wood and a dock from which you can send ships to dredge the oceans. The resource management could be a game in itself (though not a very good one, admittedly).
GO ON THEN, SAY IT...
'But we have been there,' I hear you all cry, and in a sense you'd be right. If you've played and enjoyed the original Age Of Empires, you'll feel right at home with its sequel. You have the same resources to collect, essentially the same ages to progress through (though this time they're called Dark, Feudal, Castle and Imperial), and largely the same types of units: infantry, cavalry, siege weapons and ships.
Like its predecessor, however, Age II is a carefully balanced blend of units, all of which have their strengths and weaknesses, and like all strategy games, Age II is the interactive equivalent of two people whipping their hands from behind their backs and one shouting 'Nyah, stone blunts scissors', before promptly being beaten about the jaws. It all comes down to evolution, really, and Age II is as about as highly developed a game as you are likely to find. Its subtle differences from its illustrious forefather may be small in number, but they have a big impact. Where the first game was brilliant, if a little rough around the edges, the sequel has been buffed up to a glorious shine.
After a brief introductory movie, you are immediately thrown into the usual opening menu. No doubt many people, most of whom will be familiar with the first game, will delve straight in by choosing a map, take charge of one of the 13 civilisations and start building with a few chums, whether they're online or artificial. To miss the single-player campaigns, however, would be a mistake. Unless you're a complete newcomer to this type of game (ie you're still trying to get your PC's foot pedal to work), I would avoid the William Wallace training campaign and plump straight for the Joan Of Arc series of missions. Whatever campaign you choose, you will notice straight away that far from each separate mission being a cut-down version of the skirmish-type of game, where you just build a base of operations and hunt down the foe, in most cases you start off with a ready-made army prepared for battle. You'll notice, too, that each mission has its own graphics, unique buildings and many scripted elements, as well as a historic background for you to lose yourself in. You will often march into a pitched battle between two massive armies, and although you won't be able to join in, you'll certainly want to watch.
It has to be said that some missions are very craftily written. I was stuck for a couple of hours on one where two British tribes were attacking my city and I had to destroy one of their castles. Waging a war on two fronts, as you know, is pretty tricky. How, then, to keep one enemy at bay while taking on the other? I figured it out in the end. Age II is not always about brute force - you need at least half a brain as well. Thankfully, one half of mine is still active, if a little slow.
KNIGHT LORE
Whether you play a full campaign, where your objectives are obvious and the means to achieve them are limited, or a deathmatch or random game where the scope is much broader, what is essentially so right about Age IIis the balance of each of the units. Laying siege to an enemy settlement isn't just about planting a line of trebuchets or bombardiers and pounding a wall into the ground. Enemy archers, garrisoned in guard towers will make short work of them. Then there's the knights streaming around the corner to worry about.
There are so many subtle strategies that come into play that every assault runs the risk of facing a successful counter. You can't be sure of anything. Just to illustrate this, there are 19 different infantry units, some of which are unique to the various races, but each is a specialist to some degree.
Add to that the option to upgrade armour, strength and weaponry, and the fact that each race has its own innate strengths, and you can see that to get good at any one strategy with one particular race could take a great deal of time.
What has always lifted the Empires games above the norm has been the research elements. Churning out village idiots armed with sharp sticks is of no use if you come face to face with a bunch of finely-tailored infantrymen packing 'hand cannons'. Unless you can counter them with sheer weight of numbers, you'll need to get researching. To get your hand on Hand Cannoneers (assuming you've picked a race that can build them), you'll need to research chemistry, which means you'll have to have built a university in the Castle Age.
Not all research is military in nature, of course. One of the first buildings you'll assemble will be a mill to store food, allowing you to build a market once you advance to the Feudal Age, allowing you the benefit of trade. There are many more technologies available than in the first game: various types of armour, specific skills that boost particular units or extend their capabilities, and all the while you are building various units in the full knowledge that everything has a price, be it in gold, food, stone or wood. In short, every element in the game - collecting, building, fighting, researching - is integrated almost seamlessly into one big gaming ball of loveliness.
A NEW AGE
Some people have been critical of the computer AI in Age II, being a bit dumb. For sure, it's not perfect, but you have to realise that the game is aimed at all levels. If you've played the first game for any length of time, you can avoid the two lower difficulty settings for a start. In fact, due to one fat, annoying bug, the computer player will give up minutes into a deathmatch game set on 'easiest'. At its most difficult, the game is insanely forbidding - one for those who can pull off countless keyboard shortcuts at the same time.
In multiplayer games, of course, there are no such problems. And as with the single-player games, there are countless strategies open to each player. Walls and buildings are now harder to destroy, seige weapons are susceptible to any kind of attack, and infantry units are easily decimated by archers. Rushing certainly isn't impossible, but it is difficult to pull off - which is how it should be.
With the graphics, I was a little disappointed with some of the animations, specifically the larger units (ships and siege weapons) and their abrupt changes in direction as they traverse the map.
Perhaps my only real criticism is that the Age II is essentially an update of a two-year-old game. Many of the units are just ported over from the first game; the Monks, for example, who have the ability to convert enemy units to your side, are just a medieval version of the old Healers. And the long-drawn-out castle sieges that characterised the period are too fast-paced for my personal taste.
HISTORY LESSON
Whether you choose to invest in Age Of Empires II will depend on a number of factors. If you never liked the first game, prefer more action-orientated strategy, or - like Steve Hill - can't abide games where 'it feels like you're in a history lesson', you certainly won't find much to light your fire. If you wanted to be a real wanker, you could say this is merely Age Of Empires v1.5, to which I would say Tiberian Sun is just C&C v1.1. And I think many people would agree with that.
On the other hand, if you absolutely adored the first game and you aren't expecting anything radical from the sequel, you'll instantly find The Age Of Kings to your liking. As you play the game, you'll be constantly discovering little enhancements, all of which add up to a finely tuned and perfectly balanced game.
Overall, though, Age II pretty much covers everything you could want in a real-time strategy game. It's attractive, epic in scope and so endlessly varied that you'll still be dabbling in it two years from now.
As the genre starts to embrace 3D, Age Of Empires II is sure to be looked back upon as the last in a dying breed. Without doubt, it is the best and to miss it would be a crime for which you should be hung, drawn and quartered.
What's new in Age II
New Options
When building units, you can set gathering points for each building, to which each new unit will rally when produced or 'ungarrisoned'. Even better, place the gathering point for your Town Centre on a forage bush and each new villager will automatically start gathering berries for you to stockpile in the nearest mill. No longer will you have to spend ages searching for slothful villagers, either. Click on the 'Idle Villager' icon and the screen will centre on any non-military unit that hasn't yet been put to work. Perhaps one of the best new features, for newcomers at least, is the option to pause the action at any time and take stock of the game. A quick stab at the F3 key and you can scroll around the play area, queue up orders and have a piss before resuming the action. Neat, eh?
New combat features
As well as setting your armies to be either aggressive (where they go berserk at the first sign of the enemy), defensive (where they'll come back after chasing the foe for a short distance), or to stand their ground, you can also 'garrison' your archers and swordsmen in castles and barracks, so that from relative safety, they can rain arrows upon the advancing ranks. At the ring of a bell, villagers can now be summoned to the town centre, whereas previously they were vulnerable to attack. One of the game's niftiest combat features allows you to form your grouped units into various formations, with cavalry at the fore, pikemen behind and seige engines trundling at the rear. All grouped units move at the speed of the slowest, with the hand-to-hand units breaking rank at the first sight of the enemy.
King of the castle
Reach the Imperial Age and each civilisation can finally build its very own castle, stick a few archers in there and be indomitable, at least until the siege rams come into view. Each castle allows you to create powerful rock-hurling trebuchets, as well as the one unique unit available to each race: the British have Longbowmen, the Japanese Samurai, and so on.
Trade your way to victory
Trading has been massively overhauled in Age Of Empires II. As before, once you have a ramshackle trading centre at the heart of your settlement, you can sell excess resources to buy those you are short on, with prices fluctuating accordingly. One new feature, however, is the option to build trade carts, Depending on the distance between your ally's trade centre and your own, these will raise your income of gold - a valuable resource as you build more 'high-tech' units. The same is true with docks and trading ships.
New game variations
As well as the option to win by conquest, deathmatch games can also be won either by building a Wonder and defending it, holding a number of relics for a certain amount of time or a victory based on scores - which promotes trade, research and building. There is also a new game variant called Regicide, the aim of which is to kill off the enemy's king while defending your own. If you have problems finding the defenceless monarch, a click on the Spying icon will soon highlight his whereabouts - for a short time at least.
Multiplayer Enhancements
At last, you can save multiplayer games, which means that for many Internet multiplayers, epic month-long battles can become a reality. Recording games is another new option, with little effect on speed. Each hour will take up around 1Mb of disk space and you can watch the action from the viewpoint of any player, even the AI-controlled ones, so you see how stupid or clever they really are. But you can't record the single-player campaign missions, which is a shame because we could have recorded a walkthrough and put it on next month's cover disc, saving us the bother of typing up the words. Oh well.
// Overview
Verdict
Not too shabby
Uppers
Easy to learn, hard to master Excellent interface, detailed graphics and finely balanced units Vastly improved single-player game Bigger maps and countless new features
Downers
Unoriginal and perhaps too similar to the original game Each multiplayer needs their own CD. Boo
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Easy to learn, hard to master
