15-Aug-2001 The best news for Megalomaniacs all year It's a clever game that can mesh historical fact with compulsive action, but Age of Empires is able to do just that. Whatever the PR spiels may say, this, like so many other recent PC games, is a spin-off of Command and Conquer/ Red Alert, but one so accomplished, comparisons of this sort seem unkind.Players take control of embryonic ancient civilisations; Greek, Egyptian, Asian etc and attempt to expand them into societies with the might to conquer other races and form empires. Things start very simplistically, with hunting and foraging. With increased technology, players are soon equipping warriors with bows, swords and later, huge flaming catapults.It all inevitably ends in a big ruckus, played out in realtime. The multi-player option is excellent for this, but happily, enough effort has been put into the single-player game to satiate those without a network or access to Microsoft's Internet service (though we strongly recommend it).There are loads of nice touches, from the brilliant character animation, to the 'timeline' at the end of the game which shows the population flux over the period of your contest.
Probably Microsoft's best game to date, Age of Empires has stiff competition across the market, but one us over with its sheer playability. There are many paths to pursue and a wide breadth of potential strategies. Comes highly recommended by is personally.
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