Age of Empires
      and Age of Empires: Rise to Rome expansion pack

              Reviewed by Andrew Wielochowski

With the immense popularity and the release of Age of Empires 2
recently I was surprised that nobody has yet reviewed it or
commented on this great real-time strategy game.  Age of Empires
is a produced by Microsoft and is a pretty amazing achievement
because it proves they can make things which don't crash every
couple of minutes. Age of Empires offers a couple of playing
modes:

SINGLE-PLAYER
- Campaigns
- Scenarios
- Deathmatch

MULTIPLAYER
- Multiplayer

Firstly, Age of Empires is set a long time ago in the time when
the Egyptians ruled and the Hittites seriously prodded some
buttock.  You take control over these little tribes and well help
them grow conquer and reign all supreme. To describe the game I'm
going to take the Multiplayer view point. When you begin a
multiplayer game you begin with a town center and three men. The
idea is to slowly gain supplies of wood, food, stone, silver and
gold to build up more workers, troops and slowly upgrade your
technology.  You begin in the Stone Age and by slowly building up
and getting stronger you can gradually progress through Tool Age,
Bronze Age and Iron age.

As you progress you build up defenses from the other side, these
can include walls or large towers which as your technology
improves become tougher and can start firing, whilst still sending
men out to mine stone, silver and gold which are used for trading
or for using to build up stronger armies. The men collect wood for
houses, buildings, catapults etc and food is collected by fishing,
hunting or farming. But while all this is going on you have to be
building up a strong army because there is the inevitable time
when both sides will clash and for your sake you just hope it
won't end up in them meeting you first.

The game is highly strategy based and strategies can quickly
become obsolete if used on different tribes, sizes of map and
skill.  I mainly play on singleplayer Me Vs Computer on deathmatch
setting - which means you start off with stacks of wood and stuff
so that you can concentrate more of the army and strategy side.
On Hardest level with me playing Hittites and on the continental
style map I can wipe the computer of the board in under 12 mins.
(BOAST, BOAST) But when I changed the map type my whole strategy
went booooom down the drain.

The combat side is very well thought out and armies must be well
balanced and defensives strong in big teamplay games.

The Expansion pack Rise to Rome is vitally important. It makes
play easier and improves the handling of the game and the
characters. It also includes some new campaigns and weapons.

Net play is brilliant on things like WIREPLAY. If you have the
game and you like the Computer v You then do netplay on wireplay
because it is really enjoyable, however I find that many of the
players there are very good.

The campaigns are pretty good and can be enjoyable for a bit but
they don't have much to keep your interest and aren't really fast
moving enough. I just stick to deathmatch all the time.

I don't feel like I've really explained the game well but it you
like real-time strategy then you should have this. AGE OF EMPIRES
RULEZ as they say and if don't have the Rise of Rome pack get it
because it makes play easier and much better.





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