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Age of Mythology: The Titans (PC)
by rrr605
AOM: The titans is an expansion pack to the AOM game released in 2002. It plays exactly the same as AOM with small gameplay tweaks and new units, maps, campaign and gods.
The expansion pack adds the atlantean civilization to the existing 3 (greek, egypt and norse). With this is also brings three new gods (3 different titans). ... As each civilization has a completely different playstyle the distinctiveness is carried over in the game.
Possibly one of the biggest additions to the game is the creating of doorways to freeing titans, massive godlike beings who can be called onto the battlefield and are very difficult to kill. Each civilization will be given the opportunity to unleash a titan however it often is in the later stages of the game.
Traditional collecting resources, building military forces, building construction is maintained and as in the prequel very polished. New maps are added which brings variety to the random game generator.
A new campaign is created where you play as Arkantos son Kstor as you defend the Atlanteans and now seek to bring the civilization back to glory by soughting the help of the long forgotten Titans. The campaign is fairly good but nowhere as long or interesting as the Age of Mythology campaign.
The music and graphics are unchanged but the new god powers, and the titans destroying entire battlefields is definitely a nice watch.
The expansion pack's main selling point is the Titan unit and possibly the new civilization of Atlanteans. However had the campaign been a little longer this would have been a must have.
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Age of Empires 2 - The Conquerors Expansion (PC)
by rrr605
This review is on the PC expansion pack to the 1999 hit game age of empires 2: age of kings. The expansion features the addition of 5 new civilizations namely Aztecs, Mayans, Spanish, Koreans, and the Huns. It also includes 4 new campaign chapters based around Atilla, El Cid, Montezuma and a misc of greatest battles.
For those not ... familiar with the Age of Empires series it is a RTS (real time strategy) where you play as one of the many civilizations on a map as you develop and achieve victory with your allies. The game has 2 distinct components namely the economy and the military. The economy has you focusing on building houses, creating villagers and collecting valuable resources in the form of gold, food, stone and wood. The resources gained is in turn used to research various technologies making your civilization more advanced as well as necessary for boosting your military forces. The military forces would be essential for defence and offence and to destroy your enemies on the map.
conquerors boost some major and minor changes to this tried and tested gameplay. Apart from the new civilizations and campaign there are also a number of new technological upgrades as well new units. New maps, multiplayer types and certain tweaks and command interface are easily recognized by veteran gamers of the series. However they arent as obvious to the rest of the population who never played age of kings before.
The music and sound effects are pretty much the same as age of kinds and no change to the graphics are seen. The campaign is definitely a good play but once finished offers little replay value as most players tend to play online with friends. While the new civilizations do add a little more expansion the difference between individual civilizations are merely in a handful of technology upgrades and a special unit.
For those who love RTS games particularly the age of empires series go for it. For others stick to the age of empires 2 age of kings game as you wont be missing out on much if you didnt buy this expansion.
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Age of Empires (PC)
by GrayWizard
This is the game that introduced and defined strategy games for me. I remember when I was in high school a friend of mine installed the demo on my computer and I was glued to the monitor that night.
The game has a simple concept; build an economy, progress through the ages and complete objectives or obliterate the enemy. ... Simple but in so many ways addictive.
Age of Empires is an isometric game (2 dimensional made to look 3D) and therefore does not require any graphics hardware acceleration beyond that which your computer already has. It is almost 13 years old yet the graphics feel fresh. Vivid colours, beautiful animations and great music.
Its an easy game to pickup and play. The learning curve isn't too big because all the actions are laid out in small numbers of buttons on the uers interface. These include movement, building, repairing, attacking and standing ground and so forth.
The interface has a minimap which allows you to keep up with all the action and make movements without having to navigate the whole map.
Age of Empires also features 3D sound meaning that when you move away from a certain area of the screen you do not hear any of that action.
The soundtrack is very beautiful orchestral music that varies over the game and fits the mood of progress or action.
Age of Empires has ages starting from Stone Age and finishes in the Iron Age. The campaigns are very enlightening (almost educational) and enjoyable. Some campaigns even taught me a bit about Egyptian and Hittite history - such as the Battle of Kadesh.
Multiplayer gameplay is fantastic. The old MSN Zone where matchmaking was done does not exist. Fortunately there is Voobly a matchmaking service that has games daily and a sense of community.
3 Es Enjoyable, Educational, Enlightening
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