Age of Empires III is due for release the first week of November.
I’ve never been much of a gamer, but I’ve always enjoyed wasting hours (sometimes days!) with the Age of Empires games and other conquest type games.
At present you can only download a demo, but it’s more than enough to give you a feel for the game.
What do you get?
If you remember the type of gameplay that you experienced in Age of Kings then Age of Empires 3 builds on it. The graphics are simply incredible.
Bits of buildings fly off as they come under bombardment which lends a certain degree of realism to battles that the previous versions lacked:
Real-time physics – Infantry struck by cannon fire will be thrown like rag dolls, perhaps even over a cliff and into the water. Cannonballs bounce and ricochet.
Detailed destructions – Shingles, shutters and whole towers may fly off a building and interact with the terrain, such as crashing into nearby water. This next generation effect is done on the fly so that each building always has a unique destruction, no matter how many times you see it.
The AI has improved in some areas, but I did find the settlers (villagers in previous versions) a little to lazy at times 🙂
The story of Age of Empires 3 begins where Age of Kings left of as you follow the adventures of Morgan Black and his family as they try to make a life in the New World.
The demo is great fun, so the full game should be well worth the waste of a few winter evenings 🙂
More information on the offical site
Age of Empires III – Collectors Edition (PC)
Stay away! Conquest games are the dangerious Ganja maan!
I’ve just had to give up on them. Problem is, anytime you see a documentary on Alexander the Great or something like that, the craving comes back and you loose hours and days…
Richard – I know I know
I can see my weekends and evenings being dominated by AOE3 🙂
I suspect I will be first in line at the Microsoft Company Store (I’m an alum, and my wife still works there) when it’s released. I’m a huge fan of the AOE franchise, no question.
Christopher – only a couple of more days until the official release on November 4th (though Amazon US seems to have been shipping it already… very odd)
Ed
It’s cheaper on CDWOW.ie 🙂
I saw it for sale in Frankfurt on Friday.
Should have picked up a copy, but decided to be chaep and buy it off play.com :p
hmmm, *wanders off to find credit card*
I always found AOE severely limited in both usability (too much mouse movement required and not enough keyboard use) and actual game-play (too fixed, not enough random discovery and exploring). Blizzards Warcraft is a much better RPG IMO, its just a pity they’ve decided to go online-only with the latest incarnation.
Hostyle
I’m not familiar with warcraft. Does it offer you the empire building type of experience of AOE?
Its been a while since I played AoE, but from what I remember they have a lot in common, but warcraft has better visuals, sounds, storyline and “characters”. The main difference is the theme – AoE is based on the historical past, whereas Warcraft is fantasy based with trolls, goblins, wizards, knights, dragons, and so on. Both are world-building games – you start out with little and build your way up. Warcraft 2 is more empire based, whereas warcraft 3 is more mission based. Multiplayer warcraft (especially warcraft 2) is also immense fun, especially with your mates on a LAN as opposed to on battlenet.
Hostyle – sounds intriguing 🙂
I’m not sure if it would be my cup of tea, but I may download a demo to give it a go
It’s really a great game with a new gameplay which is a good evolution of Age of Kings. Let’s play 🙂 !