Tuesday 23 October 2012

Age of Empires 2: The Age of Kings

Age of Empires 2: Age of Kings
Unlike my stalwart blog companions, Thom and Neil, I was actually quite looking forward to my first game play through. Age of Empires, as a series has always been one of my favourites. I have fond memories of staying up late with my brother and cousin, playing on the downstairs PC till the early hours.


We were, of course, told by my parents not to play the computer past 9pm, and for all intents and purposes, the computer wasn't even on once we had retired to bed. However, this was only according to my parents, as they believed the computer was off - when the monitor was off. Around 12am, we'd sneak down, snatch some penguin bars and fill up on cola and kick some AI ass. Training priests that sang "oooh-ahhhh-wo-lolololo!" to convert enemy units and sending wave after wave of soldiers to attack innocent villagers. Many a fun time was had as we crushed the Computer on Easy Mode.


So I'm excited as I place the disc in my tray, and autorun.exe does its thing. I'm running this on my Win7-64bit machine, so I have no idea what compatibility issues I might run into, but I suspect I meet the minimum specs. Hmm...typical or full installation?

Choices...

Think I can probably get away with a full install.

Few more clicks, a prompt about a restart, and I'm done. None of this patching malarkey. Run Game. I'm in. Argh! Default resolution is 800 x 600! Quickly, let's change this. Maximum resolution is... 1280 x 1024. What? No widescreen support?! Guess this will have to do.

Now the game type. I could play through the campaign or possibly even online (I very much doubt MSN Gaming Zone is still running...) so in a testament to my days of youth, I'm going to pick the random map mode. I'm going to be the Britons in this game, and I'll bring three other random Computer players along for the ride.

As stated by the rules, I'll be whacking the difficulty up to Hard. Maximum population, standard resources and set on the continental islands known as "Medium - 4 Players".

In the past, young MrBenn would've allied with the computer players, move all the units up to his base and declare war on them. Old MrBenn doesn't have this option. Old MrBenn is probably going to lose his empire fairly early on.


After clicking Start Game, and little medieval musical tune...I'm in.

mrbenn

4 comments:

  1. My favourite way to play was to do a 25 minute game and see if I could win on points. Then it became a game of speed clicks and precise build orders (much like Starcraft II) but only for 25 minutes, short enough to make sure no one actually started a war with me, as I didn't actually like the fighting.

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    1. Ah that's a good point! When I played it, I had no concept of order when building units/structures. I just picked the units I liked the look of! 25mins sounds like a good match length to go for...I hope I will survive longer than that!

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  2. Not sure Ben, that archer clearly believes you should have chosen the 'Typical' installation

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    1. He does look miffed. But the target did move. His current aim is going to be well off...

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