Well, in this context I'm the anus-opening (<-- don't click) that will continue to blog about whatever I feel like at the time. And sometimes those things will be about things that you, my dear audience, like. I'm not entirely sure if this is going to be one of them. Let's see how things pan out.
Speaking of things, or rather not speaking of them, it was quite a shock to come back to Finland after a week in London. From 10-15 degrees to -18 is not what I would call a pleasant experience, I kind of felt like the winter rapist I blogged about earlier. Minus the raping part though.. obviously. In London I went to Forbidden Planet, and found a new mascot for my rubberducking needs. Say hello to Sacky. Whenever I have a problem that needs to be verbalized to assist in the solving of it, Sacky will be there for me. Staring at me with his bitching face of disgust, but nonetheless listening to me explain about a PHP problem I have.
Yeah, some people might think I'm a bit of a traitor for buying a mascot based on a game exclusive to Sony Playstation 3 since I'm primarily an Microsoft Xbox 360 man. I think those people are stupid for thinking one has to stay faithful to one console, or just one platform. To put it simply, could I afford a Playstation 3 as well, I would. But I can't, so I won't. That doesn't mean I have anything against Playstation, or Wii for that matter. The Xbox 360 just happens to have a lot of games I like/own/want. Speaking of game I want, last Wednesday I ordered Dragon Age: Ultimate Edition, it should arrive on Monday according to my calculations. I would've bought Bioshock 2 but I promised myself I wouldn't buy it until I've played through Bioshock, which I still haven't because it creeps me out too much. True story. Anyway, enough about that, here's Sacky.
So from one game to another, here's my review of the recently released game Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings.
For a new game, I was a bit shocked by the graphics, they were, how do I say this? Do you remember when Crysis first came out and everyone was blown away by how realistic the graphics were. Well I was impressed but not in the way other people were, but Age of Empires, I mean WOW! The details on the characters are astonishing both in fidelity and with the numerous customization options I decided to have all my militia wear tops in Deep Blue and skirts in Ecru. Yeah, I decided all my men are colorblind idiots with no fashion sense.
The path finding for the A.I is out of this world, it's almost like every soldier has his own back story and life values, making decisions based on these events and according to actions taken by other soldiers. Most of the time those soldiers make those moronic decisions with the result in death. You know, like in reality. The buildings look amazing and with real-time rendering of every wooden fiber, the way buildings take damage is so intricate. Imagine this, if a militia gets a sufficient blow in on a house, splintering the wood, they can then enter the building through the newly created hole in the wall. Then they just go to sleep on the floor after binging on all the available alcohol. When they wake up again, they usually wander around my enemy's town flashing themselves to fair maidens and goats. Once the fair maidens have run away they mostly just molest the goats. Yeah, I should really do something about that.
So did I like Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings? Yes, very much, I've played it too many times to count. Knowing all the different strategies that work for different civilizations... that is.. 12 years ago when it was actually new. Now? It's aged, not bad, but not very good either. I played the trial version before I started writing this. I was an unstoppable killing machine, destroying every enemy in sight on my path to victory. On easy, but still. They probably would've kicked my ass on anything else just like in C&C.
12 years ago, Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings would've gotten a 4/5. Now, it's forever disgraced and shamed into a corner with the likes of Quake III. Games that used to be good, but that since then has been surpassed by their spiritual successors and general improvement in technology, knowledge & stuff. Don't get me wrong, they used to be very good and popular, some still are good and popular. But a lot of them are viewed through rose-tinted shades of nostalgia. A lot of them, used to be. They aren't anymore, get over it. There's better games out there and you are missing out on some of them.
