The army of developers from Ensemble is swarming over the hillside. Some on horseback, some swinging handheld weaponry as they walk, they are headed for your wallet and the competitive PC gaming market in general. Ready and confident of their strike, the darkness of the unexplored territory gradually clears ahead of their march to reveal a massive stone wall. It is a wall of expectations, built by some of their own armies. A wall as sturdy as the original Age Of Empires...

Granted, that was really stretching it, but those poor working stiffs at Ensemble had the unenvious task of having to top their original hit. It took some time (you can thank me for not relating it to "resource gathering" in the above paragraph), but they definitely did it. Age Of Empires II: The Age Of Kings is an instant classic. It should attract most real-time strategy (RTS) players, many gamers who are turned off by the future/military environments of many RTS games, and every single Age Of Empires fan. It's one of those games that makes you want to dive in, immediately, as soon as you see it on a computer screen. And its disappointments are blissfully scarce.

The grand canvas of Age Of Kings sets it well apart from its RTS peers. You see and help various historical civilizations advance, as in the first game, but following later epochs: from after the fall of the Roman Empire through the Imperial Age. You also might learn a little about the impact of some famous figures like William Wallace, Genghis Khan, and Joan of Arc, as their stories are intertwined with historically based campaigns. And while other RTS games frequently are about generating resources to make war, in Age Of Kings you're just as likely to be capturing holy relics, building and protecting a "wonder", or meeting other goals.

Click on thumbnail for full image. (109K)

Improvements to the original age of empires are both subtle and large, and too numerous to list here. But I've got to tell you about some of this stuff, in case you're still dubious about updating the original. The same gorgeous graphics and engaging sound effects are present in this sequel, though with larger buildings and quite a bit of loving detail, the graphics are perhaps even lovelier eye candy than before. Buildings and structures are portrayed larger (and more to scale this time), and a player's first impression is of impressive visual depth and complexity. Clearly, civilizations have advanced quite a bit from those earliest Egyptians scrabbling for fish and berries.

The campaigns are made more personal and perhaps more strongly motivated with the stories woven between missions, sometimes involving historical characters as mentioned above. If you're not in the mood for an extended campaign, the random map generator works better than ever, and a larger map size is available, if it's elbow room you need to grow a village. You'll play one of 13 civilizations with their own unique touches, including Vikings, Japanese, Turks, Celts and Goths. Each civilization's attributes carry balancing elements that are a marvel of game design, and you can bet this keeps multiplayer games interesting and vastly replayable. Newton would have discovered playing this game, for for every unit there is an equal and opposite unit.

Some of the features in Age Of Kings have not been seen in other games. There's a town bell to ring when you're under attack. Instead of losing many feebly fighting peasants, these useful builders and farmers will flock to your town hall for protection, and arrows will even fly from that building. After the attack, another ring of the bell will send everyone strolling back to their jobs. Not a bad idea.

There's also a button to identify and select an idle worker. This saves you the drudgery of scrolling around town, looking for farmers whose land has been farmed out, woodcutters who have run out of trees, etc. Though construction can be queued, it's a minor shame that the chore of keeping workers occupied couldn't have been even more automated.

Moving groups of land-based units can now be done in your choice of formations. Not only do marching formations look great, but they are useful for protecting weaker units (e.g. at the center of a box formation). Grouped units act with some built-in intelligence, like ranged units falling to the rear during an offensive attack. The group's behavior can be modified with a "combat stance" setting, controlling the aggressiveness or defensiveness of the non-ranged units.

Everybody's biggest problem with the original Age Of Empires, the flawed pathfinding AI, is an issue shared with many RTS games. AGE II does an admirable job of improving this situation. There are some occasional problems with moving from point A to point B, but it's usually easy to see why. Pathfinding frustrations have been generally left behind.

All the usual multiplayer options are still here, including easy and free matchmaking support on The Zone. You may enjoy a new kind of match called Regicide-get the King. In fact, I shouldn't forget to say that Age Of Empires II is very much in the mold of its predecessor. An Age Of Empires player should sink happily right into the same interface, and you can count on giggles of delight at the new goodies. It walks a happy line between fresh and familiar.

In sum, this is good gaming, and it comes highly recommended. It was developed with high ambition and, at least for me, it all works. Grade: A.

Age Of Empires II: The Age of Kings shouldn't tax your system if it meets these minimum requirements: Multimedia PC with Pentium 166 Mhz, Windows 95/98/NT-SP5, 32 Mb of RAM, 200 Mb of hard disk space, 100 Mb of additional disk space for swap file, super VGA monitor supporting 800x600 resolution, local bus video card with 2 Mb memory that supports 800x600/256-color resolution, quad-speed (4X) CD-ROM drive, and a Microsoft or compatible mouse. Additional system requirements for multi-player use are listed on the bottom of the box. Certainly, an audio board with speakers or headphones is strongly recommended.

Age Of Empires II: The Age Of Kings
[street: $44]
Microsoft/Ensemble
ESRB rating: Teen ("T"), ages 13+, animated blood, animated violence

Lighter Blue: Mini-Reviews

A Brief Look at Armageddon's Blade
3DO's marvelously detailed Heroes Of Might and Magic series has been attracting gamers who didn't even think they liked turn-based strategy games. Its fantasy environment and many characters and creatures populate an interface that pulls your hand to the mouse and a game world that keeps you up late at night. Their most recent edition, Heroes Of Might and Magic III, now can be expanded with an add-on pack called Armageddon's Blade, which provides a handful of new campaigns, dozens of standalone scenarios, a new town, two new types of heroes, 23 new creatures, and three new dragon types.

Click on thumbnail for full image. (103K)

The map and scenario generator software is reportedly improved, though the differences weren't obvious to me, and some minor changes to the game rules have been introduced; for example, your creatures can guard mines that you've captured. Buyers of Armageddon's Blade should not expect a re-vamped Heroes III engine; rather, you should look forward to the influx of new units and single-player missions. The expansion to this addictive game is both adequate and entirely welcome; it's "more of the same", so you Heroes III owners should know right away whether you want it or not. It maintains and at times surpasses the high standards set by Heroes III. Grade: B+.
Heroes Of Might and Magic III: Armageddon's Blade
[street price: $27]
3DO/New World Computing
ESRB rating: Everyone ("E"), animated violence

A Brief Look at 3 Pack
Pushing harder to provide more value for its low-cost titles, HeadGames has bundled three indoor sports games together in a single box, under the beer-like name "3 Pack." We can get Propool 3D out of the way immediately; it's got some decent features, buried beneath the clumsiest interface I've seen in a while, so you should check out alternatives if pool is what you're looking for. Dart Pro, a dart-throwing simulation, is more on par with the usual HeadGames fare: Mildly interesting for a short while, it's done with an outdated graphics engine.

Click on thumbnail for full image. (103K)

The third game, Probowl 3D, manages to rise just a notch above. Though I was never really able to understand the way my player was supposed to let go of the ball properly, I managed to toss some bowling balls at the pins, and there is the heart of a fun little game beating within this package. Its graphics are reasonable for a bowling game, and there are customizable features to your on-screen persona and to the game, e.g., psychedelic "Extreme Bowling". On balance, despite my appreciation for a low-cost value, I'd rate 3 Pack a C-.
3 Pack
[street: $19]
Activision/HeadGames Publishing
ESRB rating: Everyone ("E")

A Brief Look at Frisbee Golf
With Frisbee Golf, HeadGames plunges into computer game territory that is even less explored than darts. Well, I can see how it might be expected to behave something like a golf game, but the graphical riches of recent golf sims are entirely lacking in Frisbee Golf. With graphics and sound perhaps a little less primitive than many of the HeadGames titles, developer Sandbox Studios still doesn't hit the mark.

Click on thumbnail for full image. (64K)