Age of Empires II, PC CDRom, £39.99
It wasn't the best strategy game ever, but Age of Em- pires was one of the most popular and certainly a major success for Microsoft in the game-making department. Unlike most real-time strategy games, it appealed to a broad age range and to casual gameplayers. Compared to games like War- craft, Starcraft or Command & Conquer, however, it seemed a bit simplistic and devotees of the genre dismissed it. Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings improves on its predecessor in almost every department, but it is still very accessible to all gameplayers and the "learn to play" mode is excellent at explaining the game without boring the user to tears.
The fundamentals of the game haven't changed much. You start with a town centre, create some villagers, make them reap the resources of the land (gold, rock, wood and food) and then convert these resources into building houses, barracks, military units, marketplaces, houses of worship and so on. As you progress you can research various technologies and advance your civilization from the Dark Age to the Feudal age, the Castle age and, finally, the Imperial age. Victory can be achieved by dominating enemy civilizations, through a successful economy, or by building and defending wonders of the world.
There are 13 civilizations to play, including Japanese, Byzantines, Frankish, Vikings, Mongols and Celts. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses, unique units and technological tree. Age of Empires II has better graphics and some other notable improvements. Players can use garrisoning and military formations. Units have new options like guard, patrol, follow and different levels of aggression. In the original game, a key unit would often chase after a villager from another civilization, leaving their own town unguarded. The new guard option means that they won't stray too far before realising what their priorities are. Another nice feature is the ability to ring the town bell to call villagers instantly from their duties to defend the town and to ring again to let them return.
The campaigns available include joining Joan of Arc, Genghis Khan, or Saladin in historically-based scenarios. Other modes of play include multiplayer death match game over a local network or the Internet and custom campaigns.
The random map feature and editor to create your own maps mean that in theory you can play this game for eternity without every having the same map twice. The inclusion of the scenario editor is particularly satisfying because it could have easily been released before now as an add-on to the original game. Age of Empires II is not resource-hungry and will run on more modest setups than most of today's games. It is still not as clever or complex as some realtime strategies, but it is often more intuitive and the bottom line is it is decidedly addictive and entertaining to play.
[Recommended: P200/32MB/Win 9x]
Cheats Age of Empires II
Press Enter during play to bring up the chat box, and enter the following codes.
Cheese Steak Jimmy's - 1,000 food
Robin Hood - 1,000 gold
Lumberjack - 1,000 wood
Rock On 1,000 stone
Marco - Reveal map
Polo - Remove Shadow
Natural Wonders - Control the wildlife
Aegis - Build Instantly
Wimpywimpywimpy - Destroy yourself
How Do You Turn This On - Gives you a car
Torpedox - Kills opponent X
I R Winner - Instant Victory
Black Death - Destroy all enemies
To Smithereens Gives a Saboteur Resign - Instant Loss
I Love the Monkey Head - Gives a VDML
Tomb Raider IV: The Last Revelation will be upon us soon to and a demo can be downloaded from pc.ign.com.
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