Age of Empires Online
The Icrontic Spotlight this week reveals the machinations of the giant wooden horses of Age of Empires Online, the only game really worth a look this week. It seems that the plans for Age of Empires have changed drastically. When Age of Empires III was released, several years ago now, the developers announced plans to continue the trend of pushing each game into the next major age of human expansion. The first game was the ancient world with Alexander, Cleopatra, and The Huns, the second was the medieval world with The Dark Ages and The Crusades, the third was the renaissance/colonial era, and the fourth was intended to be the Napoleonic Wars through Vietnam, while the fifth game was planned to cover futuristic conflicts—the concept art showed a guy in a space-suit with a laser pistol. Perhaps they are still planning to do that with their core franchise, but this new Age of Empires game is a deviation from that plan.
Age of Empires Online is an MMO, and it returns to the ancient world. Each player builds up a civilization over time, increasing and customizing their in-match options as they go up in level and make development choices. Like in Age of Empires III, each match will still be held on a map that begins empty and must be built up by the players, but each player’s development options and bonuses will be based on decisions they’ve made between games. The base game will be free to play. Players will be able to choose between the Egyptians or the Greek to start, and after a time, ‘booster packs’ will be available to allow players to expand their game possibilities. These boosters will be new civs, new game types (not maps, since those are randomly generated for each match), and other enhancements. Hopefully, they know enough not to make every match determined simply by who spent the most money on enhancements—that would be unfortunate. As long as that is resisted, it sounds like a really immersive RTS experience with a lot of replayability. Unfortunately, it’s not on Steam, rather it’s on Games for Windows Live.
Following is a full list of this week’s announced North American releases:
Windows
- Age of Empires Online
- Atomic City Adventures – The Case of the Black Dragon
- Jerry Rice and Nitus’ Dog Football
- Troy Online
Wii
- Get Up Family Game Sports
- Jerry Rice and Nitus’ Dog Football
DS
- Junior Mystery Quest
- Puzzler World 2
Xbox 360
- El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron
- Toy Soldiers: Cold War
PS3
- El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron
- No More Heroes: Heroes Paradise
PSP
- Fighting Fantasy: Talisman of Death
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