Age-of-Empires-3-The-Asian-Dynasties
Latest
Age of Empires 3 collection advancing Sept. 15
Microsoft has announced that it's bringing Age of Empires III: Complete Collection to Games For Windows on September 15. By "complete," it means the original game plus its two expansions: The Asian Dynasties and War Chiefs for a grand total of $49.99. It's a reasonable price to pay for the handiwork of Halo Wars creator Ensemble Studios, although no matter how many copies you buy, the disbanded developer won't be coming back. (But hopefully one of the two studios that rose from its ashes will create something on par with the historic RTS series, someday.)
Age of Empires III: The Asian Dynasties releases Oct. 23
Microsoft said today that Age of Empires III: The Asian Dynasties is good to go and will hit store shelves Oct. 23. The second expansion for AoE III is all about the Asia and adds a bevy of new content. Big Huge Games (Rise of Nations and Legends) handled this expansion of the historical RTS while Ensemble studios, the original developers of AoE III, continue work on that other Halo game: Halo Wars. Age of Empires III will retail for $30. [Via Press Release]
Age of Empires III goes far east, or short west, this fall
While Ensemble Studios finishes Halo Wars, the development of Age of Empires III: The Asian Dynasties falls on Brian Reynold's Big Huge Games, best known for Rise of Nations and Rise of Legends (and developers of XBLA's Catan). Reynolds says, "We feel that the in-depth experience of Big Huge Games in the real-time strategy genre, combined with the solid reputation of the Age of Empires franchise, will result in something fresh and unique for gamers." Considering Age of Empires and Rise of Nations are two sides of the same coin, it's certainly interesting to see how chummy Ensemble and Big Huge Games are here, considering they should be competitors. This would also be another recent instance of Big Huge Games working closely with Microsoft. Strangely, the press release really doesn't drop many details. Asian civilizations will be playable, 15 new Asian "wonders" and "new ways of winning and trading." The screenshot you see above is also the only one that was released. The press release feels like Microsoft is just letting consumers know that Big Huge Games is taking the Age of Empires franchise out for a spin. We'll see how they enjoy the ride when the game ships on ... yeah, doesn't say that either.
Rematch: AoE III vs. Civ. IV, who's buggier?
The two went head to head in a metareview showdown: Civilization IV versus Age of Empires III. AoE III won in sales, but got edged out in overall rankings, but then it was revealed that Civilization IV was playing injured. Reports of buggy software flooded the nets, and then it was AoE III's game to lose. Then today, a reader informed us that AoE III suffered from a plentitude of bugs as well. The forums are buzzing with comments like: vodka-mike: Ensemble's devs and brass should feel ashamed [of] this release. Vincedia: OK, so we bought this game, get it home, start to play, and find out we are paying to Beta test? I've had the game for a bit over 2 weeks now and I still can not stop the crashing to desktop. gman: What I haven't seen is a response from ES at all. There are hundreds of posts just like this one, on this forum alone! Is this a case of two competitors both rushing their competing titles out the door only to have them compete against another rushed product? Or was the lucrative holiday season looming, so the "patch it later" mentality kicked in. We love Sid Meier, but we want him to know that the DS doesn't work that way. Now, if Microsoft brings AoE to the 360, maybe they could patch it... but let's not even think about that.
Metareview: Age of Empires III vs. Civilization IV
Whilst Age of Empires III and Civilization IV are classed in the same genre as strategy games, they have very different styles. AoE is real time and has a permanent "down with the troops" view and feel. Civilization IV, on the other hand, is turn based and features a lot of micromanagement. Rather than trying to represent one age as best as it can, it tries to cover the whole of civilization; from cavemen to spacecraft. The two games took the 1st and 2nd place on the PC games sales chart for the week ending November 13th. So we thought it'd be very appropriate to write up a versus metareview of the two games - in the style of our previous F.E.A.R. vs Quake 4 metareview. Take the jump to find out what reviewers thought of these two strategy game behemoths.
