AoE3
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This is getting silly: Age of Empires III is ten cents on Games for Windows today
It's rare that we see games' price tags fall much lower than yesterday's $2 BioShock deal on Games for Windows. And yet -- today's GfW weekend sale completely blows yesterday's out of the water: For $0.10 (yes, ten cents), you can grab Age of Empires III: Complete Edition.
Age of Empires 3 goes gold for Mac
It's already been a year since the PC version of Age of Empires III shipped, and now Mac strategy enthusiasts can finally look forward to conquering the New World in glorious 3D. MacSoft has announced that their conversion of AoE3 has gone gold and will be available before the end of the month for both PowerPC and Intel Macs. The AoE series is developed for the PC by Microsoft-owned Ensemble Studios (Halo Wars, Age of Mythology), and the latest entry received heavy praise for its new graphics engine and balanced gameplay. Check out MacSoft's product page and the Inside Mac Games preview for more details. See also: Mac Civ 4 shipping soon, trailer released Metareview - Age of Empires III vs. Civilization IV Age of Empires III board game in the works
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.
