Rome has Risen!

I have finished Age of Empires: Rise of Rome!

As I guessed, the scenarios in the expansion were superior to those in the base game. 

The challenge of each scenario was more consistant, from scenario to scenario and through out the scenario. Instead of having an initial tough 5 minutes followed by a cake walk, the RoR scenarios generally peaked in difficulty near the end.  This was mostly because the difficulty was no longer fending off attack waves when I was weak in initial the stages, but because the enemies usually guarded objectives with the toughest units in the game.

The scenario setups were also more unique. Instead of a bunch of coastal maps where you are required to build a base from scratch and slowly wipe out a single empire, there were many different types of maps, stronger starting bases, less required research and varying setups of computer players.  The repeated slog of building a navy, siege weapons and priests to slowly push through an empire was gone.



Okay, navy domination was still key on some maps.

Map aesthetics were also vastly improved.  The landscapes looked more natural and finer details were added to certain sections of a map.  There were alcoves with hidden ruins and planted trees running along paths.  Long past were the squarish islands with only a purely functional building on it.

Note the bridge and more detailed expanses.

No two scenarios felt quite the same.  Oddly though, the final scenario was a complete throw back to the easier original campaigns.  It was ugly, easy, required a bit of building up and the goal was just to kill off an opponent.

Another odd failure was the lack of CGI campaign videos.  There was simply intro or outro reward to the campaigns.  The only new CGI video was the game intro...which wasn't even that new

 because they just the old intro and added some horrible layer over it.

I think my favourite part about going the AoE series is the feeling of walking through history.  The game provides decent historical information about the empires and people in the game, and encourages me to look up more.  I now have a better feel for when certain events took place relative to others and a better understanding of the huge diversity of the people that lived in the Mediterranean.

Anyhow, on to Age of Kings!

All Games Should Have Knee Presses and Drop Kicks

ImiltheWinged swung by to try and finish off the Streets of Rage series and put a dent in the Golden Axe trilogy.

Welcome to the 80's

We managed to beat the first two Golden Axe games, but didn't technically finish SoR3 or finish GA3.  We beat Streets of Rage 3 on Easy (because it's actually pretty damn tough), but Easy mode leaves out the final two stages. We just died a stage short on our dry run of GA3. We'll go back and finish both soon.

I would just like to say the Golden Axe series is much more fun than you'd expect.  The first two are pretty sweet in their own right.  The third one is amazing because there is a guy who looks like the Ultimate Warrior that performs absurd knee presses and drop kicks (see 3:13 in this video). 

A Fair Comparison I think

Just imagine drop kicks and knee presses in other games like Call of Duty, Diablo or Minecraft!  I promise that any game that I have control over will include at least one of these timeless attacks.

WCW vs NWO Revenge

Once I'm done with the AoE series, I'll be doing  a little wrasslin' in the ring.

Original Age of Empires Complete

The Age of Empires campaigns have been bested! And oh my, was some of it a slog.

Stone throwers and priests, the secret to 90% of the campaign missions.

Some of these maps were definately put together in the era before RTS refinement.  A lot of them just suffered from a lack of detail on the levels.  The mountain temple above was by far the most well put together piece of map.  The Greek and Egyptian campaigns rarely had an aesthetic touch to them other than a couple of walls.  They didn't even bother to add hills!  The final Babylonian campaign levels and the entire Yamato campaign picked up in pace, both aesthetically and gameplay wise.  Still, every campaign suffered from a lack of AI steam.  After fending off the first couple of attack waves, the AI pretty much collapsed in on itself.  Or maybe they were just distracted building TONS of towers.  Most campaigns consisted of defending off a couple waves of attacks and then slowly dismantling fields of towers with a couple priests and stone throwers.

Designing a base around cliffs added a subtle challenge.

Bashing aside, the game did at least off a plethora of objectives and some of the latter levels had a fair bit more gameplay to them.  The cliff-side level above required you to defending some attacks, knock out a nearby village for resources, relocate to another island for more resources and finally penetrate an island fortress. Another level that was extremely frustrating, but quite satisfying was basically a gauntlet that required micromangement to make the best of unit strengths for each obstacle.  You had to run scouts through tower fields, convert siege weapons with priests, and focus fire archers like no tomorrow.  The final campaign levels actually made me quite excited to try out the Rise of Rome ones, where I think the refinement will carry over.

No crappy campaign stuff this time, thanks.

I should also mentioned I followed along with a great guide posted on Gamefaqs by BigglesTh9.  It helped in a couple tough spots, but was also interesting to see how someone else handled certain situations.  He also added difficulty ratings for each level, which gave me a good idea of what my frustration level should be at before tackling a level.

It is super satisfying to finally beat the campaign for a game that I constantly played as a kid (it was my favourite game for a solid year).

Age of Empires: Screenies

Here's a few shots of AoE1 for nostalgia.  Actually, I hope you never had to suffer through these horrible campaigns.

A Greek town  in need of plenty of defense from Persians. This is Zoolander world in practice btw.



Navy - the key to winning most maps.



I found Simba!

Actually, I think the map creator screwed this one up.  There is a unit on the island named "Lion King", but it's a touch North of this cliff shot.  Seriously, this is how bad the maps are.  They screwed up an easter egg! (Note: If my memory of the Lion King is wrong, I will proceed to shove my foot in my mouth.).

Shinobi Down, On to...

Hiya!  I finished up Shinobi 3 this morning.  Sadly, the PC version of Shinobi 2 had some technical problems.  So, the Shinobi series is finished for now.

Why Shinobi is awesome.

I'm pretty happy I played Shinobi.  It's a wicked game that I somehow missed out on as a kid.  I'm going to miss infinite wall jumping from all these other games.  There was something just inheritently satisfying about bouncing from wall to wall.  While not every last detail was awesome about this game, it's an extraordinary platformer.

Anyhow, there was a three-way tie on the poll between the Age of Empires series, Warcraft Series and NWO/WCW.  I've decided to go with the AoE series.

This includes AoE1 series, AoE2 series, Age of Mythology series and AoE3 series.  I'm pretty sure I'll be sick of empire crushing by the end of this.

Diablo 2: Finished

After much much longer than I expected, I finally completed D2!

This game dragged out so much simply because of the tedium of some parts, especially as a sorceress.   Nightmare Act 2 and Hell Act 2, 3 & 4 were the biggest offenders.  They tended all to just be high damage mobs with certain immunities area after area.  So, basically it was just a chain of using a single slow and boring strategy.  On the other hand, the latter of Nightmare difficult felt the most balanced.  Progress went at a decent pace and all the fights felt varied.  While I completed the 'fun' parts in a day or two, the tougher ones often took me a couple weeks because I could only play a couple zones before the tedium crept in.

For anyone who is curious, here is the gear my henchman and I finished up with:

I think my henchman had better gear than I did >.<

On to Shinobi!

Bonus Picture: Ready to rumble with the Ancients.