It’s time to open the fifth door on the Calendar. I think we might need to defeat this guy with a solid attack from our infantry, backed by archers.
That’s right, it is Age Of Empires 4
Nate: As broadly speaking as possible, Age Of Empires 4 is a super-targeted, all-track, all-song remake of the legendary medieval video game Age Of Empires 2. Newcomers to the franchise Relic Entertainment stripped the core off right from 1999’s RTS, hooked it up to a whole new game with an aesthetic best described as Team Time, directed by Michael Bay, and put it on technical discs. our number with a trumpet trumpet.
So you’re thinking, it’s a remake, right? After all, it seems like a course in strategy game development. As in the movie business, it’s rare these days for a studio to venture into a new IP adventure, when instead some well-loved but still rock-solid corpses can be recovered. . Indeed, many viewed AoE4 as merely a feat of necromancy, praising it as a solid classic RTS, but sighing at Relic’s reluctance to renew the classic. The age feature set.
But as far as I know, Age Of Empires 4 is not a remake. It’s not even a sequel, really. It was a bloody exorcism, what it was like.
To back this up somewhat, let me remind you that I spent most of 2020 in what you might call reasonable. enslaved to Age Of Empires 2, after the launch of its Ultimate Edition. I’m not alone either. Last year saw hundreds of thousands of people fall for the twenty-year-old game, and while many of its followers are newcomers – some younger than AoE2 – the first wave of Pilgrims are people who, like me, have been drawn in by nostalgia.
It was the best time I’ve ever had with a video game. It was the worst time I’ve ever had with a video game. I’ve spent more time on AoE2 than ever before than its original total lifespan. Why is it such an intense experience? Well, I suppose I was stuck indoors during an epidemic, and slowly losing my mind. But apart from that, there is only something truly powerful freak about applying a brain fit for modern strategy games, to a game from the 1990s.
There is a lot of continuous, unnecessary activity involved in playing AoE2 by any kind of standard. Even with the reasoning concessions added by the Definitive Edition, the game remains a dazzling, obnoxious brute-force that requires four clicks of the mouse that one person can suffice in a modern RTS and punishes Punish any major lack of focus with a nimble and ruthless economic Ghengising. Winning in such conditions made me feel like an extremely limited god, and defeat, a simple guy.
And so for AoE4, which has managed to banish all demonic styles from AoE2, like Christ forcing pigs to run into the lake, and still – somehow – leaving a perfectly solid RTS for The pig herders played afterwards. That is, really, by no means feat. Relic can be like that, very easily threw the baby out with the bath water, since AoE2’s baby is its bath water. The very same things that made it so magical make it so magical, and one only has to look at Age Of Empires 3 and Age Of Mythology, the two sequels it had, to see that magic gone. How easy it is to go.
AoE4, at least in its new release, isn’t as “good” as Age Of Empires 2. But if I’m honest, it’s a hell of a lot more fun. It comes pre-loaded with paint and falcon documentaries, for Grond’s sake. It has a bloody storyteller. And never once have I found myself snarling curses at my own reflection in the screen, after a sweaty teenage bastard managed to finish their build order eight seconds before me, thanks to that. God gave me permission to drown me in a horse.
Age Of Empires 4, when all is said and done, is a solid old-fashioned RTS. And from where I’m standing, it’s a goddamn miracle. Acclaim.
