Anyway, I chill in the lobby for about 30 minutes before going up. I talk to the receptionist and she tells me to take a seat in the waiting room. Next thing I know I'm sitting in a small room with a bunch of middle-aged house-wives. I'm like, "are you kidding me?"

Started getting pretty worried here... come to think of it... they never really did explicitly tell me that this would be a research group for Age of Empires, let alone video games. I began to think that I had been suckered into some weird ass psychological research project. Just as I was about to lose it, some computer nerds show up to ease my mind. Complete with glasses, unkept, long hair, and overweight... these guys could be here for only one thing.

Pretty soon all the computer nerds and I get called into a conference room and are assigned seats. All doubts are cast aside as the proctor announces that we will indeed be discussing computer games. Everyone introduces themselves and tells the group what type of games they play on the computer. Everyone pretty much said first-person shooters and real-time strategy. For the record, the room I was in might as well have been a fucking tool box. To reiterate, this had to be the gayest bunch of stanleys I've ever had the displeasure of being around, but I digress.

Eventually the topic of discussion moves on to Age of Empires and everyone in the room proceeds to suck Ensemble Studio's dick. When asked what I thought of the series, I admitted to it being pretty good, but that it paled in many respects to Blizzard's masterpiece Starcraft (for the sheer hell of getting a rise out of everyone). Sure enough, everyone in the room gives me their best Rock impression and begins to question my opinion. Put on the spot, I did manage to fend them off with some impromptu bullshit that made everyone realize that Starcraft is pretty innovative and worthy of respect. Everyone was pretty impressed... including myself. Damn, I'm good.

Anyway, we stopped talking about what we liked and disliked about the series to date and before they were going to show us some mystery game, went on to discuss possibilities for the future. Like what we expected to see in the next game of the series for example. I remember Shota telling us about two Age of Empires games in the making, one called Age of Mythology, which took place during B.C., and another game which would span across the entire history of mankind. Seeing as how we had already openly discussed Age of Mythology, this "mystery" game that we would be shown was obviously the latter. When it was my turn to talk about what I expected from the sequel, I proceeded to regurgitate all the info about the game that Shota had given me (while making it look like I was making it all up on the spot of course). Huge timeline, tanks vs. cavemen, new resources, 3D graphics... etc. Needless to say, the proctor was pretty freaked out. He was probably wondering if my Sword of Omens had told me all that or some shit.

"Give me sight beyond sight."

Soon after, we were showed images and video clips of the "mystery" game and everything is more or less as I said it would be. The proctor started calling me Nostradamus and everyone in the room starts to engage in excessive snorting or what I guess was supposed to be laughter. So what exactly did they show me? I'll try to give you the rundown on what this game has to offer.

First off, the game has two views. Overworld map style with symbols to indicate towns, units... etc. and zoomed-in mode which looks a lot like previous Age of Empires games. The overworld map is pretty much an enlarged version of the mini-map in previous games of the series. Up until this point I was pleased with what I had seen and the concepts that the game was trying to pursue, but it all goes down hill from here, unfortunately.

Next thing they showed us was a basic village with someone trying to build normally. Each player is now confined within a territorial border which you are not allowed to build outside of, much like the creep if you play as the Zerg in Starcraft. This area expands as you build more inside it. It is possible to build outside the border, but you are penalized for it. For example, if you attempt to build a barracks in enemy territory, they are immediately notified of your presence, your buildings will take longer to construct, they won't operate as efficiently... etc. This pretty much eliminates offensive building, which, for the most part, was what Age of Empires was all about. What does this mean? Remember the first time you played with a bunch of other scrubs and you all waited until the Imperial Age before doing anything offensive? Think that... except... everytime you play. You can kiss rushing goodbye.

"Well if you're better at collecting resources you can build faster and still technically rush." BZZZZ... wrong. Because Ensemble took it upon themselves to dumb down the resouce gathering as well. Instead of searching for resources and gathering them as in previous games, EVERY single piece of land can be used to gather ANY type of resource. That's right... just select a unit of land and pick a resource to extract from it. No searching required. What's more... workers are automatically put to work doing something productive and things such as farms do not have to be checked and queued. Now before you start thinking, "sounds like a good idea," think about what this means for the game. Basically, players are no longer rewarded for concentration, multi-tasking, speed, or anything that might require an ounce of skill since the computer pretty much does everything for you.

As for combat, which is what these types of games are really all about. I wasn't too impressed with that either. Instead of making and commanding individual guys, entire units are created and move together. For example... press the train infantry button and a group of 4 guys are made and move together as one unit. The whole military aspect seems to follow the general theme of this game which is to dumb it down for the lowest common denominator. It's only saving grace is that some of the units look KICK ASS (tanks, air-craft carriers, fighter jets... etc.) and that some of the units requres a little more planning and micro. There is a special ops unit very similiar (if not a complete fucking rip-off) to the Terran Ghost from Starcraft. He can infiltrate towns undetected and bomb installations... how original.

Here is an artist's (pfft... my) conception of a possible scenario from this game.

"Taste the cold steel of my blade, knave... what the fuck is tha... ARGHHHHH!!!"

What comes as the biggest surprise to me is that you no longer advance through "ages," but instead must research different technologies in order to gain access to new units and abilities. Doing so opens up new technologies for you to research as well. They showed us a tech tree for the game which had many categories including: military, technology, government, arts and crafts (um...), and about three others that I don't remember (read: sounded dumb as all hell). The whole teching idea is VERY similar to Starcraft (hmm...).

My overall impression of this game is that it looks like it will suck asshole. Everything is dumbed down to the point where all you'll have to do is click "make units" buttons and wait until you've amassed a large enough army to attack... wait... everyone else will be doing the same exact thing. Hmm... sounds like a jolly good time. I can just tell that all the focus groups who influenced the developers in the making of this game were a bunch of no talent ass clowns with absolutely no gaming skillz what so ever. Everything that a newbie crys and moans about is, for the most part, what makes a game deep and involving. So Ensemble decided to take that steep learning curve and throw it out the window. Interesting. My prediction: newbies still won't play it and experts won't play it cuz it SUCKS. Like my friend Ed says, "there's no market for bad shit." I only hope that Ensemble stops smoking that crack pipe and comes to their senses. Be weary of this one people.

- Haro