With video games, the ever-increasing abilities of designers means that every year games get sharper, more lifelike, and more cinematic. With that, there's come a stigma against older video games - if it's older, it's thereby smaller, less complex, and not as good looking. But while computers can do way more today than they could ten or even five years ago, the people behind the games haven't changed - which means that the games of back-then were still imaginative, challenging, and new. I didn't have a game console until I was 12, so before that, the only video games we played were on the good ol' PC. And while time has left some of these classics gathering dust, a number of them still have a cult following over twenty years later.
Age of Empires (***)
This was one of the first computer games I ever played, and it was certainly the game that opened my eyes to the boundless possibilities of gaming.
The only other video games that I might have played prior to this one were a series of old arcade games like Pac-Man, Rampage, Galaga, and Cadillacs & Dinosaurs. My father had an emulator that allowed my siblings and I to play them on our computer, and I have plenty of memories of working through level after level on those classics – some on my own, and some with my siblings. But all of those games were bound by one signature element – levels. The games were always about beating a level to advance to the next level, and so on and so on until you reached the end. The game wasn’t up to you – it was up to the game designers. I don’t mean this as a critique; I loved many of those games. But Age of Empires was such a departure for me because it showed me a completely new form of gaming.
The original Age of Empires game was released in 1997 when I was three years old. I couldn’t have been much older when I started playing it – I remember my dad installing it on the “kid’s computer” in the basement and being so excited. All of a sudden, I was in ancient times, and I could move these little tiny people around and make them do whatever I wanted. There weren’t levels anymore – there were just ‘scenarios’ that you could complete by whatever method you could think up. As a kid, there was nothing more fun than opening “Scenario Editor” and creating a world the exact way I wanted it. It was like a toy box that never ran empty. I could make forests and rivers, armies and cities, and landscapes teeming with wildlife. I distinctly remember trying to replicate the locales of The Lion King, from the elephant graveyard to the wildebeest canyon. A feature that entertained me endlessly as a kid was the cheat code that allowed you to control the animals. I can’t tell you how much time I spent playing with the elephants. I would build stacks of walls on the map, and then make the elephants dig through them to make an “Elephant Palace”.
Apart from the scenario editor, the cheats were my favourite part as a child. The producers behind the game had a number of wild characters you could poof into existence in the ancient world – from space troopers to mechanized deathbots to babies with guns riding tricycles. Whenever I found the computer opponent was getting too challenging, all I needed to do was type a few letters and get a special army of my own. I loved it.
Playing the original AOE 25 years later, I have to admit that there are definitely some parts I find frustrating. The pathfinding ability of the units can be infuriating from time to time – for example, if you send ten villagers to hunt an elephant, three or even four of them might just end up standing around because they can’t find a way to fit in next to the other. One time I built a wall around my town with a storage pit on the inside and gazelle just on the outside. I had built a separate storage pit outside the wall for the villagers to bring their gazelle meat to, but the villagers would gather food and then proceed to walk all the way around the wall to the storage pit inside the town. They did this because in terms of distance, the storage pit inside the town was built closer to them than the storage pit outside the town – they didn’t factor the walking involved to get around the wall, which ended up being a total waste of time. It's also frustrating that units don’t move in groups. If you’ve made a group of fifteen soldiers and send them all to the enemy base, they all just find their own way there and at their own pace. It feels a bit hectic and disorganized. Thankfully, they worked out many of these kinks in Age of Empires II, but the original game remains burdened by these quirks.
The original Age of Empires walked so Age of Empires II could run and become one of the greatest real-time strategy games of all time. Because of that, we can’t forget the pioneers that put together the original. It was a game that looked great and showed me that gaming can be just as much about creating worlds and puzzles as it is about solving them.
And of course, it gave us the iconic line “Wololo”. That’s tough to replicate.
Age of Empires 2 (*****)
This might very well be my favourite game of all time.
Age of Empires 2 is a game that I’ve never stopped coming back to. Where other games have sucked me in for only a season, AOE2 is more like a constant beckoning that I can’t help but give in to every now and then. It’s a nostalgic comfort just as much as it is a present thrill – it’s a game that hasn’t aged a day. Sometimes the games of the past can appear clunkier and more problematic the older they get, but AOE2 has remained a clean, efficient, player-friendly game. My appreciation for it has only grown over the years as I’ve learned more and more about it – and to be honest, when I see the levels that online players have taken AOE2 to, it’s baffling. Here I am just playing against a computer having the time of my life, while people continue to play a twenty-year old game against each other in a way that’s continually exciting and new. There’s really nothing else quite like it.
Released two years after the original game, AOE2 is really an upgrade in every way. Armies could now march in formation, which made them easier to manage but also allowed players to become more strategic in how they sent their units forward. Units in general became smarter at getting around obstacles and completing simple tasks. Simple little additions like the ‘gather point’ button, or how villagers automatically seek out resources once they’ve finished building a mining or lumber camp, greatly increase the amount of fun you can have. They eliminated the most menial aspects of the original so that you could spend more time doing what you came to do – building an empire and wiping out your opponents.
The game also looks way better than the original, with the graphics taking a big step up. Even twenty years later, there’s still a charm to its design. Whether you’re building a sprawling empire or a little village, things usually end up looking really nice. I have to admit I still usually put the aesthetic design of my empire ahead of its actual strategic potential. The fact that units can walk through farms as opposed to needing to walk around them makes movement through your town a lot easier, and the addition of gates makes walls and a defensive strategy a lot more practical. And of course, now that this game centers around the Middle Ages, you can now build castles, which are visually stunning, strategically imposing, and awesome to destroy. Launching a siege against an enemy base with a horde of cavalry and trebuchets firing from a distance is an experience that never gets old.
Age of Empires II is where I really started taking advantage of the Scenario Editor in a new way. With the “Trigger” function, you could essentially design your own game however you liked. Years ago, I created a scenario where you played one unit trying to make their way through the map without starving. If you didn’t come across berry bushes or other sources of food, your health would deplete until you eventually starved to death. You could interact with other characters in the game and make decisions that would affect the story, and time was always of the essence. This is 100% not the game that AOE was designed to be – but they shared their tools so that you could make it what you wanted. Minecraft is that concept taken to the next level, but years before we had Minecraft, I was still building little worlds of my own and telling stories in a medium I never would’ve anticipated before.
So yes, obviously AOE2 is a ton of fun. But it actually got me interested in history in a way that I wasn’t before. The original game came with a number of campaigns based on historical figures like William Wallace, Joan of Arc, Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, Montezuma, and more. I had never heard these names before the game, but I never forgot them afterward because I got to be them. That’s a heck of a way to dive into history. Honestly, during my undergraduate, I eventually end up getting the opportunity to write a paper on Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar, otherwise known as ‘El Cid’. He was a Castilian knight in medieval times who eventually became a national hero of Spain. His campaign had been my favourite part of AOE2 as a kid, and it led to me reading the original historical epic poem that retells his life. This game educated me.
Although I never did it as often as I would’ve liked, I always enjoyed playing multiplayer with my father and siblings. The game allows you to share line-of-sight with your allies, send tributes to help them out in a pinch, and establish trade routes to bring both sides extra gold. The cooperative element makes it all the more fun. That said, this has nearly always been a single-player experience for me. As the years have gone on, I’ve relied less and less on cheating to get ahead and I’ve instead learned how to actually play the game the way it’s meant to be played. There’s a ruthless efficiency that you can develop after much practice, to the point where you can advance through the ages in a matter of minutes. After years of using cheats and playing against easy-level computer opponents, I finally developed the desire to beat the game on its own terms – and it was so gratifying to do.
Like its predecessor, AOE2 was a game that let me imagine and create worlds that would’ve been impossible to build otherwise. I created not just maps and interactive scenarios, but entire campaigns revolving around made-up lands with epic heroes. But one of its most enduring qualities is the simple pleasure of each new game – starting with a little town center, three villagers, and a scout – and then working your way up to having a sprawling kingdom. Sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose – but either way, I manage to have a good time.
I’ll probably be playing this again in almost no time at all.
Sid Meier’s Pirates! (*****)
Until Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag came around, this was easily the definitive pirate game. And even now, it’s still tons of fun.
What makes Pirates! so fun is its complete freedom. You start the game off as a young man who’s led a mutiny against their captain, and you’re now in command of your own ship. There’s so much to do in the Caribbean sea, but what you do is one hundred percent up to you. You can:
Hunt down the evil Baron Raymondo who might lead you to one of your four long-lost relatives.
Discern the location of the villainous Marquis de la Montalban’s hideout, and get revenge on the man who stole everything from you ten years ago.
Battle with nine legendary (and real) pirates who are also sailing the high seas in search of fortune.
Become a privateer in the employ of England, Spain, France, or Holland – rising through the ranks to earn special perks and prestige.
Stumble across treasure maps (and sometimes just fragments of maps) and try to find the X that marks the spot.
Get invited to a ball with the governor’s daughter, duel with her other suitors, rescue her from kidnappers, and eventually get married (or just do it all over again with a girl in the next town)
Uncover the long-lost Aztec cities of gold that are hidden somewhere on the continents.
Pillage and plunder ships of all shapes and sizes, each one with unique stats and advantages.
Command, customize, and upgrade your own fleet of up to seven ships while finding enough crew to sail them.
Sell off your stolen goods at merchants around the Caribbean, or buy something at a low price in one spot so you can sell it for more somewhere else.
Lead attacks on entire cities to ransack their treasuries, or to put a new country in charge that you like.
Honestly, there’s so much to do, and all of it’s fun. Admittedly, the formula for accomplishing many of these tasks is similar. You sail around in a ship of your choosing, and you attack whoever you want until you enter a city to talk with the local royalty or the local scallywags to pick up some special item or get a new goal. But the open-ended nature of it means that you are always telling your own story. If you want to become the fiercest pirate that ever was, you can forget about your family and just go around capturing every ship you come up against. Alternatively, if you wanted to play it safe, you really could just play the whole game serving one country and earning a reputable name for yourself. I’ve played through the game multiple times, and every time I find a new way to do it.
If you’re ever going to give the game a shot, I have a couple words of advice. Firstly, the best ship in the game (in terms of fun) is a Ship-of-the-Line. It’s wicked fast and can carry up to 48 guns, which can effectively sink many ships in three shots. You’ll feel the most like a pirate with that one, but you’ll usually only find it when the English are going to war. If you want to find it quicker, attack the English over and over until they send one after you. Alternatively, help make the English the leading power on the seas, and you might see one sail by casually. That said, the actual best ship in the game turns out to be the weakest – the Indian War Canoe. As far as I can tell, it’s the fastest ship in the game by a significant margin, and it’s so maneuverable that you can straight-up dodge cannon fire while fighting other ships. The drawback is that it only has a maximum of 8 cannons, but if you’re being smart you’re not using your cannons anyway. Cannons damage a ship that you could easily sell at the next port, so the smart thing to do is slam into an enemy ship with your War Canoe, board it, and knock the captain overboard before he knows what’s hit him. I heard about this strategy from someone else, and at first I thought it was crazy. As it turned out, it was extremely effective.
Secondly, always attack other ships from the East. The wind is always blowing more-or-less-West, and if you’re attacking from that side, your speed will be significantly reduced. If you’re coming in from the East, speed is on your side and you’re pretty much guaranteed the win.
Thirdly, never divide the plunder if you can help it. The game tries to convince you to divide the plunder when your crew gets upset, but what this does is eliminate a big chunk of your gold and fast forward through six months of your character’s life. The older your character gets, the slower they get – so those six months are precious moments that can’t be taken back. On this most recent playthrough, I completed the entire thing without dividing the plunder once. That said, this might be difficult to do if your crew is getting cranky. Keeping them happy is actually surprisingly simple: get more gold. The more gold you have, the happier your crew will be – although the longer you’re at sea, the more discontent they’ll get. A good rule of thumb is to try and maintain 1000 gold for every crew member you have. They’ll get ‘unhappy’ eventually no matter what, but that’s fine. As long as they’re not ‘mutinous’, you’re safe. And if you ever don’t have enough gold to go around, just kill a bunch of your crew by taking on a ship or city that’s too big for you. Whoever’s left will be more than happy with their increased share. Seriously.
Fourthly and lastly, I learned that the famous pirates sailing around are a tremendously valuable resource. It might be fun to go knock each of them down as soon as possible, but if you can help it, avoid them for as long as you can. As far as I can tell, these pirates keep collecting gold as long as they’re alive. As soon as you kill them, you get all their gold, but that’s it. So the longer you avoid them, the more gold they can collect. It’s like they’re hired hands – whenever you’re in a pinch, you can pick one of them up and collect the fruits of their labour. Even so, it’s really hard not to take on the challenge of facing the legendary Blackbeard as soon as you see him.
Beyond the fun of the game itself, this game just looks great. Sure, the animation is firmly rooted in the 2000s, but the design is so bright and colourful that you’ll forgive it quickly. Everything always feels adventurous and fun, like you’ve been thrust into an illustrated copy of Treasure Island. Even when you’re just waiting for your ship to reach its destination, there’s an odd kind of peace that comes from hearing your crew sing over the roaring waves. I’d highly recommend this game – and what’s more, I’d recommend it to even the most inexperienced video game player. Anyone could enjoy this!