Mike Ybarra teases Age of Empires on Xbox

[JEMC]

Pemalite said:
Back in the dark ages of 1997, before a console gamer knew what an Internet was, or had even had a taste of what online gaming could be... Before StarCraft burst onto the scene...

There was this little game called Age of Empires.
I used to play it daily on my 33.6kbps modem via Zone.com... My mouse even had a ball and I refused to upgrade that to a laser mouse due to it's advantages. (I.E. Flicking the mouse so the ball moves quickly allowing you to jump around the map quickly without moving the mouse itself.)
I even ranked pretty high on the leaderboard at the time.

Then Age of Empires 2: The Age of Kings came out and I would dial into my neighbors 56k modem and play Co-Op. - Unfortunately my mother bought me Kings Quest instead thinking it was the game I wanted, so I couldn't play it on release until we exchanged the game.

Then we had Age of Empires 3, which was a colossal let down, why? Possibly because it deviated from a formula that worked extremely well, some of the gameplay elements seemed to have been dumbed down in favor of some RPG-like elements and the story for me left much to be desired.

Then they closed Ensemble after Halo Wars (Great console RTS, couldn't hold onto a community though, very dumbed down gameplay mechanics.) - And my hopes for the franchise died.

Basically, If Microsoft cannot bring me an Age of Empires game in the same vein that defined online PC gaming back in the 90's for me... Then they can shove it where the sun doesn't shine, I'm not interested... And I am a *massive* RTS fan, so it's a tall order.

I don't want any interface/gameplay elements/controls dumbed down due to the console release, which seems to be the path StarCraft is taking things these days, I want the frantic micro and macro management that defined the first two games.
And please put it on Steam, Windows 7.

****

As for Halo Wars 2, I'm remaining mildly optimistic, they have introduced a few changes over the first game that I like... Such as how Power is generated, giving a better resource dynamic, let's hope it can hold onto a community this time around so that it's still playable online in a year after release.

I loved Age of Empires and Age of Empires 2 was what every sequel should be: make the first game bigger and better in every possible way.

Then came Mythology, but that game didn't work for me. The Gods powers and the fantastic creatures were odd inclusions that, in my opinion, didn't fit well into the gameplay of Age of Empires. And then came AoE 3, which kept going in the wrong direction.

I really, really hope that the new Age of Empires gets based more on the first two games and forgets the last two (three if we count AoE Online).