What is your favorite Microsoft exclusive franchise?

[curl-6]

Pemalite said:

curl-6 said:

For some reason I never played AoE3, not sure why, maybe I remember a lot of people saying it was nowhere near as good as the first two, then over time I forgot about it. I'm sure even my potato of a laptop could run it, maybe I should give it a go sometime.

It is definitely not as good as the first two games, Ensemble tried to direct the franchise into a different direction... It was good, it just wasn't amazing.

I remember back in the late 90's firing up the original age of empires and playing online via dial-up 33.6k on zone.com with giant 8-player FFA matches, 1,600 total units, while other kids were just starting to taste console split-screen gaming.

I do have rose tinted glasses with the AoE franchise which means I didn't look at AoE 3 as fondly, I recognize that bias, so it's not as bad, right? :P

Yeah I've got plenty of fond memories of AoE back in the day as well, either playing multiplayer with friends in the school computer lab, or just spending hours creating insane scenarios in the level builder. 

So what was this new direction they took withy 3 that sets it so apart from 1 and 2?