Gaming Origins: Age of Empires II

We have all played games that had a huge impact or a strong influence on us. Some titles have pushed us to explore genres we weren’t interested in before, while some titles might have done more harm than good. For whatever reason these games were important enough to help dramatically influence our taste in games. In Gaming Origins I will be talking about various games that I found to have a significant impact on the types of games I play, how I play them, and my attitude towards various genres, concepts and mechanics. This won’t be about my favorite games of all time, as there will be games I talk about that left a bad taste in my mouth. I instead will focus on the significance of each game and try and relate to what sort of gaming experiences I am having today.

Age of Empires II was the first real-time strategy game I ever played. I had played PC games before, but AOEII was the first game I really sunk my teeth into. Having been exclusively a console person up until that point, navigating the game menus via mouse was relatively easy, but I just wasn’t good enough to build up defenses before my enemy destroyed me. Trying the game for the first time was not my idea of fun, to say the least. I didn’t know what I was doing and only ever really enjoyed the game when I had a massive unstoppable army.  Needless to say I got destroyed over and over again by my computer opponents. I was so bad at the game that I would rather watch friends play. Not because I wanted to learn their wizard-like ways, but because it was a hell of a lot more fun than watching my only village get destroyed by a bunch of pesky archers and champions!

age of empires 2

LARPing gone horribly wrong

I eventually got better and started to see the brilliance behind the game. I never became amazing,  but I started to figure out what my favorite civilizations were and what sort of strengths or weaknesses each one had. I also got into making my own maps. Adding more gold supplies and adding extra units to give myself the upper hand ended up being just as fun as playing a regular match. That enjoyment of customization has certainly carried over into the other games that I have played. If there is a race track to build or a custom skateboarder to create I am there with imagination in hand, to mess around with the creator tools to see what sort of trouble I can get into. I never got into modding or any of that stuff, but if a game offered in-game creation tools of any kind I was always interested to see what I could make.

I never really had the urge to play many other real-time strategy games beyond the Age of Empires/Age of Mythology series. I felt a little disappointed by Age of Empires III and I had tried Warcraft 3 and Starcraft, but they felt a little too crazy and too fast paced for my liking. I don’t really spend a lot of time playing real-time strategy games anymore. I might play the odd tower defense game here and there, but for the most part I appreciate those sorts of games from a far. Given time and effort I could get into playing Starcraft 2 and maybe even get good at it but if I was to play a RTS I would rather run back into the embracing arms of Age of Empires II. I feel the pace of Age of Empires II allowed me build up a pretty decent economy while also building up some sort of defenses before my army began to form. It’s a game I feel comfortable playing to the point that I always have some sort of desire to try and get really good at the game.

aok-bigbat

“All units” before “all units” was “all units”

I never played against other people in multiplayer though I imagine that if I had I would have been down for the count before I could even say “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” I think that aspect of not playing the muiltplayer had an effect on how I play games today. I’m not a huge multiplayer guy, I’ll shoot people in a FPS. but I would rather face AI, play some asynchronous multiplayer or play some co-op with a buddy. I don’t think I could handle the intensity and pressure of racing against another human being in a RTS for world domination. Plus I’m already racing against the entire human race for world domination so I don’t really feel like I need that in my video games (muahahaha!)

age of empires 2 gate

I’m guessing you guys aren’t here for the Renaissance fair

All in all I have incredibly found memories of Age of Empires II and I still play it a little to this very day. Unfortunately my love and appreciation for AOEII never quite registered with similar games of the genre. I have started to appreciate concepts from that genre from afar with some sort of understanding of what makes those games great and what makes many people love them. Maybe one day I’ll take another shot at the RTS genre, but for now I’m perfectly fine enjoying it from the sidelines.

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