Shortly before the start of the Gamescom 2017 appointments, Microsoft allowed us to attend a press trial session dedicated to all titles that are either exclusive to the green console or gravitating around it, and that starting with 13:00 hrs will be available to the public. Among the games most interesting was definitely the Age of Empires Definitive Edition , announced some time ago, but still never available for a try. The opportunity was then caught on the fly and so we managed to put a demo under his teeth to show the technical renewal of a title certainly not so young.
Back in Time
Memory has to travel until 1997, twenty years ago, in order to remember the release of the original chapter – a long time long enough that matured in the head of the players the nostalgia of the brand, which in the second chapter had touched the top of success and that is now preparing to get it with the newly announced fourth episode of the series.
Today, however, is the day of Age of Empire Definitive Edition, which showed us the “old” title in a completely renewed outfit, which takes the original game only from graphics and play grounds to screen a clean, detailed picture (we played the 4k title) and still captivating despite the obviously anachronized that the title labeled Ensemble Studios brings with it in this 2017. The interface is now perfectly suited to the screen and despite the obvious antiquity of the title, it does not stink with the modern UI design styles: the screen ratio is correct without the use of any artifice by bands or panels and causes the field of vision to be significantly higher than the past, generating a feeling of synoptic control that most of you who have spent days training on the title will not remember.
Back to 90s
Returning to the real test, we were placed under the command of a Roman outpost, absolutely unduly enriched by an infinite amount of resources, with the only order to overcome the miracle present on the other side of the map over time.
A bit lazy to regain control of the current RTS but away from them lightly in terms of the speed and fluency of the controls, we created an incredible army and with it we swept away the enemies, confusedly distributed on the opposite side of the map and all allies against us.
After a very classic army-building phase, with the generation of troops ready to face the infallible paper-scissor-stone system, we went to the micro troop management that was too drunk because of the high resolution, mouse with scarce DPI and a system of pointing troops that does not seem to have evolved more than that.
Graphically, in addition to the above mentioned improvements, it is worth pointing out the great work done on sprites, as well as enhancing colors that make it much clearer to identify the different screen elements. The result was certainly convincing and could positively refresh the memory of the old players, but we admit from the start that it was not enough to try to climb the interest of the new levers, also victims of a clear confrontation with a system of controls and a masterful gameplay.
