User Rating: 8.4 | Rise of Nations PC
This is like crack cocaine. It has no redeeming social value, but it's addictive. The only real innovation is the shifting borders as you play, which is actually a very nice 'heads-up' alert for the single-minded player. Otherwise, it's very much like an Age of Empires clone, but it is a very nice one. I've played it on several systems, including one with just a 450MHz K6-2. It is smoothest and most visually rewarding on a good monster-gamer, but it played even on the K6-2 at acceptable frame rates (with lots of RAM and GeForce2 MX-400 video card) except when there was lots of on-screen action. Even then, you are just watching a war movie in slow(er) motion. It wasn't frustrating, just not as smooth and satisfying. Even the tiny character animations are well-executed. Four difficulty settings make it work fine for the novice to the hardened gamer. If you're not familiar with this type of RTS, then you should just skip ahead to this one and forget the others. If you've played any of the Age of Empires or Empire Earth series, you will find yourself wanting to criticize this for lack of original appearance, but you just can't hate it because the execution is so darn good. It's not so innovative that it changes the landscape forever, but it's just almost impossible to find a Big Huge fault in it. The development team can be justifiably proud of the game appearance and gameplay. On the other hand, to quote from Microsoft in the game readme file "Intel 740, 810, and 815 Chipsets: Attempting to launch Rise of Nations on these chipsets results in a black screen followed by a crash to the desktop. There is no known solution." 'Shame on you, Microsoft!
