Age of Empires IV: Anniversary Edition News

К триумфальному возвращению одной из старейших стратегических серий компания Microsoft готовила нас основательно. В течение трех лет вышли замечательные переиздания всех трех классических игр с полностью обновленной графикой, ворохом изменений в интерфейсе и геймплее, да еще и щедро дополненные новыми сюжетными кампаниями и цивилизациями. Легендарная вторая часть с новыми силами ворвалась в киберспортивное пространство, продолжая и по сей день обрастать новыми дополнениями.

The big day is fast approaching. Age of Empires 4's release date is set for October 28 - so just a few days away from now - but we can already get a good idea of what the imminent RTS game will bring when it lands. The reviews have just begun pouring in, so let's take a look at what the critics have made of the strategy game series' next major instalment ahead of its arrival.

So far, it looks like Age of Empires 4 has been warmly received by reviewers, with the game currently sitting at a very healthy aggregate score of 84 on Metacritic and 86 on Opencritic. While there's naturally a little variation from site to site, most scores place it near the top of the scale, with plenty of reviewers putting it somewhere around the eight or nine-out-of-ten mark, though some have scored it higher.

In PCGamesN's Age of Empires 4 review, senior news writer Ian Boudreau gives it an eight-out-of-ten, noting that "the legendary real-time strategy series has returned with a surprisingly traditionalist new entry". Ian concludes that, "polishing a classic formula without revolutionising it, this is a robust package that includes something for just about every kind of RTS player, from beginners to grizzled veterans". You can check out our full review at the above link.

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Real-time strategy games have never really gone away, but the past decade has seen their glory much diminished from the heady days of StarCraft's peak. Age of Empires IV arrives like a long-lost claimant to the RTS throne - one whose titles have since been absorbed into neighbouring kingdoms. Whether there's room left for a demanding, macro-driven series like Age in the modern landscape is very much an open question, but one thing is clear: this is Age of Empires almost exactly as you remember, and some more besides.

Given the backlash Relic faced a few years ago over its experiments with Dawn of War 3, it's perhaps not surprising that this time out, the studio has hewed much closer to the established order. Age of Empires IV feels almost shockingly like Age of Empires II. Each bark from a selected worker and thud of a battering ram against castle masonry feels just how I remember in Age II, albeit filtered through more than two decades of nostalgia.

For readers new to the series - and there should be quite a few of you given it's been 16 years since the last numbered entry - Age of Empires is a historical real-time strategy series about building and defending a settlement. In a standard game, you'll extract resources and invest them in structures and soldiers, which you'll then use to knock down whatever your opponent is building. There are other paths to victory as well: you can win by controlling all of a map's sacred sites for a set amount of time, or by building and defending a wonder.

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