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Review by Jack Keely for Age Of Empires Collector’s Edition (Limited Edition)
Rating:
First of all, I would just like to say that this is such a good deal. I mean, ten dollars for the first two games AND both of their expansion packs? You can get “Age of Empires 2: The Age of Kings Gold Edition” with its expansion “The Conquerors” for 20 dollars, or get this set, which includes all that AND the original Age of Empires with the “Rise of Rome” expansion for ten dollars less! Think about it. Ten less dollars for much more? Its a miracle in the form of a computer game set if you ask me. Ah, on to the games themselves.

Age of Empires:

A true classic, this game has to be one of the most fun games ever put out. Though the graphics are nothing dazzling, who cares? I have spent endless hours on this game, and beaten every campaign in it. If you don’t want to play a full campaign, the random map games are equally as fun! The replay value of this game is also amazing. It seems more fun every time you play it, and its impossible to get sick of! The only part where you may get a teeny weeny bit anxious to move on, is toward the end of the Babylonian campaign. Don’t get me wrong, it is still fun as ever, just not quite as action-packed as the rest of them. I give this game two thumbs up!

Age of Empires: The Rise of Rome Expansion

Ok, as fun as the first one was, beleive it or not, this one is even better! The gameplay is the same as “Age of Empires” and its mostly the same, except that there are new campaigns, new countries, new upgrades and some cool new units (camel swordsman, for instance). This game has a little more action in it. My favorite level has to be “Struggle for Sicily” in the Carthage campaign. This level is incredible, like many of the others. Some people say that “The Rise of Rome” isn’t as good as Age of Empires 2: The Age of Kings”, but if you ask me, I think that “The Rise of Rome” is better than “The Age of Kings”. In all, “The Rise of Rome Expansion” is as good as the original “Age of Empires”, but because of the new units, and the new level layouts, is actually better. Two more thumbs up!

Age of Empires 2: The Age of Kings

After the success of the first “Age of Empires” Microsoft thought they would continue the series, (thank goodness for us!) “Age of Empires 2: The Age of Kings” is a knights-and-castles era version of the original. Gameplay is mostly the same, with improved graphics. Most everything is the same as the last one, because your main goals are still these: get lots of villagers, gather food, gold, stone, and wood, build an army, upgrade if you can, and win. There are some pretty cool units in this game as well, and the campaigns are awesome! The first campaign is about William Wallace (Braveheart, anyone?) and the Scottish army fighting against the Brits. Sadly, they used this story as a learning campaign, and its really easy. I think they should have made it an advanced campaign, but oh well. Its just as fun either way. There is also a Joan of Arc campaign, a Barbarossa campaign (the German knights are so cool in that one!) and many more. This game is well worth the money, and, just like the previous games, is very addictive! Two more thumbs way up!

Age of Empires 2: The Age of Kings “The Conquerors Expansion”

This game takes “Age of Empires 2: The Age of Kings” and kicks it up yet another notch! In this expansion, you can play a South American campaign, an Attila the Hun campaign, and a few more. I don’t have much more to say about this game, because basically all it is is “Age of Empires 2: The Age of Kings” with a few more units, and some cool campaigns. I enjoyed this one slightly more than the original “Age of Empires 2: The Age of Kings”, especially because of the South American campaign (the Eagle-Warriors rock!) So, as you guessed, another two thumbs up!

In all, this pack is better than a steal. Saying its a steal would be incorrect, because its better than a steal. You get countless, and I mean countless hours of awesome action for only ten bucks! This is a must own game, and even if you think it doesn’t look cool, buy it. You will get so much entertainment out of it, and I would pay 50 dollars for this if I had to. Ten dollars is just so good! Well, this review is way too long already, but I hope you got some useful info about the game from this review. I have not yet purchased “Age of Empires 3″, but the moment I can, I will. I am sure it will be very good game, and i hope and pray that Microsoft never stops putting out “Age of Empires” games!

Review by Sarah Russell for Age Of Empires Collector’s Edition (Limited Edition)
Rating:
First of all I give this collection five stars in the FUN rating because I love Age of Empires, I have since I started using a computer way back in ’97. My two star rating goes for this collection because I haven’t been able to get it to play yet on my High End machine.

High End Users beware of this one. If you’ve got XP, you’ll likely run into the same problem I’ve had. “Cannot initialize graphics” error. I’ve done what they’ve suggested in the FAQ and on the Microsoft Support, but no go so far. It says to reset the display resolution to 800×600 and set compatability to 256 color mode, but so far no luck for some reason. I’m runnig a Radeon 9800 on an Athlon 2600+ and XPPro SP2.

The game is great, but keep these problems in mind. It says XP on the box too, but don’t be too hopeful that it will work on the first try, you may have to do some tweaking to get it to work at all if you’re on a high-end PC. Just keep that in mind and be smart, it’s a great deal for only ten bucks, but I would have thought they would have been able to put a fix in for this by now.

So the good: Great games on three discs for an unbeatable price.

Now the bad: Expect problems running on high-end machines.

Hope this has helped and just be aware of this issue.

Review by N. DeMond for Age Of Empires Collector’s Edition (Limited Edition)
Rating:
The games themselves are great. I want to let everyone know the Jewel Case edition is just that. It has all four games in a jewel case with a slip cover over the top. It does not include any manuals or information cards. The game can be played perfectly fine without them. Just a heads up that the savings are in lack of paper materials included.

Review by L. Zhou for Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty
Rating:
Blizzard’s (now Activision-Blizzard) obvious success today was hardly a guarantee over a decade ago, and I believe two unshakable tenets of the company back then were responsible for taking them from small game developer to the huge juggernaut that they are now: polish and care. The polish is still there, but the care is gone.

Let me begin by addressing the good stuff in Starcraft 2 first, namely, how polished the game itself is.

Graphics, sound, and game play:

You have to hand it to Blizzard, their art direction is amazing. With such comparatively low polygon count for modern mainstream computer games, there is a world of details coupled with aesthetic color schemes that could make anyone smile. I really cannot stress the attention to detail enough, such as the Terrans laying down their barracks and seeing the beams and foundations go up in real time, the lighting effects of Protoss attack beams, or the reflective organic surface of Zerg bodies. It makes the game feel alive.

The musical score and sound effects aren’t fodder to the pretty graphics either; the production values are high and one can hear all of the treble and specific timbre that goes with every explosion or laser beam that gets fired with a clarity and sharpness that’s to be expected of Blizzard’s products. As any of the Starcraft veterans know, the music perfectly complements each of the three distinct races very well, from the mellow alternative rock motifs of the Terrans, to the new-age majesty of the Protoss, to the sci-fi horror-themed screeches of the Zerg. You may not personally enjoy listening to the background music per se, but it’s undeniable that the pieces fit with each race.

The single player campaign, from the missions I have played thus far, are engaging and wholly satisfying, with the feel of an epic trilogy along the veins of high-budget Hollywood trilogies. I have always adored Blizzard’s attention to story and lore, even if the same themes (betrayal, vengeance, contrition, forgiveness, etc) are used over and over again in their other franchises, but who’s to complain? They’re classic, timeless, literary themes.

The game play is fast and action-paced, save for maybe the first 3-5 minutes of the game where everyone is building up. I can’t say that Starcraft’s brand of fast-paced, high-lethality game play is for everyone, as the learning curve to be considered moderately good is quite high. Thankfully, Bnet2.0′s matching service somewhat mitigates this difference by pairing you with someone similarly skilled by considering total games played, win-loss ratio, level of opponents, etc. How well this matches players is up to debate, but so far I don’t have any complaints.

Now for the bad stuff, which may sound confusing to new players of Blizzard games, but veterans will instantly recognize the problems addressed.

Omission of obvious Bnet2.0 features, RealID support requirement, lack of LAN support, and cost:

The original Starcraft, and each subsequent rendition of [...], has several key features that is conspicuously missing from the Bnet2.0 used in Starcraft 2, namely:

-Private channel support

-Private game features missing

-Named custom games

-Regional server options

Private channel support:

Why is there no private channel support? If Activision-Blizzard were honest with their words that they wanted a [...] experience so good that we wouldn’t want to play offline or on LAN, why leave out such an obvious feature? Private channels allow clans or friends to gather in a chatroom in [...] to organize events, discuss strategies, or just shoot the breeze in general. The lack of private channel support is a huge offense, since this was a standard feature in the days of the original Starcraft, over a decade ago.

Private game features missing:

As it is currently, to join custom games, two players would have to have each other’s game ID, and add each other to their respective friends list. Not only that, ALL friends can see and join games that are created by a user on the friend list. What if you just wanted to relax and host a random custom game with complete strangers, or host a custom game with certain friends but not others? Well, you can’t easily do this, since any friend on your list can see the game you’ve made, and can subsequently join it if they wish.

Named custom games:

Anyone who has played Starcraft or Warcraft III on [...] knows that custom game names are important. “2v2 LT no rush 20min” or “DOTA Cali ALL RANDOM” tell game seekers exactly what they’re getting into when they join these games. This is no longer possible with the current Bnet2.0, as you are only privy to the game map name, and speed of the game.

Regional server options:

In the old [...] if you had friends in different parts of the world (North America, South America, Asia, Europe), you can switch your [...] server to hop over to any of those servers and play with/against them, albeit probably with much more lag, but nonetheless, the option is there. In Starcraft 2, you are locked to the region of your purchase, so there would be no way for you to change region servers. If you’re in the east coast and want to play a few [...] games at 2am and it’s too late in the night to find many games on the east coast, you would not be able to hop on over to the west coast where it’s only 11pm, and likely more players are still on.

RealID support requirement:

The Orwellian requirement to link one’s real name and location to their PUBLIC support forum profile is ridiculous; the potential for abuse is endless, as it is for anything that reveals real, personal information. I guess one could make the argument that it is in the game’s disclaimer, or just don’t buy the game altogether.

Lack of LAN support:

This cannot be stressed enough, LAN is an integral part of modern multiplayer RTS games, even if the majority of players will not be using it often. Just because most people don’t use Radians on calculators, does that mean we should get rid of it entirely and use only Degrees? The point is, LAN settings could range from fun, social gatherings with friends, to tournaments hosted at some internet cafe; being 100% reliant on [...] to be up is hardly reassuring, especially considering that tournaments require the low latency that only LAN environments can provide.

Cost:

At $60, and with all of the previous issues addressed, Starcraft 2 is too much for its worth. I hate to say it, but as much as I love the game play and the level of polish, the price tag does not justify the clear omission of certain key features.

I love Blizzard’s RTS franchises, but it seems that Activision-Blizzard has stopped caring about the long-time fans that catapulted them to their prominence today. I love Starcraft 2′s game play and level of polish, but I cannot get past some of the egregious offenses that the game possesses.

Review by J. Pearson for Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty
Rating:
Starcraft II seems to have a mixed of the good, bad, and ugly. Instead of just being a fan or complete critic decided to give overall view about where this game and the gaming industry is going.

A. Internet – One of the main issues with this game and others is activation. If you have no internet connection the game is not activated. For people with an internet connection no issue at all. People who buy games for offline playing and don’t have an active internet connection a major headache/frustration. There is an offline mode but again an internet connection is necessary to activate it from the beginning.

B. Privacy vs Anonymity – This game along with others requires you have an active account with battlenet. The dividing line is with this issue is to have a battlenet account, private information needs to be provided. If you okay with giving your info away so a company can use it at their discretion to market products, give it to third parties, take away gaming privileges if the company thinks you have been hacking, and other issues dealing with control then fine. People who like to remain anonymous such as with the old Diablo style or Starcraft style will be disappointed.

C. Game Content – The game as a multiplayer is okay for the casual player but annoyance for long term players. If you like multiplayer strategy this may be good but be warned it is only regional. Many players want games that network out on the global level or over a LAN. An example is the old Starcraft you can find people in South Korea, Norway, and other countries on the same game. In college dorms you could play Starcraft:Brood War over a LAN. This version is set up like World of Warcraft that only allows regional such as the Americas and Europe.

D. Power over the game – This game takes the power away from the purchaser because it only allows installs tied to a battlenet account. In simple terms the buyer has just purchased a license to play it. This may be ok for the casual player but for people that want to program a game, set up their own game in a LAN, or something to do independently will be greatly frustrated and angered.

E. Game Campaign – The single player game campaign may be good to ok for new players who have never experienced Starcraft Brood War. People who have experienced the original Starcraft may see this as a rehash, too quick of a campaign, and/or just lame. The problem is with how some of the features seem taken away compared to adding to the game. But this depends on your gaming experience.

F. Graphics – Graphic wise this is a small step in an okay direction. The graphics are not totally blown away or anything but have become slightly enhanced compared to the old Starcraft. If you want super graphics that will blow you mind away this won’t exactly do it.

Overall, the game is ok for new players and people who have never experienced the old style of Starcraft. In simple terms a young kid or teenager who just got their first computer might like it. For us traditional gamers who have been gaming since the 1990s it is terrible The gaming industry is slowly catering to casual players and making money off their games like a business. Blizzard likes to hold things back so you have to purchase new content so they make more money. The old style of gaming such as purchase a game, install it, play it, mod it, get patches to enhance it for free, take apart some of the code to customize it is almost gone. You no longer have complete control of the game but the company does. For the price I would say it’s not really worth it but if you are rich do as you wish.