June 14, 2014

Rise of Nations Extended Edition Now Available on Steam

Even more good news, Rise of Nations Extended Edition is now available on Steam. I got the original version several months ago and had one hell of a time playing. It ended quite badly with the threat of nuclear weapons, but that’s another story. It was great to be back in the genre of the RTS and after checking out the updated edition of Age of Empires I decided to order RoN. Well, the pre-order is over and the full game is available. And for $20 you get both the original game and the Thrones and Patriots Expansion  pack. That should give you plenty of civilations to play and lots of troop movement. One of the main things I loved about RoN and AoE was that you didn’t have to play multiplayer to have a good time. You could play on your own against 1 to 7 other opponents. You could go for Easy to get your skills up and […]

May 31, 2014

Rise of Nations getting re-imaged and coming to Steam

First there was Age of Empires HD, then Age of Mythology HD and coming next month, Rise of Nations: Extended Edition. Microsoft has purchased the IP from Big Huge Games and with the help of SkyBox Labs will update the graphics, add multiplayer and achivements and release both the original Rise of Nations and the Expansion Pack "Thrones and Patriots". Quite an interesting trilogy of games which is both exciting and sad. It’s exciting to see these games come back to life as they were incredible works that held my attention for months. Age of Empires is still a fantastic game and Rise of Nations added it’s own great elements. It’s sad to realize that the studios behind these games have all gone defunct and Micorosft purchased the IP rights in a bankruptcy sale. How can you go from making a best selling series of games to selling off what little you have left in a fire sale. So disappointing. […]

July 1, 2013

Rise of Nations ended in a Hazy Shade of Nuclear Winter

My tutorial based, mano a mano, get to know Rise of Nations again game ended in a rather surprising way. As I wrote previously, I started a new game where I would be the Romans in the wilds of the Australian Outback. It took me a long time to get my bearings in this new land, but after a time I managed to research decent military units at the library, had enough universities to increase my knowledge and mined, farmed and found enough resources to build an army. With my ports building battleships and my barracks and stables building weapons I finally got to the point where I could defend myself against invaders – if they decided to show up. From there I built jet fighters, cruise missiles and stealth bombers. I thought I had a pretty badass nation going. So I sent my ships to scout the perimeter to destroy ports and oil fields. With a sea battle distraction […]

June 29, 2013

Those Rise of Nations Just Keep on Rising

Through the power of Amazon Prime my RoN disc arrived far sooner than I expected. It’s a single disc with both Rise of Nations and Thrones and Patriots on it. I wasn’t too hopeful this was going to work on a Windows 7 machine with multiple cores, multiple monitors and larger hard drives than this game had ever seen. But to my surprise, it installed fine. A quick reboot and the game launched without a hitch. It loaded up fullscreen and my cursor movement were contained to the correct monitor. And then the wave of nostalgia hit me! It may be a decade later, but Rise of Nations still looks really good! The colors are bright, the landscape has contours, the oceans waves still look impressive and the fish still swim in the sea. I skipped the tutorial and blazed into a game. After just a couple of minutes I was reminded just how complex RoN really is. The skill […]

June 28, 2013

From Age of Empires to Rise of Nations

An article about Microsoft’s plans to make Age of Empires for the mobile platform, including the iPad had me longing for the days of what I consider to be one of the best series of games made – Age of Empires. I spent hours playing both Age of Empires and Age of Kings (including all the expansion packs). I feel this was a watershed series of games for Microsoft. At the time, Microsoft wanted to be a game publisher. They wanted that “Home” market and needed more than just Flight Simulator and Links. Along comes Ensemble Studios and hits their first game right out of the park. It wasn’t just a “decent” or “alright” title, it was fantastic. It had great graphics, awesome music and sounds, a complex and exciting skill tree and it was a great single player as well as multi-player network game. At the time, when it hit 6pm, the corporate network was alive with AoE. There […]

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