Well, the higher requirements are more in account of guaranteeing stability with the Steam platform (and its Big Picture). Judging from the DirectX9 requirement, they're probably going to blit it all to a D3D surface for the SteamOverlay to work properly and the community hub.

900x600 is the most disturbing part for me.

weird aspect ratio ...

I'm betting that's supposed to say 800x600. Typos happen sometimes.

In any case, there is a widescreen patch floating around out there, it came out 4 or 5 years ago IIRC. It's a bit... unpolished, though. It requires the Conquerors expansion and a no-CD cracked copy of the original game (though let's be realistic, anybody who still plays AoE II already meets those requirements), there are different patches specific to particular resolutions and only a limited choice of resolutions, the menu screens are not re-sized at all, and the bottom toolbar in the in-game window isn't properly re-sized either (as can be seen here). I mean, it works, but I prefer just playing the game in windowed mode instead.

So the 'HD edition' does have some definite improvements in that regard. The textures have also been upgraded, though there are some mods out there that can do the same to the original game (I've never tried those, don't know how good they are). Still, taking a 15 year old game, doing a few little tweaks, slapping DRM onto it and charging $20? No. Fuck them.

It would be worth it for the steam multiplayer features, as getting a game of aoe 2 running over the net can be quite painful. With this version you should be able to just invite someone on your friends list and off you go.

Huh? Worked great for me in the past, perhaps you didn't forward ports if you're behind a router. In any case, I'd imagine the full introduction of IPv6 could be problematic in the future...

I'm not normally into RTS games, but I love AOK. I've been playing it with my nephew since he was probably 7-8 years old. Nowadays he can destroy me at it.
It's amazing how long this game stayed for sale at retail. Just a few years ago they still had a multipack of AOE, AOE Romans expansion, AOK, AOK Conquerors expansion, all for $10. That's a lot of game for the money.
The problem I have with internet multiplayer is that I can't keep it stable. It always falls apart in the late game phase, and that's with just 1 other human player and a couple computer players. We'll be sitting there paused with 100-200 pings (which are supposed to be fine for this game) and it refuses to re-sync, the game just gives up.
I'm on low end cable which I'm sure doesn't help, but it still has much better upload rate than my modem used to have and it doesn't seem any more stable.

Old Thrashbarg wrote:

I'm betting that's supposed to say 800x600. Typos happen sometimes.

In any case, there is a widescreen patch floating around out there, it came out 4 or 5 years ago IIRC. It's a bit... unpolished, though. It requires the Conquerors expansion and a no-CD cracked copy of the original game (though let's be realistic, anybody who still plays AoE II already meets those requirements), there are different patches specific to particular resolutions and only a limited choice of resolutions, the menu screens are not re-sized at all, and the bottom toolbar in the in-game window isn't properly re-sized either (as can be seen here). I mean, it works, but I prefer just playing the game in windowed mode instead.

So the 'HD edition' does have some definite improvements in that regard. The textures have also been upgraded, though there are some mods out there that can do the same to the original game (I've never tried those, don't know how good they are). Still, taking a 15 year old game, doing a few little tweaks, slapping DRM onto it and charging $20? No. Fuck them.

It probably has widescreen support. And how is that slapping DRM on it. it already has/had DRM they just changed it.

they are hardly repackaging an old game considering they RE-rendered the graphics, that's no easy task.

I fully plan on buying it just because of how long it would take me to get the game on 3-6 of my computers, let alone patching and NO-CDing and res hacking.

Also note that some of us may never have owned this, like me.

I'm looking at getting this title too.

cdoublejj wrote:

It probably has widescreen support. And how is that slapping DRM on it. it already has/had DRM they just changed it.

they are hardly repackaging an old game considering they RE-rendered the graphics, that's no easy task.

I fully plan on buying it just because of how long it would take me to get the game on 3-6 of my computers, let alone patching and NO-CDing and res hacking.

I'll admit that it indeed looks somewhat nicer in HD than the hacks I've seen on youtube, but that just means that the people who made those didn't put too much effort in it. You seem to misunderstand the meaning of DRM though. Simply having copy protection on an old school CD is very different from buying a game tied to Steam, because if that goes down the drain someday you would be SOL if it weren't for cracks. You don't even need a no-CD crack to play the original release without CD considering virtual drives.

Besides that, I think it's somewhat cheap that they now try to cash in on an old game instead of bothering to create something new and unique. AoE 3 was a nice new take on the franchise and is worth playing. "AoE Online" isn't even worth talking about.

I'll be buying it. I don't want to deal with swapping CDs or archaic DRM. Steam is awesome, the Steam integration will be awesome for playing with friends, and I can launch it any time with a simple double-click.

d1stortion wrote:

cdoublejj wrote:

It probably has widescreen support. And how is that slapping DRM on it. it already has/had DRM they just changed it.

they are hardly repackaging an old game considering they RE-rendered the graphics, that's no easy task.

I fully plan on buying it just because of how long it would take me to get the game on 3-6 of my computers, let alone patching and NO-CDing and res hacking.

I'll admit that it indeed looks somewhat nicer in HD than the hacks I've seen on youtube, but that just means that the people who made those didn't put too much effort in it. You seem to misunderstand the meaning of DRM though. Simply having copy protection on an old school CD is very different from buying a game tied to Steam, because if that goes down the drain someday you would be SOL if it weren't for cracks. You don't even need a no-CD crack to play the original release without CD considering virtual drives.

Besides that, I think it's somewhat cheap that they now try to cash in on an old game instead of bothering to create something new and unique. AoE 3 was a nice new take on the franchise and is worth playing. "AoE Online" isn't even worth talking about.

Actually I use steam because i have multiple computers, and since you can only be logged in ONCE. I keep my other machines offline mode. I effectively have offline back ups. Also it has been said by Gabe newell that there is a dead man's switch in case of emergency that will be released for true offline play. Also it is apparently pretty easy to crack steam/games from what hear.

so are you saying it's not cool that they fixed the game to run on modern computers? I could see where you are coming if you were advocating a cheaper price but, there are serious production costs to update a game like that and i can tell it wasn't, fast, cheap or easy. I say that with SOME experience of what it takes to make a video game.

I'm figuring $20 buck is better business model than $50 or $60 USD. Perhaps $14.00 USD might be more fair?