Age of Empires has thankfully delivered upon the promise made by Ensemble Studios an eternity ago when development began. Think Warcraft meets Civilization. This game allows players to build up an empire from the Stone Age to the Post-Iron Age, then battle it out (militarily or diplomatically) with competing camps for dominance. First, start with a meager town center and a handful of defenseless villagers. These folk will gather the four essential resources: Wood, food, stone, and gold. You then utilize this mana to construct new structures, research novel technologies, and progress to the next age of civilization to unlock greater tech.

AOE's single-player campaign and various skirmishes are plenty of fun, as are the multi-player modes accessed via LAN or the Internet Gaming Zone. Regardless of your preferred settings, one issue will arise consistently: The dreaded plague of micromanagement. The lack of production queues is a real pain. Oh, and playable units are dumb as dirt. They will often have profound pathfinding difficulty and fail to respond altogether when a nearby unit is slashed to bits. Worse still, they may even thoughtlessly wander in battle themselves! All this while the enemy is somehow limitless in its aggressiveness. Still, AOE demonstrates solid fundamentals for an action-oriented strategy game.