Age of Empires III

I finally got my copy of Ensemble Studio’s Age of Empires III. I have two friends who work there now, which means that it is twice as easy to get a free copy! I met one of them for lunch Friday. Being the very nice individual that he is, he gave me a copy of the collector’s edition, which comes with an artwork book, soundtrack, some extra guides, and a "making of" DVD. Excellent!

I installed it Friday night and played it a little then and a little yesterday. Nice graphics. The gameplay is very similar to the last, so it didn’t take long to get up and running, but it has some interesting new features. You are going to need decent hardware to run it, and really excellent hardware to get the graphics that you see in the online screenshots. Though my processor and memory is up to snuff, my graphics card isn’t, so I have to lump my home PC into the "decent" category for a game like this.

Haven’t played it enough to really get addicted, or to have a strong opinion about the game. But, my first impressions are good.