Age Of Empires 2: HD Remake

[Misuicide]

Worthy of its own thread I believe. If the mods do disagree, then please delete!

www.Ageofempires.com

http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/03/07/ag...op-on-april-9/

[link deleted]

Everyone did play for hours I am sure.

[Deadgye]

Oh shit, does this mean I can finally play archer's hellfire again? Can't wait, was sad when I attempted to multi-player for no reason a while ago and the site was dead as expected.

[Waraji]

I'm sorry, but it looks just like it did before, with SLIGHTLY higher res textures and color contract/gamma upped a bit. It was a great game no doubt, but meh.

[Kaisha]

It's just a slight graphical facelift of the original game+expansion.

What surprises me is that the main AoE site links to it being purchasable on Steam. Figured Microsoft would try to force-feed it through GFW. Might pick up during a Steam sale sometime if only to have a digital updated copy handy. Don't think they're touching a thing beyond the graphics on this?

[Correction]

It does seem disingenuous to call this an HD Remaster, but the water looks better I guess?

[Prothescar]

That's... pretty much every HD remaster ever released. The biggest bit about this is that it's reviving features of the game that have long since been dead due to age while making it look prettier on modern systems. It's not exactly bleeding your wallet either. What's the problem?

[Tyrath]

The biggest thing about this is that you can play it online easily without their bullshit online problems.

[Correction]

That's... pretty much every HD remaster ever released.

Perhaps, but some HD Remasters get a lot more effort put into improving the visuals because, you know, "HD." I'm not hating on Age of Empries II, it's still a good game, and I'm sure it was a lot of work to get multiplayer through Steam working. It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth when the definition of HD seems to get molded to whatever a publisher wants.

[Prothescar]

I mean if they were marketing it as a full HD remake I'd see where you're coming from, but all they're doing is brushing up some textures and making it run in HD making it an HD remaster of the original. It still looks more crisp and certainly looks more HD than the original version.

It's like a remaster of an album. They don't get the artist/band to perform the entire album again, they just tweak it to sound better.

[6souls]

A good someone posted this so I didn't have to.

[Correction]

all they're doing is brushing up some textures

Imma be real with you, the only improved visuals are the brighter looking fire and animated water. Everything else looks identical to the SD version, just zoomed-out.

[Prothescar]

Idk man maybe my eyes are bad and I'm seeing things, it looks more crisp to me in that video. I'll just agree to disagree

[Kaisha]

Doesn't look like they're playing the 'SD' version at the highest resolution it supports in the video.

[Palpatine]

MEMORIES. Beating 2v8 Hardest on Nomad setting against the computer was a fine accomplishment.

[Deadgye]

The biggest thing about this is that you can play it online easily without their bullshit online problems.

This is all I really cared about, some of the multiplayer custom campaigns/maps were ingenious. Steam workshop means you won't even have to join and play games to get custom campaigns.

Also, the game is so old that it's forced fullscreen at a crappy resolution. Higher resolution support and windowed support is all the "HD" I need.

edit: lol at the cobra at the end of the video.

[Shadowhusky]

It's just a slight graphical facelift of the original game+expansion.

What surprises me is that the main AoE site links to it being purchasable on Steam. Figured Microsoft would try to force-feed it through GFW. Might pick up during a Steam sale sometime if only to have a digital updated copy handy. Don't think they're touching a thing beyond the graphics on this?

Because Hiddenpath is doing the HD facelift/port which is the same company that made CS:GO. So naturally it has steamworks support added in (Uses steam servers for multiplayer, steamworkshop, etc.)

[Gokulo]

Sorry, but they want too much for a graphical upgrade >.<

[Uzor]

I'm excited actually. I'm sad they completely ruined III, it's dead to me. Never even existed.

I absolutely loved II, used to play it with my cousin all the time. I loved how you could play 2 people as the same player. I used to focus on the military part while my cousin focused on construction

[Shadowhusky]

Sorry, but they want too much for a graphical upgrade >.<

It'll be 50% off during the summer sale.

[Tidane]

Sorry, but they want too much for a graphical upgrade >.<

Maybe. I'm certainly a bit bias, as AoE2 is one of my favorite games of all time, but just because they didn't completely redo everything doesn't mean that it wasn't a fair amount of work to do. They're taking a 15 year old engine, updating textures, correcting graphical issues on new cards, and making multi player functional again. This isn't an easy task.

I'm not sure how technically knowledgeable you are, but the reason AoE2 works on current GPUs is because vendors coded their drivers to recognize the game executable and fix issues the game has on the new GPUs. Even with that, there are still issues. Emulated colors, text rendering, and etc all have issues on Vista and 7. Fixing these sorts of issues and re-adding multiplayer is worth $20 to me (and I'm guessing a large number of others that still play).