still BVGROTI talking aoe2, we’re back.
Age of empires got a re-remaster. It does that thing now where building crumples, causes my boxers to transform into a teepee. Before, in my review of the remaster, I focused my efforts on uncovering the social dynamics around the game and it’s audience; back then I had ideas about what to write about, and didn’t merely do so out of habit or strained obligation to an imagined judge. Mostly the latter. Back then there was an essence of vitality to what I did.
.When we try to recapture the past there is an element of confusion to it, memory for all it informs us, is a fickle thing; maybe that’s why people can be just as fickle.
Let’s see if we still got it?
Definitive edition, to be justifiable as a project needed to be more than a graphical update and so had to begin tampering with a game that had been going strong to varying degrees for nearly twenty years. The HD edition 7 years prior had significantly expanded the roster, so there was an unlikely route that could be taken again. Without the option of being additive the only route was to tweak.
This raises the motherload of questions, how do you tweak a 20 year old game to bring it up to scratch to today, while still keeping it as the definitive masterpiece it always was definitely agreed to be. This consists of an epistemological investigation into the essential properties of experience that is as much characterised by nostalgia and clunkiness as it is by long bow’s going brrrrrrr.
There have been, amongst gamer tard circles, some complaints about new aspects added like auto scouting; aspects not there in the initial release of definitive, but which have been added on top of the existing quality of life changes. Some find it distasteful, troglodytes mostly. Regular balance tweaks that keep shifting a meta, like some league of legends bs, when it had been stable for seven years prior.
Whereas I, in my position of enlightened foresight (they buffed goths), feel this is the very point. The re-imagining is not a static thing. The idea of a definitive edition being unable to find a static position, may seem ironic but it captures that very element that made the game feel so good to start with, learning novel techniques that best allow us to take advantage of our existing knowledge, while not invalidating it. Koniks being the cronic.
Still reppin knight rush on franks, Still thinking khmer are a pile of wanks.
Still failing to fast feudal, goth rush is my strudel, tower rush giving me a hard noddle.
Turtle to forty my name is BVGROTI still stealing your sheep yes you know i am naughty!
Still castle dropping, trade cart rocking, my mans economy is stagnant but i ain’t knocking. Just locking down, gold, stone, wood line rolling up to your relic (yeah that is mine) all this shit makes for a real good time. Still!
With this in mind I tried my hand at interviewing the dweeb again.
In summary. Is it worth 15 pounds to get an erection every time a building melts so smoothly i think i might...uhghghhhhghg… Yes it is, now get me a tissue!
