Is it old? Yes. Is it outdated? Quite possibly. Is it still fun? Most definately. Well ever since October/November last year I've been playing Age of Empires II during the lessons in College where it doesnt really matter (Key Skills (of which even our lecturer admits its a filler lesson for the timetable to make up an hour or two) and occasionally Health and Safety).

Even though this game is so very old the reward of building your base well and crushing my classmates is still as great as say, Dawn of War or even Command and Conquer 3. And the fact that it will fit on a memory stick makes it just that bit sweeter. Well in Age of Empires I'm a cavalry man through and through, my friends all fear the sound of hooved legs on the ground, and the red blob appearing from the fog of war as my 120 strong army of Elite Cavalry Archers and my Hunnic Tarkans begin to rampage through their base, of which very rarely fails to defeat them, or at worst severely weakens them (for someone else to take advantage of).

What also makes Age of Empires a very rewarding game is the hard work you have to put into it to achieve victory, as you cannot rest on your laurels and hope to be ignored, because if your opponent has the player statistics up, it will give you away as the easy kill you are. You have to build a strong economy, and then use that to build up a strong army. What seperates this in my mind from allot of modern RTS is the multiple resources you must collect, and the number of buildings you must build, whereas in say Dawn of War you just build a plasma generator here and there, and capture a few strategic point's. Resource management is also more of an issue here than in many other games, as there is only a finite amount of stone and gold on the map, and if you waste it all on walls, you may be hampered in the castle age when you will want to build a few castles.

One thing that sticks in my mind from this game that was dropped in its sequel Age of Empires III was the sneaky tactic of building a castle right behind an enemies base and then launching a massive attack from it, if your opponent still hasnt realised your hiding there. This sneaky little trick was removed as you are unable to build to close to your enemies town centre.

So i guess this is my random take on an old Classic that in my eyes will never truly become obsolete even in the face of the myriad new games being developed.