Slaughter your friends in Age of Empires

By James Andrews

Okay, now for a game that your history teacher and you will like. You may be thinking that I am crazy at this point but I am serious- do not start playing this game if you have a test the next day or in fact in the next week.

Age of Empires is one of the most addicting games I have seen to date and everyone that I know that has tried it agrees. In this Warcraft-type game you choose a civilization to play with, like the Greeks. You have to build up your culture to survive. To fight, you have what the civilization you're playing had.

The game has many pluses- one is that it is historically accurate in the weapons that you use and the buildings that you build. The multiplayer is also fun and runs good over network or modem.

The minus is that in the retail version of the game each side is limited to only 50 people. If you look closely there is a way of getting around this that can give one player an advantage over the other. The secret is to build as close to 49 people as possible then have all of your factories make men at once. When they all arrive you will have more than 50 men. Then there are other bugs in the game. Most can be fixed if you download the patch at www.microsoft.com. Other than those bugs I can not say much bad about the game except for the sounds in the game repeat so much it can get irritating at times.

The game is a great game so sit back and try to conquer the world, ha ha ha.