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Age of Empires II Gold Edition

Great single player.

Written by AS from Redmond

Dec 25, 2008

First thing I think I should warn anyone of is that you CANNOT IN ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM PLAY MULTIPLAYER GAMES WITH PEOPLE THAT HAVE THIS GAME ON A PC. You'd think that it'd be compatible over a simple LAN or an IP connection, well it isn't. They don't tell you this either. So I am. I was trying to set up a game with someone over TCP/IP that was running it on a PC, and after 15 minutes of failed attempts and trying everything with the Firewall and internet connection settings, I did some Googling. Turns out, Microsoft didn't want to give Macsoft some of their code or something and so multiplayer only works with other Mac computers. LAN is also not even provided in this version of the game, the only options for multiplayer is TCP/IP, or GameRanger, the new Zone.com I guess. This is an online service similar to battle.net available for Mac and PC users, but again, no cross-breeding. You can only play with other people on your OS.

Other than that issue, this is a great game. I used to own this on PC and I see no other differences, the single player has been converted flawlessly. It runs smoothly on my 1st gen iMac. The installation is a bit weird, but it gets the job done and the game runs well. All the music, sounds, and graphics are the same. And the AI, from what I can remember.

Also, if you're not on an admin account with this game, you need to have Read & Write (including all enclosed items) privileges for the entire folder in which this game is located on your HD. Otherwise, the game will force quit whenever you try and start playing. This too took me some trial and error to figure out.

Most new games being released now are released for Macs and PC's, so these problems shouldn't continue.

But hey, this is a '90's PC game redesigned for Mac computers. Can't expect 100%, not even from Apple.

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