Holding on to the past

Age of Empires 4Rating 45Developer Relic EntertainmentPublisher Xbox Game StudiosPlatform PCPrice Rs 2499Age of Empire is one of those games that has legendary status amongst RealTime Strategy RTS players It has a strong community and the recently remastered versions did well for an ancient game The new game holds on to that strategy keeping the historic theme and telling us stories of significant wars in the Middle Ages through the engaging medium of video gamesOn starting the game you are treated to some great video content and are thrown into a tutorial scenario where you are taught about townbuilding army building and of course waging war It is a nice way to learn about the basics of the game The campaigns are also a great introduction to the franchise even if you havenrsquot played the series before The videos throughout the game are topnotch giving the player some nice historical context to whatrsquos happening in the gameAOE4 is mostly straightforward in its approach where the campaign is concerned build an army and destroy your enemies Most of the strategies from the previous games still work which will make fans of the franchise quite happyThere are four campaigns in total and each has a lot of levels enough to keep you engaged for a long time The difficulty also scales up nicely offering more challenges I enjoyed the campaigns even though I found some of the more restrictive levels very frustrating especially ones where restrictions were imposed on how you used your armyThough fun the campaigns donrsquot teach you about the tech trees in the game sticking only to basics So while this approach may work for veterans newer players may find it a bit annoying to have to research about each factionrsquos tech progression on their ownAge of Empiresrsquo mechanisms and feel are very similar to the previous entries to the game It was one of the sourest points for me in an otherwise great game RTS games have progressed way beyond the rock paper scissor strategy that governs the armies of AOE There is a lot more depth and complexity to the games now It feels like a missed opportunity the only exception to this was the Mongols whose campaign was a breath of fresh air in the game With Mongols you canrsquot build a settlement like you can with the other factions so no walls and other security structures On the flip side you can keep moving your buildings to advantageous positions without spending a bomb rebuilding everythingThe rest are more simplistic in their approach Each faction has its plus and minus points which can be researched and leveraged in the game That said this Age of Empires will hopefully take on a life of its own considering the popularity of the game in the modding community If that happens AOE4 will be well worth the investment just because of the infinite replayability it will offer through its communityThe game is only available on PC which I thought was sad considering how well the Xbox Series S and X are doing it would have been great to have a version that worked on them as well The Xbox anyway accepts keyboard and mouse for surfing whatrsquos the problem in letting an inhouse game from taking advantage of its significant processing powerAOErsquos system requirements are very low I managed to play the game very smoothly on a fiveyearold laptop with discreet graphics This was very impressive considering most modern games would never load let alone be playable However it looked and handled a lot better when it was played on a proper gaming PC so that was a plus point Age of Empires 4 is a great strategy game but it is so similar to the remastered older games that it barely has an identity of its own Fans of the franchise will find AOE4 comforting to play but its gameplay and style are very outdated when compared to all the recent RTS games RTS fans who have never played AOE before might get a little frustrated with the gameASUS launches detachable laptopASUS has launched a new 133inch Windows 11 laptop that can be used as a tablet by detaching the keyboard The Vivo book 13 Slate comes with a 133inch Pantone validated Dolby Vision screen a stylus with 4096 pressure levels 33GHz Intel CPU up to four 256GB SSDs up to 8GB DDR4 RAM 5MP front and 13MP rear cameras The device has two USB C ports an audio jack and a micro SD card reader India pricing for the device has not been revealedHarry Potter Wizards Unite shutting downThe locationbased Harry Potter game from Pokemon Go creatorsndashNiantic will be shutting down on January 31 2022 The game will no longer be downloadable from December onwards and players will not be able to buy anything in the game as well The twoyearold game let players capture creatures from Harry Potterrsquos wizarding world and it let players interact with popular characters from the franchise The company did not mention the reason for the sudden termination of the gameSquid game inspired crypto crashesCashing in on the success of the Korean show Squid Game on Netflix scamsters developed and launched a crypto token that was meant to be used in a redlightgreenlight playtoearn game The coin crashed this week Developers restricted users from selling the token when it reached record highs of 2860 per coin