When comparing Age of Empires II HD vs Grey Goo, the Slant community recommends Age of Empires II HD for most people. In the question“What are the best singleplayer games on Steam?” Age of Empires II HD is ranked 22nd while Grey Goo is ranked 171st. The most important reason people chose Age of Empires II HD is:
While the graphics are slightly outdated, they were very well done for their time. And when combined with the history behind the game and its wonderful soundtrack, the game comes across as extremely polished.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Awesome ambiance with a great finish
While the graphics are slightly outdated, they were very well done for their time. And when combined with the history behind the game and its wonderful soundtrack, the game comes across as extremely polished.
Pro Runs on very old computers
As this game is quite old, requiring only a 1.2GHZ processor and 1 Gigabyte of RAM, this title will run on older PC's and laptops alike without issue.
Pro Facilitates the user's preferred pace
This game neither gives the impression of being thrown to the wolves nor that of being left stranded on an island. Whether you want to move slowly and steadily through the game or take things at a more heightened pace, Age of Empires 2 will allow for both (given a little planning).
Pro Balanced asymmetric races
Each of the three races have their own powers and weaknesses, which makes for asymmetric gameplay due in part to how each is balanced. Relying partially on a rock, paper, scissors approach, each faction has power over the others in some way, as well as exploitable weakness. Thus, when choosing a race, the player has to keep in mind what they need to do in order to defeat the other races, which results in different and unique play styles, increasing strategic longevity of the title.
Pro Accessible gameplay
Being that this is designed to be a traditional RTS game, fans of the genre should find the the gameplay familiar and easily accessible.
Pro Polished design
The graphics look great and look to be designed with care. There are plenty of tutorial pop-ups as well, which enhances the overall design and polish, as it alleviates any confusion players may have mid-match.
Pro Great map editor
Users can create their own maps with the custom map editor, which makes for a ton of longevity to the game as players can create their own maps to play on.
Pro Great soundtrack
The soundtrack features different music for each of the three available races. All of it is done well and feels as though it fits with each race making for a more immersive experience.
Pro Clever AI
The AI in Ashes of the Singularity is programmed quite well, allowing it to detect a player's weakness and using that to its advantage. Allowing the AI to have the same advantages that regular human opponents receive, in regards to Player Power Level and Mini-Map expansion detection, this keeps the player on their toes and makes for challenging single player action.
Pro Amazing building shortcuts
It's super easy to quickly select and build a specific unit and/or building, thanks to the excellent build menu.
Cons
Con A lack of proper User Interface scaling makes a clunky UI worse
While this is a remastered edition of a classic Real-Time Strategy title, the UI was left largely unchanged. Selecting workers still prompts you to click buttons to bring up both economic and military buildings, then choosing whichever building you wish to construct. This is uninteresting design and makes the UI difficult to navigate.
On top of this, the game does not feature UI scaling. Since the game is bound to your current desktop display settings, the UI will adjust itself to match that resolution. This means if you play at 4K resolution the User Interface will be absurdly small, making it near impossible to see what buildings you wish to construct or what units you want to train. This is counter-intuitive design, for this era of modern gaming, and makes properly playing the game more of a hassle than it should ever be.
Con Age of Empires II HD is an unsuccessful remaster due to its outdated graphics
With the only notable upgrade being high resolution options, Age of Empires II HD fails at being a proper remaster. While higher resolutions give the game a slight face lift, the rest of the engine is left largely unchanged. This means the graphics we see in this remaster are nearly the same in its original 1999 release. Due to this, the game is grating to the eye and does not deliver on its high definition promise.
Con Terrible UI
User interface is terrible: it's hard to select units and the cursor frequently gets stuck on other functions.
Con Can't change game speed
There's no way to slow down or speed up game speed.
Con Region locked
The matchmaking component of this title suffers from the region locking instituted upon it. Due to this constraint, finding players and getting into matches can be a issue, and take a great deal more time, as you will be unable to look for anyone outside of your respective region.
Con Lack of replays and spectator mode
There is no replay feature in the game, which means users will not be able to look back at previous matches, nor is there a spectator mode to allow others to view a match in progress.
Con Maximum of four players for multiplayer is limiting
The game's multiplayer greatness is stymied due to the limit on the maximum number of players being only four. With the only large-scale battles limited to 2v2 game types, players hoping to have more epic battles and play with more friends will unfortunately have to look elsewhere.