Peanut butter and chocolate, Hall and Oates, Kirk and Spock, coffee and cigarettes, classic combinations that mutually bring out the best qualities of each part. Rise of Nations is the result of just such a duo, part man, part machine, all cop… “no that’s Robocop“, “Oh yeah, thanks voice in my head”, “No problem“, “Okay lets get back to the blog”, “Hail Satan!“.
Part RTS, part 4X strategy game, Rise of Nations is the love child of Age of Empires and Civilization. Leading your humble civilization to victory will require more than military might or the twitch reflexes of your typical RTS. Expanding your empires borders, diplomacy, researching new technology, and maintaining civil unrest are all challenges you’ll face on the path to world domination. Rise Of Nations also sets the stage for some epic multiplayer matches and fortunately the servers are still up and running thanks to matchmaking service from GameSpy.
4 People have left comments on this post
Awesome, great to see Microsoft filling in where Sierra has fallen through (Thanks Blizzard)
I like RTS, especially multiplayer, with some rather good points being open-ended ability to conduct business in your own fashion, be able to deal with resource issues through alternate means, and throw in some random violence for good measure.
I do miss Red Alert era games from Westwood (No thanks to the toxic EA chocolate, you are better off selling it on ebay for lint)
Doesn’t work.. reports I have a debugger installed even though there’s nothing even running except core services… please note I deal with development software from time to time and know if I have a debugger, and this system does not have any development tools whatsoever aside from a programmer’s text editor.
Services:Application Layer Gateway Service, Application Management, COM+ Event System, Cryptographic Services, DCOM Server Process Launcher, DHCP Client, DNS Client, Event Log, HID Input Service, IPSEC Services, Logical Disk Manager, Network Connections, Network Location Awareness (NLA), NVIDIA Display Driver Service, Plug and Play, Protected Storage, Remote Access Connection Manager, Remote Procedure Call (RPC), Secondary Logon, Security Accounts Manager, Server, Shell Hardware Detection, System Event Notification, Task Scheduler, TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper, Telephony, Terminal Services, Windows Audio, Windows Firewall / Internet Connection Sharing (ICS), Windows Management Instrumentation, Workstation
Programs: TSVNCache (TortoiseSVN), Firefox, GameTapPlayer
I even closed down my keyboard and mouse (Microsoft one ironically) programs through task manager, and ones that provide an overlay (Which is a D3D/OGL hook) such as Xfire, Steam, and Fraps, it’s a no-go.
With a history of lack of transparency and bad documentation, I find you blog to be a better place to post this so other people know you may be wasting your bandwidth/time. Hopefully you can communication that this draconian anticheat/piracy (Or whatever it’s trying to do) mechanism hurts your relationship with Microsoft. All of their other games work fine, just not this one.
So for the first time in a while, a game on GameTap hasn’t worked for me, this one. “No problem!” I think, “I still have my disc version, it’s right with all my other games I got with my laptop.”. There’s Rise of Legends. There’s AoEIII. There’s AoM. And there’s…
FML.
Gametap stole your copy. You’re destined not to play it again.
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