Why Age of Empires II is the ultimate form of male therapy

Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition (2019)

Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition (2019)

Alright, which one of you reading this is the biggest sore loser? It can’t be me; these days, I'm too brow-beaten by life and accepting of mediocrity to really care anymore. All the competitive edge has gone out of me. But it wasn’t always like this, oh no. I used to be a right little screaming shit whenever I lost at something.

I distinctly remember playing a relaxing game of chess with my brother, no pressure or tension at all - you would have thought. Of course, my self-professed young grandmaster status just had to get in the way. Or, more accurately, I was letting my ego get the better of me. It looked like I had the game won, until - wouldn't you know it - I fell right into my brother’s trap.

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I didn’t suffer an instant defeat, a completely unseen checkmate, oh no. That would have been almost acceptable to me, strangely enough. No, the problem was that, even despite my best laid plans, I couldn’t deliver the killing blow, and so I plunged myself into a stalemate. In real terms however, it was effectively a last-minute victory for my brother, and a humiliating defeat for me. I was let down by my own brain.

Well, by God, I wasn't having that. How do you get over an embarrassing turnaround like that? I took my white king, that lumbering pilchard with his silly crown, the man who had blindly walked straight into an unwinnable battle, and I flung it. That’s right, I threw it from the board with as much determined ferocity as a ten-year-old could muster. And then it happened.

If you are familiar with chess pieces, most kings tend have a large cross atop their heads. Well, the king I threw hit the bottom of the nearby radiator head-on, or rather head-off - the cross was cut clean off the top of the piece.

So now you’ve been warned - when I lose, the beheadings begin. That's probably as serious an act of violence that I’ve committed against a game I’ve lost at, but don't go thinking you're safe. Come out on a game of pitch-and-putt with me, and you'll be lucky if I’m polite enough to shout "fore" before my sand wedge lands on your forehead.

Don't worry, I don't rip Happy Gilmore off by smashing people places and things up with a golf club. That would be crass. But I've definitely been known to throw clubs as far away from me with great force when things start going bad, which they always do in golf. There's no safe place on the fairway with me, mate. If you're not ducking my putters and drivers, you're jumping over my daisy-cutters.

With video games, I have previously cried, shouted, slapped, spat… you name it, and I’ve done it in response to a loss. Sometimes this behaviour is justified, even as an adult. If you think that's ridiculous, then I’ll ask you to think back to the last time a Mario Kart victory was in your grasp, only for an absolute barrage of items to smack you on the face, repeatedly. When that happens, wouldn't you lose yourself to the throes of despair, or fury?

Or better yet, wouldn't you try to cheat to even the odds? I know I would - and did- several times on Age of Empires II for PC, whenever the computer AI would give me yet another hammering. My cheat of choice for this game was the AC Cobra machine-gun cars, spammed en masse - guaranteed to turn the tide of any Random Map battle. Not very appropriate for the medieval time period of Age of Empires II. But who could resist a classic cheat for a classic car?

And everything else about this game just screams classic. I've never been a PC gamer, actually. I'm much more into pissweak laptops than top-level desktops. But I'd always been jealous of my mate who had games like Command & Conquer, Red Alert, Civilization II and Settlers on his PC. His family had a PC way before we ever did, but when my family eventually spent the guts of two grand for a PC in 1999, the package came with Age of Empires II.

I loaded it up one day out of curiosity, and I was absolutely transfixed. This was an ultra-modern, utterly compelling real-time strategy game when the genre was at its peak. PCs just do certain gaming genres beautifully, and RTS is one of them.

The more I think about it, the more I'd actually consider the real-time strategy genre to be a form of male therapy; it’s liberating to occasionally load up an RTS game, Command & Conquer or Age of Empires or whatever you like, and then just get into it. Spend two hours moving a load of units around, thinking up a few nifty strategies, and lovingly micro-managing your economy. Perform all of these tasks together in beautiful harmony, and it's an unbeatable feeling.

Ah yes, the economy. This isn’t like Command & Conquer where you can just load up on Ore and start spamming a zillion tanks, no. You've got a full economy to look after in AOE2 - many different buildings for many different units, built by a thousand villagers.

Those same villagers will be breaking their backs for hundreds of years gathering food, wood, stone and gold to keep everything running. You'll be researching technologies, fighting for the land and sea, building walls, advancing through the ages, training a mixed composition of armies, and generally trying to keep on top of a-million-and-one different things.

Don't let all of that put you off though, you need never feel overwhelmed and stressed. Take a breather from battle, and go into one of the most comprehensive and brilliant Map Creators ever, maybe build yourself a Custom Scenario - or a full-on Custom Campaign. You can also tackle the Single Player Campaigns, or get yourself a load more Custom Maps and Scenarios by taking the game online.

Ah yes, the online mode - another huge factor in AOE2's lingering success. I know you’re incredibly interested in my own anecdotes, so I’ll tell you that when I first started playing this game online, incidentally the first game I ever played online, you used to log onto something called the MSN Gaming Zone to get a game going.

This was in the pre-broadband - I’m THAT old - meaning I had to play after 6PM, or on weekends. And if any fool called our home phone during the game, then that was it, I was gone. Didn't matter if you were nearly two hours into a game, you were at your phone’s mercy back in the dial-up days. Luckily the phone was downstairs, or I'd have flung that in great anger too whenever somebody called.

That was all in the bad old days of online gaming, of course. Nowadays with high-speed, always-on internet and Steam, this nonsense is a thing of the past. Better than that, AOE2 has been updated for a new age - firstly, in 2013 with a HD remaster, including some new civilizations and units into the bargain.

And not only that, a full remastered Definitive Edition came in 2019 with lovely graphics, animations and even more content, plus ongoing patches, DLC and updates, and a still thriving online scene.

Naturally, given they’re both on Steam, you can pick either of them up for half-nothing most of the time. Of course, the Definitive Edition is the recommended choice, but if you need the full range of RTS therapy, you might as well do what I did and pick up both.

Even when Age of Empires III and IV came out, nobody seemed to care. Everyone was still engrossed in this game, and we’ve been like this for the last 20+ years. This is one of those rare games that you cannot pick a single legitimate flaw in.

The soundtrack is a stone-cold classic, the graphics on lesser editions still look good, and the balance between civilizations is brilliantly and sensibly worked out. You could even learn a few pub quiz questions in the included History section. It’s not as nerd-birthingly detailed as the Civilopedia, but it's there.

That's why, when it comes down to it, I don't actually mind losing battles in Age of Empires II. Even losing is a pleasure in this game, which is surely loser talk, but the trip is just as good as the destination. I’m just as happy sitting there in peace, working on making my base as beautiful as possible without even going to war.

They'll still be playing Age of Empires II in 20 more years, you know, I'll guarantee you that. They'll probably still be thinking up new civilizations and units to keep the game going. This is a game that I absolutely love, and even though I'm still a noob some 25 years later, it’s OK. I can accept that now. This is the game that never loses.

10 January 2025