Age of Empires III demo... not impressed!

I just played the Age of Empires III demo and, well it wasn't as good as I expected. I've read reviews from game sites etc. which say things like "its ironic in this age of high performance game consoles that one of the most visually impressive games to date is a PC strategy game" and alot of hype about the great graphics. I played the demo with all the graphics settings maxed out and I could barely tell the difference between Age Of Empires II and this new offering, certainly the graphics were no better than Age of Mythology which came out about 2 years ago! Plus from what I played, the gameplay dosn't seem to have advanced much either. Maybe the finished game will have improved graphics, but I don't see why they would make the demo have worse graphics than the actual game. I was looking forward to this new game but I don't think I'll buy it now.

 

what the hell? are you insane? AOE3 is actually in FULL 3d, not 3D plane over 2D sprites.

for comparison :
http://www.dare-devils.info/daredevils/design/images/misc/10_1_aoe3_4.jpg battle scene from AOE3

http://www.mdcc-fun.de/arno.battke/SpieleUndLernen/jpg/aoe3.jpg a battle scene from AOE2

yeah..they look the same

Plus, there is a new way to strategize with your main city as you continue to improve and have a larger cities more bonuses are available to you, allowing you to create more complex units / battles.


Your arguement = full of holes like swiss cheese.

 

Alright mate, the picture looks nice, have you played the demo? That picture is NOTHING like the in game graphics, at all, what so ever. The graphics in the AOE3 picture you posted were what I was expecting, but the game is not like that at all! Well the demo I played wasn't anyway, and like I said I don't see why they would bother to make the demo graphics nowhere near as good as the finished game...

 

Yes I did, yes they looked like that (less glossy though)

 

OK i'll admit the graphics are better than AOEII now looking back. But you can't tell me these graphics are as good as you were expecting, certainly not good enough to call this game vissually impressive. The graphics look out dated and the game hasn't even been released yet. Vissually impressive is half life 2 (which came out a year ago), this game isn't. I played through the demo thinking is this it? And I stick to my initial view that the graphics are as good if not worse than age of mythology. Also the picture you posted of AOE3 isn't in game, unless i'm missing something, the game plays like previous editions looking down from a bird's eye view.

 

You can rotate / zoom your camera in AOE3. You can't compare a FPS against an RTS for a ton of reasons. The more obvious being that an RTS you have to produce thousands of units / particles / movements / AI strategy / updating off screen world etc... In an FPS rendering is completly different, areas are rendered in segments - best example is HL2 where every 5-10minutes you would load into a new area. Even when you are in a large FPS maps there is still partial loading, limited to "what you can see".


There is nothing remotely compared to AOE3. Even AoM is not comparable to AOE3 since its based on a low poly engine (zoom into the units you see the units compiled of triangles) and is heavily limited on how many units in game / particles / effects. I fear what you have done is played 15mins of AoE3 and judged it then in there without putting any effort, based on previous posts you obviously don't know the basics of the game or read up on anything about it. That and your PC must be a stinker since it can't produce quality grahpics.