Age of Empires
"Age of Empires", released on October 26, 1997, was the first game in the series, as well as the first major release from Ensemble Studios. It was one of the first history-based real-time strategy games made, utilizing the Genie game engine. GameSpot described it as a mix of "Civilization" and "". The game gives players a choice of 12 civilizations to develop from the Stone Age to the Iron Age. The expansion pack, "The Rise of Rome", published by Microsoft on October 31, 1998, introduced new features and four new civilizations, including the Romans. Although the two games had contained many software bugs, patches resolved many of the problems.
Age of Empires
The trend in improved graphics continued well into the next release, "Age of Empires III," much to the delight of reviewers. IGN stated, "After seeing the screenshots, our jaws hit the floor at the amount of detail." "1UP.com" described "Age of Empires III" as "one of the most beautiful games you will put on your computer for the foreseeable future." GameSpy agreed, stating, ""Age III"s graphics are unmatched in the strategy genre." "Age of Empires III" builds on and introduces new features to the prior release, "Age of Mythology," such as the inclusion of the award-winning Havok physics simulation middleware game engine for the Windows version and PhysX for the Mac OS X. The innovative result is that pre-created animations are avoided; instead events are calculated according to the physics engine. Consequently, views of events like building destruction and tree felling are not pre-recorded. GameSpot also admired the graphics in the fourth release but complained about "the awkward unit behavior." Other graphical features of the game include bloom lighting and support for pixel shader 3.0.