In 14 years, your average video game franchise has a fairly decent shot at hitting a double-digit sequel number. It's not really in vogue to go back and simply keep adding content to an older game—so who ever thought that, a decade and a half after its original release, Age of Empires 2 would receive an official expansion? It's true, and it's happening courtesy of Microsoft Studios, which is supporting the team behind the fan-made mod Forgotten Empires to bring new content to the classic strategy game's HD release.
This was announced by a developer post on Steam , where it's revealed that SkyBox Labs is currently working with Forgotten Empires LLC to bring the mod to "official" status. It's a pretty swank success story for a team of amateur developers—why aren't my custom TF2 hats getting this much attention?
Anyway, Age of Empires 2 HD—The Forgotten will allow us to explore five forgotten civilizations and their technologies, four new campaigns, a bunch of maps, new AI, and more. And, hauling the ancient franchise into the modern age will be Twitch.tv integration. It's roughly scheduled for a Steam release next month; follow Forgotten Empires on Facebook to keep up with their updates.
I tracked down the guy who gave a negative review to Battlezone 98 Redux after playing for over 8,000 hours, and came away convinced he was right
Factorio's expansion is setting record high player counts yet again so I'm expecting the world's IT infrastructure to collapse and innovation to stagnate any day now
