Age of Empires 2 HD to come to Steam

Following recent leaks through Steam, Microsoft have officially announced Age of Empires 2 is to be released on Steam fully remastered in HD. This is awesome news to me, as I put hundreds of hours in to this game and cannot wait to play it again. In fact I recently tried to install my old disk version and found out that it would not run on my Windows 8 machine, so it has come at a good time indeed! The game will include all the campaign missions including the ones from the expansion pack 'The Conquerers', as well as full support of online multiplayer through Steam and even Steam Workshop support. The graphics have been updated slightly, though not enough to change the original feel of the game, just enough to make the high resolution not look ridiculous. It also features multi-monitor support, I'd say RTS games are probably one of the only genres of game where this is important so it's great to see them doing that.

The gameplay style of Age of Empires 2 has unfortunately died out a little with few 'base building' RTS games being released in the last 10 years so for this game to be touched up and HD-ified is a step in the right direction; hopefully it will be popular and will get some interest going. As Ensemble Studios (the original developers) have unfortunately disbanded, this game has been remastered by Hidden Path Entertainment who made Defense Grid: The Awakening (a 3D tower defence game) and Counter Strike: GO.