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I did something very similar with an old strategy game called Age of empires II. Over the course of two years I went from a 1300 rating to 1850. I don't play ch

I did something very similar with an old strategy game called Age of empires II. Over the course of two years I went from a 1300 rating to 1850. I don't play chess, so it's hard for me to compare the scales, but I will say the highest players were rated around 2600. I think being 1850 put me around 90-95th percentile for active players-- there were less than 50 players over 2300, and only a few hundred over 2000. My only real commentary is that trying to follow a progression like this can be profoundly, profoundly frustrating. You need to really make sure you're enjoying this hobby before you try to dedicate yourself to a trajectory like this. It can really make you feel like shit a lot of the time, as you find yourself continually repeating mistakes that other people breeze past without issue. It takes true love of the game and a great deal of patience and persistence to push through all the downspells. Eventually I decided that I no longer wished to prioritize the game over other things. The enormous time investment was no longer a worthwhile trade-off for me, and I stopped playing almost all together. I haven't regretted it since. There's just so many things to do in life. I gave it thousands of hours of my time, and now the door is closed on that. Now I'm learning Ruby on rails!

the_only_law 6y ago
Never got into aoe2 but used to play a good bit of aoe3 (and have started again since the DE released). I used to hang around people who played ot semi competitively though I was never on that level. I understood the game for the most part, but my execution was never good enough. Too much semi precise timings required and I could never get my APM high enough.
Pelic4n 6y ago
That's amazing. I love that game dearly and have been playing on/off for more than 15 years, so I get routinely obsessed with it, play a lot a few weeks, get good against the AI (usually using cheese like huskarl spam or massed mangudai), then get my ass handed to me online & ends up quitting. Then I don't play for a year or so. At which point were you able to reliably not fail the boar lure ?
- rubidium 6y ago
  If you’re dying to the boars you should just be playing the first 9 min of the game on repeat against the AI. If you can’t master that after 15-30 games, then RTS are not for you :)
- aerovistae 6y ago
  While I disagree with the other comment gatekeeping RTS's, which can be played however you want (my father pauses the game in between every action in order to keep up with the gamestate), I do agree that ~15-25 games of dedicated boar lure practice, just restarting the game after each attempt, should be enough to get it right in tandem with watching some videos on how to do it.
_the_inflator 6y ago
Hey there fellow AoE II player! Cool, to hear from some decent player. What time did you play? Around 2002? Since I was a 2k player at the time, let me assure you, that the top dudes at the time (Koven, Sheriff for example) were already so called pro gamers who got payed/sponsored and they were exceptionally good. The true story is, that many folks above 2k+ did what was called "points trading" back then. Koven once stated, that they got payed according to their rank in the official ladder. So he also had to defend against cheaters, un-sync games etc. He was always top notch, but he had to adjust his rating accordingly, due to cheaters. Almost all at the top did points trading. Smurf accounts, the system, some refusing to play against weaker players, or some playing DM to get points faster. Also some game "hacks", like the farming bug etc. that gave you the edge in early FLUSHing games. So take this: 1850 is extremely good in RM 1vs1. 2k+ players are exceptionally good at micro-management. A skill to be learned. I was part of CN, you might remember this clan from our most famous player, Lightning_CN. Greets to Force, Gwenny etc. where ever you are! :) PS: There is a book from L_Clan_Chris at Amazon. Some knowledge bites to digest.
- xuki 6y ago
  As someone who could never break 1750 on Zone, hat off to both of you. Even though I no longer play, I did follow the scene closely for a while until a few years ago. To my surprise DauT is still a top player, although one of his teammate is clearly the indisputable No. 1 by a distance compare to anyone else.
  - dreamer7 6y ago
    To me, DauT is the Mikhail Tal of AOE while Viper is Bobby Fischer. I've watched endless videos of DauT and Viper playing AoE. ZeroEmpires has done a lot to popularize AoE streaming. Here's his YouTube channel if anyone is interested - https://www.youtube.com/user/ZeroEmpires https://www.youtube.com/user/ZeroEmpires
    - _the_inflator 6y ago
      T90official is also suuuuupercool! He also started as a pretty mediocre player and now deserves his rank among the best players! He shares a lot of his secrets and is also #1 commentator now for AoE II:DE related games: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZUT79WUUpZlZ-XMF7l4CFg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZUT79WUUpZlZ-XMF7l4CFg Also watch his Twitch account. Spirit of the Law is also a great resource: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChzLZJo-SxuPHz-oYKAIC_g https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChzLZJo-SxuPHz-oYKAIC_g
ZephyrBlu 6y ago
> Eventually I decided that I no longer wished to prioritize the game over other things This is what I unfortunately found as well. I reached Legend in Hearthstone (The top rank, no clue what percentile it was) a while back and top 3-5% in StarCraft II a couple of years ago. In both games I stopped playing shortly after reaching that level because the time investment just didn't seem worth it to me. I love games, but playing at a very high level requires a lot of practice and focus. I don't really think it's possible to play competitively and do much else because of the time investment required just to stay at your current level, let alone improve. I love games, but it's hard to justify when I could be doing something more productive with my time.
- MperorM 6y ago
  I think there's something to be argued that reaching a high level in any competitive game or sport has merit. I've learned more valuable lessons from competing in Starcraft than I can count. Without knowing the exact opportunity cost, I think trading my highschool grades for the competitive experience was worth it. The biggest mistake I think I made was not cutting games out completely after having learned those lessons.
  - ZephyrBlu 6y ago
    I definitely agree and also feel like I've learned valuable lessons from SC2. It sucks to give a game up though :/.
    - fakedang 6y ago
      I play Starcraft for the story only, and I loved it. Still play the campaign from time to time. I feel like a savage amongst civilized men on this thread.
      - Sherwoodcs 6y ago
        Please don't feel like "a savage among civilized men". Video games are made to have fun with. I experienced both sides. First trying to become a professional CS:GO player, and after just having fun playing the Starcraft 2 story. Some of my friends still deeply enjoy the competitive aspect. Sometimes I just want to see big stonking robots blow up aliens :)
nurettin 6y ago
There is not even a modicum of similarity other than both of them being called games.
- C19is20 6y ago
  Once I explained the similarities, my kids got into chess.
- Pelic4n 6y ago
  There is a staggering amount of similarity between the two, especially at the competitive level where chess moves needs to be played very fast. The biggest differences I see is that AoE2 is not a perfect information game, and that it needs micromanagement.
- arcticfox 6y ago
  You might enjoy the games of Federico Perez Ponsa, chess Grandmaster. He plays Age of Empires II at a 2k+ level and is known as Fedex.
  - nurettin 6y ago
    Thanks, that is interesting. I used to be 2000+ rated for AOE1 on zone.com and 1400+ chess on Yahoo! games back in late 90s, and to me it is a point of contention that I often bring up because chess is not motivated by capital greed whereas microsoft and their game studios are. And the dissimilarity between two games is pretty obvious to anyone who plays above 700 ranks.
    - Guthur 6y ago
      Sorry, what? What does MS market position have to do with the design of the game, it's not like it has any sort of monetization within the game mechanics at all. You are conflating so much BS that it shows a profound lack of understand of both game mechanics and dare i say market economics. It appears that you've rapped yourself up in some anti market bubble of cognitive disonance and can not longer think straight, I'm sorry for your pain.
jaggederest 6y ago
If you're ever stuck on Rails stuff or want suggestions about where to go next, feel free to ping me, email in my profile. I've enjoyed tutoring/mentoring a lot over the last few years, would be a privilege to do more. That goes for any anonymous readers, as well. Anything from a one liner email all the way up to screensharing, helping people to learn is a gift.
- aerovistae 6y ago
  Thank you very much for the invitation, really appreciated!
castaweh 6y ago
I can relate to this. I was briefly around 1800 in HD and DE, but found that if I didn't play for a while that I'd come back and find myself outclassed. I uninstalled and reinstalled the game about five times over a couple of years because I found myself putting too much time into it to try to maintain a competitive skill level. I actually tried to get into chess after quitting AoE2, to fill that strategic urge, but found the same thing - if I wasn't dedicating time and thought to it regularly I couldn't retain the advances I'd made in skill without going through a "warm up" period all over again (usually of losses).
baxtr 6y ago
Ahh. So many nights lost (spent) :) AoE was sooo much fun. Dunno. Feels like nothing similar out there nowadays?
- noahtallen 6y ago
  AoE2 is alive and well with the recently-released definitive edition! I’m also excited for AoE4, which will be set in the same time period, but otherwise different.
johnnycerberus 6y ago
As a chess player I could never get into RTS games though my friends were playing them alot, especially Warcraft 3, but even then they switched to mods like Dota). Instead, I'm pretty good at turn-based games like Civilization V and VI. It feels very cumbersome to control all these units in real time. I could never get used to it and I played many games in that RTS genre: Rise of Nations, C&C: Generals, AOE 2 and 3. Nowadays, I'm not a PC gamer anymore, I have Chess.com, Hearthstone and Civilization on my iPad, it is amazing how a tablet can be a very good medium for turn-based gaming.
- pms 6y ago
  Try Heroes of Might and Magic 3 (HD version with Horn of the Abbys). This turn-based strategy game is excellent. It's 20 years old, and yet it has a larger average Twitch viewership than AoE, because of its awesome competitive scene.
gutter_rat 6y ago
I got into AOE soon after it was released in 1997. Especially early on, when we didn’t know much, it provided a rich universe of interesting economic, tactical, and strategic problems to solve. I spent countless hours studying the game, practicing, competing, and hanging out on the MrFixit forum. I once played one AOE game after another nonstop for 33 hours. Like you and many others, I eventually concluded it was too much of a distraction and uninstalled it permanently in order to focus on other endeavors. That was about 18 years ago. It’s nice to see there are still plenty of people enjoying the game.
RhodoYolo 6y ago
I don't know if you've ever played runescape but it has a very similar experience to the one you are describing. It's interesting you compare your time spent in a game to time spent productively outside the game. One of the things driving the 'investments' in those style of games(MMO's) is that you get this feeling of progress and can compare your progress to your friends 'skills'. I've been writing alot in my personal journal on how to turn runescape skills into real life skills with achievements. Ruby on rails would be a 'skill' and based on time spent doing pomodoros to earn xp for a 'Ruby on Rails' Skill, combined with certain projects awarding XP and achievements would turn real life into a game. Think like a self defined 'Khan Academy meets Facebook'. You could see your friends skills and see what they are working on. Maybe a bulletin board/ social media style GUI that would say ' x just completed a pomodoro in Piano'. You could post to your linkedin account all the 'skills' you've obtained to show your various interests.
- megameter 6y ago
  I agree with this assessment: MMOs are very good at getting a person into a skill-acquisition mindset. I've been off-and-on with Planetside 2 for a few years now(it's been getting good updates lately, and I've been seeing new players popping up - good time to get in) and while not every part of it is as deep as it could be, it's got an absolutely huge surface area to study - MMO, FPS, vehicle gameplay, construction, leadership, strategy, and all the edges where these things meet - which means you can feel you've hit your limit in one area and simply shift over to another instead of quitting the game entirely. Unlike many MMOs the grind is not heavily stat-focused either: while you can get unlocks and upgrades, most of them constitute "sidegrades" into a specialty role. On the field, your effectiveness still comes down to knowing the ins and outs of the gameplay. And there are leaderboards to motivate competitive players, but it's widely acknowledged that playstyles are not represented equally on these boards: it is straightforward to get a very high K/D by learning one of the various kill-farming techniques, and to get a lot of experience points with a support role around a meatgrinder battle. But those things don't necessarily contribute the most to your faction. It's things like that that suggest where the model breaks down on application to real world skills. Generally, once a person is aware of the things they need to focus on, through good feedback, they can stay on the task. But if you look at a thing like programming, it's like, "where's the feedback?" It's not the butt-in-chair hours that are doing the lifting here. And it isn't reducable to lines compiled or issues cleared or other single-number metrics either. "Speedcoding" is only good in rare circumstances. It's more like a finished project is a series of quests that build on each other, with each quest having some checklist pass/fail requirements. But each one is bespoke, and hard to compare to others even if it's applying the same skills. Indeed I actually do write down pass/fails conditions as a checklist in the comments to start with a complex implementation, and to create a kernel of documentation. Having tools helps, but it's that early conceptual/goal-setting where I put down boundaries that seems to make the biggest difference.
tibbar 6y ago
Hey, OP here - thanks for this wonderful comment. I'd like to hijack this thread to say that I respond to this comment and several other questions here - https://jacobbrazeal.wordpress.com/2020/11/17/the-touching-responses-to-on-learning-chess/ https://jacobbrazeal.wordpress.com/2020/11/17/the-touching-r.... Thank you all for such a warm reception.
dcist 6y ago
I play AOE2 as well (the Definitive Edition is really great), but I never got that serious about it. I play with relatives and friends mostly. I've watched some videos about how to increase my efficiency and some basic strategies (killing the boar, fast castle, etc.) but never really dedicated myself to it. Really brilliant game. It just gets everything right and the graphics are timeless. I can't think of another game that still gets regular updates and has a big online following 21 years after it was released.

the_only_law 6y ago

Never got into aoe2 but used to play a good bit of aoe3 (and have started again since the DE released). I used to hang around people who played ot semi competitively though I was never on that level. I understood the game for the most part, but my execution was never good enough. Too much semi precise timings required and I could never get my APM high enough.

Pelic4n 6y ago

That's amazing. I love that game dearly and have been playing on/off for more than 15 years, so I get routinely obsessed with it, play a lot a few weeks, get good against the AI (usually using cheese like huskarl spam or massed mangudai), then get my ass handed to me online & ends up quitting. Then I don't play for a year or so. At which point were you able to reliably not fail the boar lure ?

rubidium 6y ago
If you’re dying to the boars you should just be playing the first 9 min of the game on repeat against the AI. If you can’t master that after 15-30 games, then RTS are not for you :)
aerovistae 6y ago
While I disagree with the other comment gatekeeping RTS's, which can be played however you want (my father pauses the game in between every action in order to keep up with the gamestate), I do agree that ~15-25 games of dedicated boar lure practice, just restarting the game after each attempt, should be enough to get it right in tandem with watching some videos on how to do it.

_the_inflator 6y ago

Hey there fellow AoE II player! Cool, to hear from some decent player. What time did you play? Around 2002? Since I was a 2k player at the time, let me assure you, that the top dudes at the time (Koven, Sheriff for example) were already so called pro gamers who got payed/sponsored and they were exceptionally good. The true story is, that many folks above 2k+ did what was called "points trading" back then. Koven once stated, that they got payed according to their rank in the official ladder. So he also had to defend against cheaters, un-sync games etc. He was always top notch, but he had to adjust his rating accordingly, due to cheaters. Almost all at the top did points trading. Smurf accounts, the system, some refusing to play against weaker players, or some playing DM to get points faster. Also some game "hacks", like the farming bug etc. that gave you the edge in early FLUSHing games. So take this: 1850 is extremely good in RM 1vs1. 2k+ players are exceptionally good at micro-management. A skill to be learned. I was part of CN, you might remember this clan from our most famous player, Lightning_CN. Greets to Force, Gwenny etc. where ever you are! :) PS: There is a book from L_Clan_Chris at Amazon. Some knowledge bites to digest.

xuki 6y ago
As someone who could never break 1750 on Zone, hat off to both of you. Even though I no longer play, I did follow the scene closely for a while until a few years ago. To my surprise DauT is still a top player, although one of his teammate is clearly the indisputable No. 1 by a distance compare to anyone else.
- dreamer7 6y ago
  To me, DauT is the Mikhail Tal of AOE while Viper is Bobby Fischer. I've watched endless videos of DauT and Viper playing AoE. ZeroEmpires has done a lot to popularize AoE streaming. Here's his YouTube channel if anyone is interested - https://www.youtube.com/user/ZeroEmpires https://www.youtube.com/user/ZeroEmpires
  - _the_inflator 6y ago
    T90official is also suuuuupercool! He also started as a pretty mediocre player and now deserves his rank among the best players! He shares a lot of his secrets and is also #1 commentator now for AoE II:DE related games: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZUT79WUUpZlZ-XMF7l4CFg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZUT79WUUpZlZ-XMF7l4CFg Also watch his Twitch account. Spirit of the Law is also a great resource: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChzLZJo-SxuPHz-oYKAIC_g https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChzLZJo-SxuPHz-oYKAIC_g

ZephyrBlu 6y ago

> Eventually I decided that I no longer wished to prioritize the game over other things This is what I unfortunately found as well. I reached Legend in Hearthstone (The top rank, no clue what percentile it was) a while back and top 3-5% in StarCraft II a couple of years ago. In both games I stopped playing shortly after reaching that level because the time investment just didn't seem worth it to me. I love games, but playing at a very high level requires a lot of practice and focus. I don't really think it's possible to play competitively and do much else because of the time investment required just to stay at your current level, let alone improve. I love games, but it's hard to justify when I could be doing something more productive with my time.

MperorM 6y ago
I think there's something to be argued that reaching a high level in any competitive game or sport has merit. I've learned more valuable lessons from competing in Starcraft than I can count. Without knowing the exact opportunity cost, I think trading my highschool grades for the competitive experience was worth it. The biggest mistake I think I made was not cutting games out completely after having learned those lessons.
- ZephyrBlu 6y ago
  I definitely agree and also feel like I've learned valuable lessons from SC2. It sucks to give a game up though :/.
  - fakedang 6y ago
    I play Starcraft for the story only, and I loved it. Still play the campaign from time to time. I feel like a savage amongst civilized men on this thread.
    - Sherwoodcs 6y ago
      Please don't feel like "a savage among civilized men". Video games are made to have fun with. I experienced both sides. First trying to become a professional CS:GO player, and after just having fun playing the Starcraft 2 story. Some of my friends still deeply enjoy the competitive aspect. Sometimes I just want to see big stonking robots blow up aliens :)

nurettin 6y ago

There is not even a modicum of similarity other than both of them being called games.

C19is20 6y ago
Once I explained the similarities, my kids got into chess.
Pelic4n 6y ago
There is a staggering amount of similarity between the two, especially at the competitive level where chess moves needs to be played very fast. The biggest differences I see is that AoE2 is not a perfect information game, and that it needs micromanagement.
arcticfox 6y ago
You might enjoy the games of Federico Perez Ponsa, chess Grandmaster. He plays Age of Empires II at a 2k+ level and is known as Fedex.
- nurettin 6y ago
  Thanks, that is interesting. I used to be 2000+ rated for AOE1 on zone.com and 1400+ chess on Yahoo! games back in late 90s, and to me it is a point of contention that I often bring up because chess is not motivated by capital greed whereas microsoft and their game studios are. And the dissimilarity between two games is pretty obvious to anyone who plays above 700 ranks.
  - Guthur 6y ago
    Sorry, what? What does MS market position have to do with the design of the game, it's not like it has any sort of monetization within the game mechanics at all. You are conflating so much BS that it shows a profound lack of understand of both game mechanics and dare i say market economics. It appears that you've rapped yourself up in some anti market bubble of cognitive disonance and can not longer think straight, I'm sorry for your pain.

jaggederest 6y ago

If you're ever stuck on Rails stuff or want suggestions about where to go next, feel free to ping me, email in my profile. I've enjoyed tutoring/mentoring a lot over the last few years, would be a privilege to do more. That goes for any anonymous readers, as well. Anything from a one liner email all the way up to screensharing, helping people to learn is a gift.

aerovistae 6y ago
Thank you very much for the invitation, really appreciated!

castaweh 6y ago

I can relate to this. I was briefly around 1800 in HD and DE, but found that if I didn't play for a while that I'd come back and find myself outclassed. I uninstalled and reinstalled the game about five times over a couple of years because I found myself putting too much time into it to try to maintain a competitive skill level. I actually tried to get into chess after quitting AoE2, to fill that strategic urge, but found the same thing - if I wasn't dedicating time and thought to it regularly I couldn't retain the advances I'd made in skill without going through a "warm up" period all over again (usually of losses).

baxtr 6y ago

Ahh. So many nights lost (spent) :) AoE was sooo much fun. Dunno. Feels like nothing similar out there nowadays?

noahtallen 6y ago
AoE2 is alive and well with the recently-released definitive edition! I’m also excited for AoE4, which will be set in the same time period, but otherwise different.

johnnycerberus 6y ago

As a chess player I could never get into RTS games though my friends were playing them alot, especially Warcraft 3, but even then they switched to mods like Dota). Instead, I'm pretty good at turn-based games like Civilization V and VI. It feels very cumbersome to control all these units in real time. I could never get used to it and I played many games in that RTS genre: Rise of Nations, C&C: Generals, AOE 2 and 3. Nowadays, I'm not a PC gamer anymore, I have Chess.com, Hearthstone and Civilization on my iPad, it is amazing how a tablet can be a very good medium for turn-based gaming.

pms 6y ago
Try Heroes of Might and Magic 3 (HD version with Horn of the Abbys). This turn-based strategy game is excellent. It's 20 years old, and yet it has a larger average Twitch viewership than AoE, because of its awesome competitive scene.

gutter_rat 6y ago

I got into AOE soon after it was released in 1997. Especially early on, when we didn’t know much, it provided a rich universe of interesting economic, tactical, and strategic problems to solve. I spent countless hours studying the game, practicing, competing, and hanging out on the MrFixit forum. I once played one AOE game after another nonstop for 33 hours. Like you and many others, I eventually concluded it was too much of a distraction and uninstalled it permanently in order to focus on other endeavors. That was about 18 years ago. It’s nice to see there are still plenty of people enjoying the game.

RhodoYolo 6y ago

I don't know if you've ever played runescape but it has a very similar experience to the one you are describing. It's interesting you compare your time spent in a game to time spent productively outside the game. One of the things driving the 'investments' in those style of games(MMO's) is that you get this feeling of progress and can compare your progress to your friends 'skills'. I've been writing alot in my personal journal on how to turn runescape skills into real life skills with achievements. Ruby on rails would be a 'skill' and based on time spent doing pomodoros to earn xp for a 'Ruby on Rails' Skill, combined with certain projects awarding XP and achievements would turn real life into a game. Think like a self defined 'Khan Academy meets Facebook'. You could see your friends skills and see what they are working on. Maybe a bulletin board/ social media style GUI that would say ' x just completed a pomodoro in Piano'. You could post to your linkedin account all the 'skills' you've obtained to show your various interests.

megameter 6y ago
I agree with this assessment: MMOs are very good at getting a person into a skill-acquisition mindset. I've been off-and-on with Planetside 2 for a few years now(it's been getting good updates lately, and I've been seeing new players popping up - good time to get in) and while not every part of it is as deep as it could be, it's got an absolutely huge surface area to study - MMO, FPS, vehicle gameplay, construction, leadership, strategy, and all the edges where these things meet - which means you can feel you've hit your limit in one area and simply shift over to another instead of quitting the game entirely. Unlike many MMOs the grind is not heavily stat-focused either: while you can get unlocks and upgrades, most of them constitute "sidegrades" into a specialty role. On the field, your effectiveness still comes down to knowing the ins and outs of the gameplay. And there are leaderboards to motivate competitive players, but it's widely acknowledged that playstyles are not represented equally on these boards: it is straightforward to get a very high K/D by learning one of the various kill-farming techniques, and to get a lot of experience points with a support role around a meatgrinder battle. But those things don't necessarily contribute the most to your faction. It's things like that that suggest where the model breaks down on application to real world skills. Generally, once a person is aware of the things they need to focus on, through good feedback, they can stay on the task. But if you look at a thing like programming, it's like, "where's the feedback?" It's not the butt-in-chair hours that are doing the lifting here. And it isn't reducable to lines compiled or issues cleared or other single-number metrics either. "Speedcoding" is only good in rare circumstances. It's more like a finished project is a series of quests that build on each other, with each quest having some checklist pass/fail requirements. But each one is bespoke, and hard to compare to others even if it's applying the same skills. Indeed I actually do write down pass/fails conditions as a checklist in the comments to start with a complex implementation, and to create a kernel of documentation. Having tools helps, but it's that early conceptual/goal-setting where I put down boundaries that seems to make the biggest difference.

tibbar 6y ago

Hey, OP here - thanks for this wonderful comment. I'd like to hijack this thread to say that I respond to this comment and several other questions here - https://jacobbrazeal.wordpress.com/2020/11/17/the-touching-responses-to-on-learning-chess/ https://jacobbrazeal.wordpress.com/2020/11/17/the-touching-r.... Thank you all for such a warm reception.

dcist 6y ago

I play AOE2 as well (the Definitive Edition is really great), but I never got that serious about it. I play with relatives and friends mostly. I've watched some videos about how to increase my efficiency and some basic strategies (killing the boar, fast castle, etc.) but never really dedicated myself to it. Really brilliant game. It just gets everything right and the graphics are timeless. I can't think of another game that still gets regular updates and has a big online following 21 years after it was released.