Age of Empires: Castle Siege for Windows 8

Pros

• Popular franchise
• Campaign isn't bad

Cons

• Too many pay walls
• Just another time management game

Age of Empires is a free to play strategy game for Windows 8. It takes its name and looks from the classic game series, but otherwise has little to do with the other games in the series.

If you are a fan of Age of Empires, you might be disappointed to find that this is a sequel in name only. There's almost nothing left from the classic series here, except for the fact that it takes place in a vaguely medieval world. You won't be raising a civilization and taking part in epic tactical battles here. Instead, you'll be going through the same time-based gates that you're used to from games like Clash of Clans. This game is many things, but one thing it is not is an Age of Empires game.

If you can get past the title, there's at least a solid example of the free-to-play genre here. The time gates grow as you get more powerful, and there's an ever-present threat of having to pay money if you want to stay competitive. The battles are fine, and the game looks good enough for what it is. This isn't something that you'll want to dedicate a great deal of time to if you don't want to pay out real money, but it's a good enough distraction.

Age of Empires Castle Siege is just another example of a popular franchise being used to sell free-to-play games. If you've got Windows 8 and want something with castles, you can probably do worse than this game. If you want a tactical strategy game, though, you'll probably want to dig out your old disks and play a real Age of Empires game instead.

Pros

• Popular franchise
• Campaign isn't bad

Cons

• Too many pay walls
• Just another time management game