Docked: Age Of Mythology Tale Of The Dragon Out Now

Age of Mythology [official site] came out in 2002, a more innocent time when people spent their time pretending Half Life was actually going to get a sequel. "Valve can't count to two," guffawed the internet. "Ha ha ha." More fool the internet, which failed to predict the appearance of Left 4 Dead 2, Dota 2, Portal 2 and, yes, Half Life 2.

The short-sighted global system of interconnected computers we now know as Charlotte's Web also failed to predict Tale of the Dragon, an expansion for Age of Mythology, which came out yesterday, almost fourteen years after the game originally launched. Stupid internet.

Tale of the Dragon hasn't had the warmest welcome. With 115 reviews tallied at the time of writing, Steam rates the response as 'Mixed' and there are all manner of complaints. Some people reckon it seems like a mod rather than a 'proper' expansion and others are struggling to get it running at all.

The core of the package is a new civilisation, the Chinese, who have their own 12 god pantheon and a full campaign. If the internet is to be believed - and as I scientifically verified above, it isn't - there are lots of recoloured units and ropey voice acting.

The developers have been working to fix, or recommend fixes for, some of the crashes that were affecting people at launch. Basic advice is to disable all mods that are running if all necessary files are in place and have been verified.

Hopefully the major issues will be sorted and people can dig into the new pantheons and powers. Forgotten Empires and Skybox, who worked on the expansion, have done solid work before - they were responsible for Age of Empires 2's recent revival.