Age of Empires III will be released to American consumers on October 18. A Collector’s Edition will be available for $69.99 and comes with all the useless stuff that people cram into these editions. A book of concept art, a “making of” DVD, a super special manual, etc.

I’ll buy it, mostly because everyone else will and the best part of gaming is the early day sharing of likes and dislikes. The demo disappointed me on so many levels, though, that I’m not excited about shelling out the fifty bucks to stay on top of things.

This, however, is one of the major strategy titles of the year. This isn’t a marginal game, like Legion: Arena – a game I am, at this point, much more interested in seeing than a retro-feeling Age game. But not playing it would be like being a movie critic who never saw Casablanca.

After all, there is still a chance that this game could end up on somebody’s Best of 2005 list. After all, GameSpy picked the first Empire Earth as its game of the year for 2001 and it wasn’t all that great.