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Review: Lord of the Rings: Conquest
by Lewis O'Brien
30.1.09

It's taken three years for a Lord of the Rings game to make it to console, not since the Battle for Middle-Earth II have we been exposed to Tolkien's fictional world and as with the console version of that game EA have successfully created a game that doesn't compliment either Tolkien's written world or Peter Jackson's films.

The game loosely follows both book and movie, beginning with the Battle of Helm's Deep (although one or two "what if" scenarios have been added such as a battle to retake Moria and a siege of Minas Morgul). Whether you play as Good or Evil (the Evil campaign is unlocked only after completing the Good campaign) you get the choice of four classes, Warrior, Archer, Mage or Scout. The game seems to favour the range class of the Archer, fire enough arrows while moving backwards and you have a good chance of beating anything that comes towards you, whether it be a weak orc or a great troll.


Conquest is made from the same mould as Star Wars: Battlefront 1 and 2 which were also made by Pandemic. One major difference being, the Battlefront games were good. Not that Conquest isn't outstandingly bad, it's just the same as every other game made by EA when they venture into genres that aren't sport related. The gameplay is disappointing as you soon find yourself falling into the repetitiveness that is button-mashing. 

The graphics overall are also sub-par, the only thing the developers seem to have concentrated on are the faces of the games residence; the rest of the game from a graphic point of view would fit in if it was released on the original Xbox. The size of the battles too is disappointing, even as close as a month or so from the release date, it was suggested that the number of participants in battles would be different depending on which map you were on abut could reach as much as 50. Instead we were restricted to a number around the 30 mark. Another nail in the coffin for this game is the heroes. Normally a point where developers can really go to town and be inventive with their abilities, special moves and so on. Not so in Conquest, the majority of the heroes are just the same as the normal classes but with a bit more survivability. Faramir and Aragorn, for example, are exactly the same. In fact, the only real difference is that Aragorn's special ability is to throw ghosts at his enemies!


Not all heroes however are unimaginative, Sauruman feels different, as does the Mouth of Sauron and the Balrog (they would actually find it hard to make him feel like a regular soldier though.) The animated quick time events are a great little feature too, the ability to climb up the leg of a Mumak and take it out in the same manner as Legolas does in the Return of the King is awesome as is scrambling up the back of a troll before performing a very graceful one hit move. It never gets old and adds some much needed balance to fighting against monsters. The randomness in some battle of being picked up by a circling giant eagle or nazgul, in my opinion is also a good addition to the game which gives you a feeling of being in a real battle where simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time can spell doom for a warrior. Having said that though, I did get exceptionally frustrated when, while playing as Sauron and striding menacingly towards Gandalf the White to begin an epic battle of the ages, I was picked up by a passing giant eagle which resulted in an instant kill.

Overall, this game lacks anything that is truely memorable, the bad gameplay, graphics and unimaginative style mean that the bad points greatly outweigh the good. The potential for a great game -certainly one that would become as successful as the Battlefront games, if not more- was definately there, but the end result is disappointing.

5/10

Lewis

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- Lewis O'Brien

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