GameSpy
Review
of Lord of the Rings: Conquest
Remember that scene in "The Two Towers," where Legolas and Gimli were competing for kills, calling out their current tally? Lord of the Rings: Conquest is the videogame iteration on that concept. Take the beloved characters from Tolkien's rich fantasy setting and drop them into team deathmatch and capture the flag (capture the ring!) scenarios, missing the point in the process. Frodo isn't a backstab-happy rogue out to get as many cheap backstab kills as he can, he's a troubled, somber character who bears the weight of the world on his shoulders. This is a game that takes what is arguably the most relevant intellectual property to gamers outside of "Star Wars" and somehow manages to bleed it of its charm.
Pandemic Studios' plan for The Lord of the Rings Conquest was simple. Take the formula from Star Wars: Battlefront and apply it to the settings and characters from the Lord of the Rings films and books. The playable characters are generic archetypes split into four basic roles: warrior, archer, scout, and mage. Some artistic license was taken with these, of course, since Middle-earth is a low-magic world and isn't known for having teams of mages running around nuking each other with bolts of lightning. The classes aren't balanced particularly well either, with the mage being dominant in online matches in our experience.
The twin campaigns are fairly short; you'll be able to plow through them in an evening on the lower difficulty setting, which still manages to be painfully difficult at times, even to a fault. The good campaign follows the events of the films quite closely, while the evil campaign is a "what if?" scenario in which Frodo failed to destroy the One Ring and where you control the forces of evil, including Sauron himself. The unique characters are almost identical to the generics, however, with some cosmetic changes and scaled up powers. There's little that separates Gandalf from your garden-variety mage, except his spells are more powerful, while Aragorn is just a Warrior with some ghost powers.
If you're going to get extended play time out of your purchase, you're going to have to want to take part in the game's online component, where you can choose to side with the forces of good or evil in game types originally designed for shooters. Melee combat is particularly frustrating, as it's easy to end up swinging into empty space, and the camera often makes it difficult to get your bearings. For a game that is meant to recreate the epic large-scale conflicts from the films and books, you never really get the chance to take that scale properly into perspective.
On a basic level, it can be gratifying to mash buttons to execute combos or fire off special abilities, but the game's combat just feels like it's lacking. Playing as an archer, for instance, should appeal to shooter fans, except that there's no gratifying feedback when you've shot an opponent. Unless the target actually keels over, you can't tell the difference between shooting an enemy or firing at a friend. It may be fun to get that backstab one-hit kill on an enemy as a scout, but try and use any of his other melee attacks and you'll just be met with a near insta-death. So many other games have executed third-person combat in more engaging ways that it's hard to settle for less.
Knocking down enemy characters is one of the predominant combat mechanics, but it also happens to be one of the most annoying. It's entirely too easy for you to be knocked helpless and killed in an instant, resulting in many moments where you've lost control of your character. You can accelerate the process of getting up, but generally, if you're knocked down you're out and will have to wait for a respawn. Managing your health in combat isn't made any easier by the fact that it's hard to tell when you're getting hit by anything without actively staring at your life bar.
Multiplayer is easy enough to get into, whether you're matched up over Xbox Live or through your EA Nation account. The actual matches just aren't as entertaining as we'd have liked, thanks to the clunky combat system and the boring match types. Running around generic bits of Middle-earthian ground to capture control points gets old real fast.
While the backgrounds aren't the most detailed, the character models look fair enough. The overall impression when looking at the game is a sense of everything being quite bland. Attack animations lack fluidity, and at times can feel pretty choppy. If you're looking for the best-looking version of the game, the PC version in particular has crisper, cleaner visuals, though all the versions we played were comparable and ran at a smooth frame rate. It's worth noting that in spite of the lackluster graphics, it can still be a treat for "The Lord of the Rings" fans to be able to defend Helm's Deep, to explore the Mines of Moria, and to eventually rampage through Rivendell and the Shire.
The voice work has its strengths and weaknesses. Hugo Weaving provides strong narration for the scenes clipped directly from the films, which serve to break up each chapter. On the other hand, the over-enthusiastic and repetitive commanders will get on your nerves as they repeat the same orders, over and over again. Yes, I know we have to take the command point, there's no need to keep saying so until my ears bleed. The generic grunts and the sounds of combat are satisfactory, but we experienced some issues with the Howard Shore soundtrack, which would cut out at times, leaving the game all too quiet.
Despite all its faults, playing The Lord of the Rings: Conquest can be fun with a friend. The two-player split-screen mode allows you to go through the campaign with a human ally, and it's fun to see who does better and gets to unlock the hero class. You'll be competing side-by-side, re-enacting Legolas and Gimli's friendly rivalry. It's especially exciting when you get to break away from the standard character classes and take on the special units, like the Ents, Trolls, Nazgul and Oliphaunts.
We were hoping for more from The Lord of the Rings: Conquest, and we're disappointed that the game didn't do more with such a powerful license. Star Wars: Battlefront hasn't aged very well, and to get essentially the same game with a different theme left us wanting more. "The Lord of the Rings" fans may want to rent this one to play through the campaigns, but anyone who wants a satisfying multiplayer experience should look elsewhere.
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