In 2000, Pandemic Studios came out with a pretty enjoyable Star Wars game called Star Wars Battlefront, featuring some of the epic battles from the movies. You could play as a standard issue soldier or even take control of one of the Star Wars heroes every once in a while. Now take the same concept and apply it to Tolkien’s (or rather Peter Jackson’s) The Lord of the Rings and you’ll get The Lord of the Rings: Conquest. Based around some of the most memorable battles from the books and the movie trilogy, the game puts you in the shoes of a no name soldier during the War of the Ring, while also giving you the opportunity to play as a hero character. Sounds fun, eh? Not really, because the game isn’t half as fun as it promises to be.
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The game is primarily a multiplayer focused affair complete with a “tacked on” single player campaign. While the single player might look appealing in the beginning, you’ll soon realise that it lacks any kind of coherence or depth. You can play as the good factions in the War of the Ring campaign or wreak havoc on Middle Earth in the Rise of Sauron campaign, which features an alternate take on the events that would have taken place had Frodo decided to elope with Sam instead of heading into Mordor.
All this sounds pretty epic stuff, especially if you’re a Tolkien nerd, but it’s rather disappointing. Levels which should feel large are confined to much smaller battle areas blocked off by invisible walls from the rest of the battlefield. Helm’s Deep feels like a small fortress that is about two storeys high. This is even more obvious in levels like the Pelennor fields, where you can see hundreds of troops fighting elsewhere but if you try to get there, you’ll be slapped with a warning to return to the battlefield… so much for the “epic” feeling that the game is trying to achieve. Hardcore LOTR fans may cringe at some of the liberties the game takes with the source material. In one section set during the reclamation of the Mines of Moria, you have Gandalf fighting the Balrog (again?) alongside troops from Gondor. And just why is a Roharrim charging into battle on foot?
In battle, you can choose to play as one of the four predefined classes. There are the self explanatory Warrior, Archer and Mage classes along with a Scout, basically a stealthy assassin who can turn invisible and stab enemies in the back for one hit kills. Among these the Mage feels rather overpowered with his decent close combat skills and devastating offensive and defensive magical abilities. Large creatures such as Ents or Trolls can be controlled, acting like “tanks”, soaking up and dealing heavy damage. You’ll also be able to use mounts such as horses and wargs, but they’re a lot worse than moving on foot, so it’s best to leave them alone.
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At certain points in the game, you’re given the option of playing as one of the hero characters. The game features a pretty impressive list of heroes you can play as ranging from Gandalf to the Dark Lord Sauron himself. However, the heroes are nothing but beefed up versions of the four classes and can actually die rather easily. Didn’t know Sauron could be killed by ordinary soldiers. To add insult to injury, pretty much all the heroes feature extremely cheesy voice acting and sound nothing like their movie counterparts.
Much of the gameplay revolves around hacking and slashing or shooting through hordes of enemies while holding a certain area before moving to the next. While the constantly changing objectives actually give a good sense of pace and keep things moving, the core combat itself gets old rather quickly. Collision detection feels somewhat broken and your allies constantly keep getting in your way. Each class has a large set of moves and special abilities but it feels rather useless because in the end it all boils down to just mowing down enemies with basic attacks. Larger enemies such as Trolls and Oliphaunts need timed button presses to bring down and the animations can be entertaining for a while.
Multiplayer fares slightly better, and in the beginning it might feel like a refreshing change from the usual shooter based titles. You have your standard Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag and Domination game types, each with an LOTR twist. Games are easy to find at the moment, but one wonders how many may still want to play the game in about two months. Also, the classes feel unbalanced since the Mages can pretty much single-handedly wipe out most of the opposition. Still, there is some enjoyment you can extract from the online component while the community is still active. The entire campaign can also be played with another player in split-screen mode and you can even play offline matches with bots.
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Graphically, the game is nothing special but is not bad either. Character models are well detailed and the environments look pretty decent. More importantly, the frame rate is pretty consistent even with many units on screen at once. The music, most of which is taken directly from the movies, is pretty good. As mentioned before, the voice acting is horrible and I’m sure you’ll want to murder the announcers for the single player campaign. The exception, however, is the mid-mission cut scenes which feature footage from the movies with voice-overs by Hugo Weaving, who plays Lord Elrond in the movies and is the only actor to be featured in this game.
Conclusion
LOTR Conquest is not a terribly bad game; it’s just an uninspired attempt to cash in on the success of the franchise. It’s hardly worth recommending, since there are much better titles to invest time in. Fans of Middle Earth may be able to get some enjoyment out of it (if you’re willing to look past some of the indiscrepencies), but others may want to look elsewhere.
Next Page: “Bland and unimaginative”
The Lord of the Rings, the epic novel by J R R Tolkien, must have been read by every literature-loving, English-speaking person in the world, The movie trilogy, which has broken many Hollywood box office records, must have been watched by every movie buff out there. Even the previous games based on this story line were fairly successful. With this in the background, one can’t help but have high expectations on this latest game by Pandemic Studios, The Lord of the Rings: Conquest.
The single player mode has two campaigns and an instant action mode. The War of the Ring campaign, where you play the forces of good, follows the events in the LOTR trilogy, which once finished, unlocks the Rise of Sauron campaign, which creates a scenario assuming Frodo fails to destroy the ring and narrates the consequent events that lead to the dark lord’s rise to power. This campaign lets you take control of Sauron’s forces. Both the campaigns are equally short and mediocre. The instant action mode lets you play Capture the One Ring, Conquest and Team Deathmatch with 15 AI bots.
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Each campaign is divided into chapters. You need to complete certain objectives to complete the chapter. You start each chapter playing as one of four classes – The Warrior is the standard hack and slash character, The Archer uses bow and arrows in combat, The Mage uses magic and can heal his allies, and The Scout can use stealth and move around and stab enemies in the back undetected. The objectives may be anything from capture a base to defend the base for a certain amount of time, kill a certain number of enemies to kill the boss. Almost every chapter has the same set of objectives, just in a different order, set in different maps, making the game very repetitive. The game allows for switching of characters in between objectives at spawn points. You also get to play as a hero at critical points in the game.
The game play is bland and unimaginative. There is a lack of variety in the combat moves, which restricts the game play to just plain button mashing. There is no gore or finishing moves. There is no satisfaction derived from killing an enemy troll or even an oliphaunt or an enemy boss. To add to that, there are glitches in this game, which may make the enemy boss commit suicide by falling off a cliff without even fighting you, make horses stand and freeze on their two front legs, or make your character get stuck in a fence or wall.
The graphics in the game are just as uninspiring. The character animations and character models are, to put it simply, crappy. The environment textures are smudgy and bland and you cannot help but compare them to the awesome visuals in the movie trilogy and rant about it. The entire sound track has been ripped from the movie trilogy and is the one positive in the game. Through out the campaign, you will have a voice in the background repeatedly telling what you need to do. It becomes quite irritating and only gets worse in the Rise of Sauron campaign, where you’re called all sorts of names; filthy maggot, fool, idiot, and filthy rat to name a few.
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And then there is the multiplayer, which has three modes of gameplay. The Capture the One Ring mode, which is like capture the flag, the Team Deathmatch mode and the Conquest mode, which is like Capture the Control Point. The multiplayer is plagued by the same defects as the single player campaigns and the character classes are very imbalanced, with the Mage more powerful then any other class.
Conclusion
I am a huge fan of action games and I’ve played and enjoyed even mediocre games in this genre like Viking and Too Human. I am also a big fan of J R R Tolkien’s Middle Earth and must have watched the movie trilogy at least a dozen times. So when I got this game in my hands, I did expect a lot from it, but sadly it disappoints on every front. This game had so much potential and could have been much better had there been a genuine effort from the developers.
Next Page: “Hampered by redundancy”
Pandemic Studios’ Lord of the Rings: Conquest is the latest installment in the already huge line-up of LOTR games. Honestly, when I first heard about the game, I wasn’t very excited. Don’t get me wrong though, I was and still am a huge fan of Lord of the Rings – The Series, it’s just that the games to me were not consistent with the flair the rest of the series offers. LOTR to me is all about epic, massive battles. So imagine getting the opportunity to recreate the magic of these battles. Sounds Interesting? While LOTR: Conquest lives up to a few of these expectations, the game, on the whole, is a bit of a disappointment.
It’s an action game that is built around the epic battles of Middle Earth depicted in J R R Tolkeins’ books. It lets you play through two campaigns – as the forces of good and as the armies of Sauron. Initially, you will start with the War of the Ring that follows the events that took place in the movies. After this, you move on to the Rise of Sauron, which follows a story, where Frodo does not destroy the Ring and fails in his quest after which, it lands in the hands of Sauron, leading to events which do not actually take place in the series.
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Conquest lets you play as one of the four different classes of soldiers – Mage, Scout, Warrior, and Archer. Though at important key points you will assume the role of some of the more famous characters from the series (Frodo, Aroagon , etc). The campaign mode of the game ranges from you having to assault an enemy outpost to defending your command positions. You can play single player or co-op. The Different class of soldiers have different skills and abilities, strengths and weakness. With the archer you can assault your enemies with a barrage of lethal arrows. The scout can cloak himself to become invisible and plan a sneak attack. The Mage can cast spells on enemies and the Warrior can mow down enemies with his sword.
The various heroes also fall into the same class, so the move list is basically the same throughout the game. You’ll start with a handful of weapons and moves and these remain consistent through the game; there are no extra weapons. While the different classes of soldiers add a bit of variety to the game, the overall gameplay is pretty monotonous. The different classes of soldiers have different powers, but most of the time you’ll find yourself pressing the same combination of buttons to unleash these powers. So more often than not, you’ll find yourself getting bored with the repetitive button smashing.
Combat is also disappointing. The melee combat in particular is clunky. You’ll quite often find yourself swinging at empty spaces and missing your target. It is also frustratingly easy for you to get knocked down and get killed during battle because the fight more often than not favours the one who can land the first blow. The co-op aspect of the game doesn’t help the case much either. While it may be fun at times to play with your friends, this only further highlights the flaws of the game.
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The online component of the game can accommodate up to 16 players and consists of three modes – Team Deathmatch, Hero Deathmatch and Capture the Ring. The Human Factor in multiplayer can induce the ‘strategy’ effect. While this may initially sound interesting, the online component is again hampered by redundancy. Sure, the modes are different, but the gameplay is basically the same.
The game isn’t visually that impressive either. The character models are done quite well, but the visuals do not do justice to the series. The game at times looks bland with poor textures. It fails to capture the magic of Lord of the Rings. The only place where the game actually shines is in the audio department, which is largely credited to Howard Stone’s Score and Hugo Weaving’s narration.
Conclusion
In the end LOTR: Conquest is a game that leaves you wanting more. It was an attempt to recreate the magic of the series, but unfortunately it fails to do so. While the game is enjoyable at times, the overall experience is bland. Monotonous gameplay, substandard visuals and slack presentation hamper what could have been the perfect game to a perfect series.
(+) Multiplayer can be a fun distraction for a while
(+) Multiple game modes offer a decent amount of variety
(-) Dull gameplay, restrictive levels & loads of glitches
(-) Deviations from the source material can be quite distracting
(-) Voice acting is atrociously bad
(-) Classes are not properly balanced
(-) Short incoherent single player campaigns
IndianVideoGamer Verdict: 5/10 (Avoid)