games: Lord of the Rings: Conquest

Lord of the Rings: Conquest is a bizarre slash fiction. If you dug up Tolkien and threw a copy of this game into his coffin, he’d spin around so fast that he’d probably turn into an old, dead version of Wonder Woman. Possibly with a beard.

Some developers have struggled with Tolkien’s world, because it doesn’t have much magic in it. Gandalf, Sarumon, Sauron - they’re all part of a tiny group of people with access to magic. The problem is, no-one wants to play a fantasy game where you can’t crimp off a fireball whenever you like.

So. How do EA get around this delicate tension?

By filling Middle-Earth with loads and loads of magic – of course! The warriors have magic fire swords, the Scouts can turn invisible - you know, that thing the ONE RING lets you do - and mages can fire a constant stream of electricity out of their hands. It’s no big deal of course.

The game takes you through all the setpiece action of the movies, and reproduces some of the scenes quite well. The warrior can wade and chop through crowds of Orcs - and you’ll only really be fighting Orcs. The ranger can pick people off from a distance, and is easily the most boring character to play. The scout can sneak up behind boss characters and back-stab them, and the mage - well, you can just about walk through every level firing off those constant bolts of chain lightning.

It’s a simple system to master, and there’s no character progression. Although the game tries to be like Dynasty Warriors - a pretty dubious aspiration - it’s actually more like Gauntlet. Every class will end the game with the same powers they started with, and when you play as Gandalf or Gimli, it’s just reiterations of the same powers.

Once you’ve finished the main campaign (eight missions), which should take you about five hours - then you get to play as a Nazgul. In the books, these guys are tough bananas; they live in the realms of magic, and a nick from their blade will fester and consume you. But don’t worry - they still have to use levers to open doors.

Lord of the Rings: Conquest isn’t awful. It’s very repetetive, very short, and wipes its downbelows with Tolkien’s lifeworks, but if you loved Ninety-Nine Nights and Dynasty Warriors, then your homework this week is to stop liking rubbish games.

The best of the rest:

Total Video Games:
Despite last year’s releases like Dead Space, Mirrors Edge, and Spore pushing forward a brave new world of original and inventive brands for Electronic Arts, the launch of Lord of the Rings: Conquest seems very much like a move by ‘old EA’: a faceless corporation that relied on annual updates and nasty movie adaptations. It’s not just that the Lord of the Rings phenomena has steadily declined since the last of the movies hit cinemas six (yes, SIX) years ago. Rather, it’s more to do with that EA has relentlessly plied gamers with more than a fair share of Lord of the Rings games this decade, most of of which have been toppled quicker than a drunk Orc with a club to the head. The JRPG wannabe, Lord of the Rings: The Third Age, is one particular low point that springs to mind.


Gameplayer:
The biggest problem with the Shire is that it is full of Shire folk. If, like us, you’ve always seen the Hobbitses as devaluers of rural real estate, lazy little lollygaggers, a skid mark upon the medieval underpants of Middle-Earth – then set your ears to ‘hearken up’. For not only does Lord of the Rings: Conquest let you hew through hordes of inbred orcs, it also allows you to embrace your dark side by putting ’shish-kabobbed Shirelings’ back on the men.

The Guardian:
LOTR: Conquest allows you to play out the key battles from Peter Jackson’s trilogy, from Helms Deep to Gandalf’s Balrog-bash, crammed into two single-player campaigns and a 16-player online mode. Each level follows the same pattern – namely, a frantic struggle against up to 150 onscreen foes to regain control points from the enemy.