Many many years ago the Lord of the Rings trilogy was all the rage. Based off the movie, EA released a few action games that had some replay value, but anyone who saw the movie probably thought to themselves, “Wouldn’t this be great if there was a game based off this movie that was like Command & Conquer?” Well, think no more because EA has released The Battle For Middle Earth II for the Xbox 360.
Command & Conquer, for the uninitiated was a fantastic game for the PC released way back when and single handedly fired up the genre of RTS, or Real-Time Simulation. Games like C&C and WarCraft were so popular that these RTS themed games were released for the popular consoles at the time. There was one problem with these games: specifically, these PC based games didn’t convert from a mouse and keyboard to a controller that well at all.
Having been burned on these console-based RTS games from nearly a decade ago, it was with some significant anxiety that I went to review this game. Thankfully, I am pleased to report that although nothing will ever replace a PC for this genre, this Xbox 360 game comes pretty darn close to recreating that environment for me.
When you play an RTS game, you sometimes feel as though you just can’t keep up with everything that’s going on, and with LOTR you can feel that way too. However, a quick press of the Y button will direct you to the most pressing activity so you aren’t dragging your cursor all over the place trying to find the hotspots. That is a very nice touch!
The game itself centers around…wait for it…Middle Earth.. You can choose the good side or the evil side. While there are about 16 single player (eight good, eight evil) missions total to play, the skirmish mode adds extra value but it’s not a very long game by any means. The skirmish mode is rather interesting as you can pick the number of players, choose the map you want to play, how many resources you have and so forth.
People who have seen the movie or read the book shouldn’t have any problem following the story line. Even if you aren’t a devout follower, you can easily follow along with the game. The tutorial explains everything you need to know – which is extremely helpful if you are new to the RTS genre. Since everything does happen in real time, you have to allocate your resources to building new armies and having those armies fight accordingly. If you’ve played an RTS before, you’ll know what to do here, and the LOTR license is just a bonus. Knowing the story will add to the enjoyment of the game, however.
The pattern in the game is pretty standard: start with nothing, build an army or get reinforcements, build a fortress, be attacked by the bad guys or attack them, upgrade your armies and repeat. You have to earn the currency required to build these fortresses, and you have to have builders to build them…and of course these builders can’t fight if they are building..you get the idea here. As far as your fighters go, you can have ranged attacks or up close and personal…some of the creatures you fight are pretty impressive as well with their ranged attacks, so look out.
Obviously rule number one is to not have your army killed and as in all RTS games you’ll see a strength bar above each character. You’ll control these armies and using an on screen cursor you’ll order them around. You don’t do any of the hard fighting yourself, instead you are just guiding an army around to attack and do the dirty work for you – but you have to make the call to retreat or move forward. In addition to building the ‘standard’ army, you can also recruit heroes to help you out
As mentioned before, control of these types of games on a console can be frustrating. EA actually didn’t do a bad job here as it’s easy with a button and a trigger press to order everyone within your control to go to a certain place to attack or defend. Adding reinforcements or upgrading your armies with better equipment is a breeze too and very important to winning each level. The primary goals for each level are spelled out at the beginning; however secret or bonus goals may be obtained by stumbling upon them (they don’t give everything away upfront on the pause menu).
The 3D map is very nice and the graphics for the most part are impressive; however unfortunately with multiple armies on the screen, sometimes the frame rate can take a hit and it is noticeable. Obviously when you have what seems like zillions of armies fighting, it’s going to take a beating but it’s a real shame to see it happen on a 360.
