How could a game that lets you take control of an Ent and knock down swaths of hapless Uruk-hai with your massive branch-arms end up being so unimpressive?
Lord of the Rings: Conquest, an action game built around the legendary battles of Middle-earth depicted in J.R.R Tolkien's books, should have worked well. In Tolkien's stories, warriors with unique abilities combine their talents to win massive battles; Conquest developer Pandemic made a name for itself with the Star Wars Battlefront series, action games that featured squads of different character classes that combined their abilities to win massive battles. The perfect marriage!
But the honeymoon ends quickly. Conquest's 16-player online battles can be fun, but they get repetitive in short order. And the single-player mode, in which you can re-enact the big scenes from the movies and then play an alternate story in which the forces of Sauron win the day, is a mess.
Lord of the Rings: Conquest is available for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC. We reviewed the PlayStation 3 version.
If you do buy Conquest, you'll probably want to start with the single-player campaign. It's brief -- it won't take you more than a few hours to blast through all 15 levels, although you can go in later at a higher difficulty level. Playing the solo mode is a good way to get acquainted with the game's four different character classes.
Full review on WIRED here...