Lord of the Rings: Conquest

Yet another game that makes me wish I was a gamer.

So it's going to be like Battlefront...but in Middle Earth? Now THAT is a clever idea.

I have to be honest, I have been burned/disappointed/assaulted by so many godawful tie-in efforts over the last 20+ years (fuck, I'm getting old), I just don't have the heart to dream anymore. How many truly great (not good or acceptable, but great) screen-to-video game adaptations have there been? Other than Chronicles of Riddick, KOTOR, and maybe Battlefront, I can't think of any within the last five to ten years. Out of what? A thousand releases?

For every good Star Wars title, there's at least four or five godawful ones. And I consider that to be one of the industry's better ratios. I can't think of a non-arcade comic book based game ... other than maybe the recent Marvel Ultimate Alliance/Legend series (which are okay) that hasn't sucked ass. There must be one ... right?

The Superman Returns and Iron Man demoes have squelched any remaining interest.

Let's create a list of very good to great tie-in games (no arcade games like Marvel v. Capcom or Jurassic Park). I'll start:

1.)KOTOR
2.)Battlefront
3.)Chronicles of Riddick
4.)Tie Figher/X:Wing
5.)Rebel Assault
6.)Marvel Alliance/Legends
7.)Goldeneye

What else?

I had a blast with the games based the LOTR for PS2. Not incredibly deep, but fun with a second person and decent production values.

I dug Constantine the game. Not the best, but it was fun. And Punisher was awesome.

It's Pandemic, it'll be great.

I thought Spiderman 2 was pretty damn good for PS2. How you screw that up with a sequel using basically the same engine I will never understand though.

Does Ultimate Alliance count?

Does it have to tie into a movie or could it tie into anything like a comic book or such?

I'll go with it for now:

1. Jedi Knight
2. Tie Fighter
3. The Chronicles of Riddick
4. Goldeneye
5. Marvel: Ultimate Alliance
6. The Punisher
7. The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction

The Punisher and Incredible Hulk games are good? I must investigate.

And yes, the Spider-Man series had a promising (but not really exemplary) beginning, and then quickly devolved into shit.

They're good dumb fun. Don't expect deep experiences out of them, but i got a severe kick out of Hulk-jumping around a sandbox NYC (I'm presuming at least it was Manhattan?) and blowing away loads of baddies in some of my favorite environs from the Ennis Punisher comics.

Goldeneye, Chronicles of Riddick and Lego Star wars show it can be done properly.

If there's proof it can be done properly, it's not a lost cause.

Videogame-to-movie adaptations on the other hand...

I don't know if this catches you before leaving but try asking them this:

The battles in the books were highly asymmetrical, ie fewer and more powerful good guys vs. more but less individually powerful bad guys (heroes excluded). Do they have any intention of trying this approach or is it going to be more symmetrical?

I'd love to know what stuff they're using in the game that was cut out of the films. I'm intrigued to know if there's possibilities of something like the Slime Balrog showing up, or whatever form of Sauron PJ had in mind back when he had him fighting Aragorn at the Black Gate.

Nice write up Alex. I wasn't a big fan of the Battlefront, so I probably won't be lining up for this, but I have to say they're not helping the case with those screen shots they gave you. It looks like the exact same engine used in the PS2 LOTR games that came out with the movies.

My brother told me about this last night, and I think I might have to pick it up. Great article Alex.

8v8?

That's deal-breakingly disappointing.

even playing online in the capture the battlefield locations? No A.I guys running around on either side for you to slaughter or be overwealmed by?

They put the trailer and a new oneup on xbox Live this week.

The new one, titled Good to be Bad has renewed my faith and if they put a demo out before release, i'm all over it.

fantastic news about the demo, the SW: Battlefront had me in the first m inute of playing with a friend.

And thanks for the heads up and articles btw.

Did a brief run through the tutorial on the demo. Looks and sounds great. Gameplay feels exactly like the EA movie tie-in games they released. I'll need to see how multiplayer feels before committing to a purchase next month...

Still not up on Xbox Live

There were trolls running around in the match I played last night Alex.

I'll need to play around with the control scheme and see if I find a solution; a big gripe for me so far is death from Ninja Gaiditis. There'd be times I'd head to a control point and find myself being killed constantly by archers and mages...and worse, fighting 1-on-1 with warriors also had me out of position with the action wasting melee attacks on thin air - and then being taken out by their well placed hits. The camera system is not your friend in this style of game which might keep this from being a day one buy.

I may have to try this again as my first play through did nothing for me.

THe Demo is up for Gold Members on Live.



initial thoughts: the Tutorial was kinda meh, but then again it does get you to learn all the things you can do with your soldier classes.

And the tutorials on the Battlefront games where underwhelming too. So no harm.


Played one 8 vs 8 in the Shire before realizing it was past 3am. I'm sold on the game.

The only thing I liked about the demo was that cheesy announcer during the training level, is he present throughout the game?

Is there a reason to play as anything other then the cloaking thief type guy? On my first and only multiplayer demo match i went 17-3 by just abusing the hell out of the hidden backstab.

Ouch, you were pretty high on this too. What went wrong?

Well, shit. I'm still gonna buy it though.

Good enough for me.

Not much talk on this... how are people liking it?

I'm mostly interested in 2 player co-op on the same system. My wife and I really enjoyed Star Wars Battlefront 1 and 2 played that way. How does it compare?

Also, can you play 2-players on the same system AND play online together at the same time?

I didn't run out to buy it because we are currently playing some Xmas presents (like Little Big Planet and World of Goo), so we probably won't buy it for a couple of weeks at least.

Thanks for the review and the heads up on 2-player online play... well, lack thereof (which I expected).

Is there a mode like Galactic Conquest in the SW Battlefront games where you are fighting to control a map? In other words, something to do besides play the campaigns or play online multiplayer?

Hmm... now I'm not sure as I'm as excited about getting it. I'd say that once we beat the campaigns on SW Battlefront 1 and 2, we rarely went back to them, because they are too predictable. We had much more fun just playing through galactic conquest with the different armies, made for more varied play.

I supposed I'll pick it up eventually, but now I'm in less of a hurry, maybe we'll finish tackling our other co-op games first before I worry about it. Ah well! I appreciate the feedback regardless.