The Lord of the Rings worked exceptionally well as books or films. It’s little wonder then, that given the success in other media, a raft of video game titles would crawl out of the wood work. Lord of the Rings : Conquest, published by EA and developed by Pandemic Studios, is the latest of these.
Conquest is a third-person, hack-and-slash action game, which is set loosely around the epic sequences seen in the films. The player has to mosey through a campaign of good against evil, brow-beating orcs with several different classes of fighters: warriors, archers, scouts or mages. Each has a commendable ranges of moves, from basic attacks to powerful magical abilities. The archer in particular gives across a nice feeling of Legolas type bowing, threading arrow after arrow, dropping orcs and trolls to the ground. Care is needed though, as it is easy to have the hordes encroach on you – fortunately archers can kick as hard as a Macropodidae marsupial too.
Using this fine-fettle of fighters, the action is played out through some of the historic mythical battles that litter the trilogy. From Helms Deep to the mines of Moria, Pandemic has done a good job of extending the sound-stages to full digital playgrounds. There is a real good feeling of scale to the size of battlefields, Peter Jackson would be rightfully proud.
Pandemic has also managed to capture the spirit of movies, particularly so by implanting the thunderous LotR soundtrack in just the right places. There are also plenty of clips from the film, mashed in between the action; sadly the voice acting doesn’t appear to be using any of the original cast’s talents, which is somewhat of a let down. At least there’s the chance to play as the heroic main characters in some situations through the game.
It’s here though that pleasantries end, and the problems begin. The major issue with this title is the tediousness of it – after playing the tutorial you’ve pretty much seen all the game has to offer. The rest of it is the same hacking and slashing, mostly of orcs, and not even the setting can really rescue it from the gameplay problems. The multi-player options also suffer from the same fate. Whilst there are many modes there to play around with, Team Deathmatch, Conquest and Capture The One Ring, it just becomes the same all too soon.
It’s clear that Conquest has knocked down on the polygon count in order to help with the multi-player side of things, and ensure that a lot of characters can march on screen together. It’s by no means the worst looking game on the PS3, characters like Gandalf and Aragorn have been well carved out of the digital wood, but the animations suffer from the same fate as the gameplay, in that they get repetitive all too quickly – and don’t even get started on the orders that are barked out over and over. Whilst the music is fantastic, hearing stuff like “You must stop the Orcs” a dozen times in as many minutes, is tantamount to auditory atrocity.
Dying, on the whole, is not a huge issue in the game. The player will automatically re-spawn when that health bar hits zero, which it will. Often and usually unfairly. However, there are points in the game that may give rise to controller-throwing fits. When victory is near, and the only thing left is to battle the level boss, there is the opportunity to fight as a hero, which is great.
Taking the role of folk such as Gandalf, Aragorn or Legolas, should any of our heroes succumb to a death-blow three times (as unlikely as that may seem), the entire battle must be restarted from the very beginning. Given how long, tedious and boring these can be, it’s almost enough to chuck the PS3 through the nearest window. Were it not for the tie-in to the movies, and the want to see how Pandemic has handled further battles in the Ring’s mythology, many a console could be reduced to component parts.
The camera can be real pain too. Although it can be manually controlled it ends up far too close to the character on screen, and whilst the player is busy mashing buttons, it ends up pointing the wrong way too much of the time. The enemy by this juncture has knocked our hapless hero to the ground, smiting him with their mass produced sharp edged implements … to his death. Couple this with controls that really don’t feel very responsive (the scout class in particular feels quite sluggish despite supposedly being a fast unit) and there’s a clear recipe for calamity cake.
Should a brave soul manage to make it through the entire good campaign, titled The War of the Ring, it unlocks the ability to turn the tables and fight as an evil doer through The Rise of Sauron. This tale is a dark place, where Frodo wasn’t able to destroy the One Ring. Eek! It’s somewhat of a pity that this isn’t available from the get-go, as how many people will have given up long before fighting as a nasty Uruk-hai is anyone’s guess. As it transpires, there’s not very much to miss; it’s the same stuff again, only this time using an uglier avatar.
Overall Conquest is a disappointing experience. Whilst there are moments of greatness; such as playing as an Elk and splattering fields of Orcs with boisterous branches, the rest is a travesty. The humdrum repetitiveness, finger numbing, sloppy controls, and a camera that really doesn’t help matters, seals Conquest’s place in history as another wasted license of the Lord of the Rings trilogy – one Tolkien thankfully isn’t alive to see.
