‘Lord of the Rings: Conquest’ Review (PS3)
Like the Star Wars franchise, Lord of the Rings keeps coming back with more games based on the film years later. Lord of the Rings: Conquest lets you take control of many playable characters and monsters from the series. This includes all the Hero characters including the enemy characters such as Sauron.
The game allows up to 16 players online and fours players can play offline through the campaign mode. There are two offline campaign modes in the game, one being the original story of the films and the second having a take on what would have happened if Sauron had won the battle and if Frodo didn’t throw the ring into the lava!
Lord of the Rings Conquest is a straight forward hack and slash game developed by Pandemic Studios – they were the same developers who did Star Wars Battlefront, so if you have already played Star Wars Battlefront you will most likely know what Lord of the rings is all about. However this time instead of Jedis, Spaceships and lightsabers you have wizards, balrog and swords.
The game allows four types of characters to choose from, each with their own unique fighting styles and abilities:
- The Warrior character who is great in hand to hand combat and can string together combos that unleash flame attacks.
- The Mage character can create a defensive force field, magic attacks and heal friendly players.
- The Scout character is a faster fighter that can sneak up on people.
- The Archer can take down enemies from a distance.
You play through the epic battles, which really does feel like the battles from the film and every so often you will have the option to play as one of the films heroes. The game really emphasises the multiplayer as it is the top item on the menu screen and essentially this is the best part of the game.
The game’s epic feel and mass is amazing as the game can allow 150 characters on screen at any one time with little slowdown. The detail to keeping everything like Peter Jackson’s film is done very well and the soundtrack is straight from the film giving the player the best Lord of the Rings experience in a game.
Aside all the good points, Lords of the Rings Conquest does suffer in other areas. The character models don’t look great at all and if anything seem more like characters from last generation consoles. This could be due to the fact that there are 150 players on screen to keep the game play speed high, but you can’t help but notice some of the sloppy textures and low polygon characters.
The gameplay as a whole is very repetitive. The control and the combat simply do not have enough depth and while the animation of the combat looks good, you get a little tired of looking at the same actions over and over again. When you attack enemies it doesn’t feel like much is happening while other similar games such as Dynasty Warriors really does give the player a feeling of power unleashing satisfying kills.
In conclusion Lord of the Rings: Conquest should still appeal to Lord of the Rings fans as the licensing of the game has been used very well and the overall presentation is brilliant. Hardcore gamers should probably give this one a miss as there is simply just not enough depth for a game that could have been so much better.
2.5 out of 5
Related Pages:
- Lord of the Rings Blu-Ray Release Date Announced (Pre-Order)
- Lord of the Rings Online Video – Stupid Hobbitsess
- Lord of the Rings Online Video – Stupid Hobbitsess – Episode 2
- Overlord: Raising Hell Review (PS3)
- Star Wars: The Old Republic – Bioware E3 Interview
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Comments: 3
5:05 am 26th February, 2009
Of all these games, has there really been a solid Lord of the Rings game?