Lord of the Rings: Conquest (Xbox 360)

 

Lord of the Rings: Conquest features large open scale battles in all the major areas featured in the books and movies from the fortress at Helms Deep to the Black Gate of Mordor.  Conquest offers a variety of gameplay with four different classes (warrior, scout, archer, mage) each with their own abilities and attacks.  Although each class has their own attacks and combos it normally just boils down to button-mashing and often swinging wildly off camera at enemies you can’t see.  Aside from class variety there’s also a variety with riding horseback or manning siege weapons.  In certain areas of the game you can play as a “hero” such as Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli or Gandalf which are basically souped up regular characters. 

 

The game plays a lot like the Battlefield series where you capture certain points on a map and push the enemy back to the last objective which normally involves killing the main baddie.  The music is great and recognizable for anyone who has watched the movie series.

 

The AI in singleplayer can be pretty irritating, they’ll help you for the most part but won’t really start helping until your character charges in there to initiate the attack or capture of an area.  The most frustrating thing in Conquest is the instant deaths that sometimes happen.  Archers can easily headshot you from afar or you can be slapped by a troll which often times mean instantly dead.

 

The game isn’t bad, these issues are really only minor, it’s somewhat good you can die pretty quickly so you know you just aren’t so overpowered over everyone else then that might get a little ridiculous.  It’s an enjoyable game that relives the great battles in Lord of the Rings and being able to play on Sauron’s side is truly rewarding.  The singleplayer campaigns may be over quick but the game truly shines in multiplayer and playing with friends.  

 

4/5