When details first emerged of a Lord of the Rings game, that is based on Star Wars Battlefront, taking place in Middle Earth, and allows you to play as the heroes that you so closely followed in the trilogy, fans everywhere could not wait to get their hands on this title. Then, we got our hands on this title. If I could, I would throw this fucker right into Mount Doom and walk home into a hobbit pillow fight. Is the game awful? No. Am I thoroughly and completely disappointed? You bet your short, hairy ass.

The comparisons to Star Wars Battlefront are going to fly all over the place and they should. The game was presented as LOTR in Battlefront. In Battlefront, there was a campaign which was just okay, but the game really shined in the multiplayer. It was addicting. The game play was awesome. The characters were balanced. The camera was not an issue. The vehicles added a ton to the replay value. In Conquest, the campaign is actually what I enjoyed the most and that is not a good thing. I have never played a game that was this cheap in killing you. The game, for one, is not hard. It is actually rather easy, but you will fall off of ledges, bridges, cliffs, etc. all the time. ALL THE TIME. The game is absurdly cheap in this fashion.

A prime example is when killing a troll. You simply run behind, press R1, then press the appropriate button to inflict damage. Okay, no problem. Nevertheless, you can kill the troll, fall off its back, and fall right off the fucking cliff. Wow. Yeah. Even better, you can perform a special move and off the cliff you go. A rebuttal would be do not stand so close to the edge. Often you are not given this luxury because sometimes you are forced to fight on very narrow areas. To make matters worse, your character cannot go near water. In the final level of the evil campaign, you get to play as Sauron and fuck up the Shire. Sweet, right? I died. You know why? A troll knocked me off the bridge into, get this, a foot of water. A foot of water killed the Dark Lord. Are you shitting me? This guy would control the entire world and he is bested by a canal of a foot of running hobbit water? What is this, Pitfall? Come on. It’s 2009. Make the game at least logical.

The multiplayer is a huge disappointment to say the least. After about 20 minutes, you will basically say fuck it. The characters are not weighted at all. The scout class is beyond worthless. Unless you are invisible, you stand zero chance of winning anything hand to hand. A headshot is insanely easy when you are zoomed in. The mage’s fireball attacks and lightning are basically unstoppable and they can heal themselves at will. No one plays as a team and the only motivation for most players is try get as many points as possible so they can be the hero. This is fine in Conquest modes, but in anything that requires teamwork, it blows.

After all of this, you won’t even notice the sub-par graphics, bad sound, clipping issues, framerate drop, and collision detection. Are there any positives here? Yes, there are. The campaign had some good ideas. The locations were memorable and playing as the heroes was fun at times. This all took a back seat to the game’s shortcomings. This could have been awesome. Really, really awesome. It turned out to be just another hack and slash. I would classify this as a rental at best. It took me 4 hours to beat BOTH campaigns. Check my gamerscore. This could have been one of the greats. I’d rather have a sleepover with Gollum than play this game again. No pants. Just rings.

Overall: 5.5 out of 10

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