One of the first big releases for 2009, Lord of the Rings: Conquest, has now been released. But I wouldn’t urge anyone to go out and buy it. I have only ever played the 3 main Lord of the Rings movie games on the Playstation 2, so when I saw the demo for LOTR: Conquest, I thought, meh this might be good. After playing the demo I was reasonably impressed, I thought it was an ok game, not the best, but it was playable, and because of this, I decided to rent the game rather than buy it.

The first thoughts of the game were quite good. You get some nice snippets of movie and sound track from the films which seems to give the game a nice feel. However, once you get into the game, it really lets it down. Not only the poor graphics pull this game down, but also the gameplay and storyline. Somehow I managed to play the game for 5 hours straight, not sure how.

There are just so many things I think are wrong with this game. The first point is the storyline of the game. For the good side, they have tried to follow the storyline of the films, however, all the battles are in the wrong order. But one thing I thought was strange was the fact that in the mines of Moria they had Gandalf the White, although in the movie at that point he was still Gandalf the Grey. Maybe that’s just me being a fan of the films but I’d like to think that if the storyline is following the films, they could get their facts right.

As for the evil side of the story, they have totally made it up. They have taken the main events from the 3 films and created some hash of a storyline, they then mashed some movie scenes from the film to make it look like it was really in the films. You start by rescuing the ring and bringing back Sauron, who then resurrects all his buddies that have died. You then move on to playing the same battles, just in a different order, as the good guys story, except this time, the evil side wins and the good guys die.

However, the storyline isn’t the biggest problem. My main problem with the game is the annoying AI. There are these certain types of characters that walk up to you and smack you with their sword, so to avoid this, you simply move back, but once they corner you, they hit you, knocking you down, but then as soon as you get up they knock you again, and this just gets into a continuous cycle until you’re dead.

I also find it quite stupid that, when you come up to a ‘boss fight’, which tend to be no harder than killing any other enemy, you are given the option to swap your character to play as a ‘hero’. One of these heroes that I had the chance of playing as was Sauron going to kill Gandalf, all I have to do is run over a bridge, simple task. So I spawn, run towards the bridge, get a first foot on it, and an eagle just flys along, picks me up and kills me, and once the hero is dead, it’s dead for good in that play through of the mission.

So, overall I wouldn’t rate this game very highly. The graphics aren’t great, but somehow the game is slightly addictive. It may get very frustrating at points because of the silly AI. But I managed to play it for those 5 hours straight. I should also say that in those 5 hours, I completed both evil and good campaigns, however, there is a multiplayer which is an advantage as you can carry on playing after the campaign, if you would want to that is.

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