The Lord of The Rings: The Battle for Middle Earth - PC CDROM
I bought two games that were RTS and covered the epic trilogy of “Lord Of The Rings”. The first was Vivendi’s “War Of The Ring”, and the second was Electronic Art’s “Battle For Middle Earth". Admittedly this review is a little late as there is a “Battle For Middle Earth 2” out now, but seeing how this game served as a basis for that, it still seems to merit a review of it’s own. At first I expected no more then a rendition of Age Of Empires, and was nicely surprised by scrolling terrain and nice cut-scenes from the movie itself being played. The game is stylishly presented and you do get a sense of scale with this game, which was sadly lacking from “War OF The Ring”. However having played it for a little while I would say that this game is ok, possibly good, but I wouldn’t say that it’s a must have.
The game offers you the chance of playing either a good campaign, where you can righteously smite wrong doers the world over, or alternatively you can play the evil campaign where you can crush the rebellion under your sweet imperial boot (which does have some satisfying moments). When you choose your option the game will launch and there you will be presented with the much touted “Living World Map”, which actually is quite a visual feast, and nice to use. Middle Earth is broken up into territories on this map, and each territory has an associated value attached to it. And this is where this games subtleties start to play. Basically, when you fight a battle, whatever units are left over, gain experience and upgrades, and these bonuses are then carried forward to the next battle as they fight alongside your army again (and hopefully keep doing so). Now as you win territories, you get extra bonuses from the areas you capture (or free depending on your viewpoint). So for example, Cair Andros gives +20 command and +2 power if beaten while West Emnet gives +20 Command and +10% Resources. This means that as you progress, these values are added to your total over the course of the game, giving you bigger resource bonuses, the option to command more people, and more power points to select special powers.
At this point the game can get a little bit Warcraft III for my liking, why? Because of “Heroes”. I do enjoy the prospect of having a hero leading my army to victory (haven’t seen destruction yet), and I suppose it’s quite nice that it’s Gandalf, Legolas, Aragorn and the rest of the Fellowship, but it’s quite a surprise just how powerful they are. In fact, near the start of the game there is a little scene where Boromir is on “Amon Hen”, and your task is to save the fellowship from the first wave of Orcs and then to save Boromir. At first I thought there was no way this was possible with the sheer number of Orcs, but instead of losing in a hail of arrows and sharp warg teeth, Gandalf and Co utterly devastated the fiendish foe, and Boromir was saved, and with little effort on my part. On further inspection it seems that there is little continuity regarding heroes as well. Apparently if you don’t save Boromir, no matter, he’ll be available anyway later on in the game.
Now in games like “Age of Empires” and “Mediaeval Total War” the mood can seem a little stale, whereas “Battle For Middle Earth” does very well, cut-scenes from the movie setting the atmosphere just right. Unfortunately this is also a part of the games downfall. The cut-scene for the infamous defence of Minas Tirith shows HUGE armies lined up against each other, however in the game play this doesn’t quite happen. With games such as “Age of Empires” and “Mediaeval Total War” on the other hand, provided you’re clever with your resources, you can really can field quite sizeable armies with which to rampage across the enemy lines. In other words the scale of things can be disappointing.
So what about the gameplay itself? It’s actually quite nice and easy to follow, allowing your devious mind to set about disposing of the enemy. I do have some gripes however. The first are the buildings. They look very nice, but you can only build them in certain spots defined by the game. I found this quite annoying because one of the more useful tactics in say “Age of Empires”, was to literally build a huge war camp near the oppositions base, and then just batter them with wave after wave of troops. Due to the positioning of these defined settlements in “Battle For Middle Earth” however, this is often not possible to achieve.
The other issue with the buildings is that they level up only once they have produced a certain amount of troops. This means that the player is sometimes forced into sending troops into suicide missions just so they can produce more troops and upgrade the building and get their hands on further troop upgrades/types. This is contrary to the way I like to play RTS, I don’t like losing troops for no real strategic reason. And there’s the other problem, lack of variety. Gondors army choice consists of two types of archers, two types of foot soldiers, basic cavalry and trebuchets, and to be perfectly honest, I couldn’t tell the difference between some of the unit types that were of the same type (i.e. missile or melee).
And there are a couple more issues regarding troop types. Firstly archers. Now I am a huge fan of Elves, and I especially like the idea of longbows because it saves you getting up close and personal and you can dispatch the enemy from a nice safe distance (this would explain why I’m a camper in First Person Shooter games and love the lightning gun in Unreal Tournament). However, the archers, like the heroes are a little bit too powerful, so much so, they can take down charging Mumakil, Trolls, Eagles, and even Nazgul without even breaking into a sweat. The other problem is the cavalry can also be a bit overwhelming.
Finally, the strategy element is lacking. In “Mediaeval Total War” for example, I could have a unit of cavalry taunt a unit of pikemen then runaway up a hill. When the pikemen got near, I would run around the back and charge from the side or rear, end result, flawless victory, and that made sense. If you actually ever see a huge weapon like the pike you can appreciate just how long it would take to turn a unit of troops around in the melee of battle, and this is where strategy comes in. Sadly in “Battle For Middle Earth”, it makes no difference if you charge from the rear (“Oi Grishank, can you hear something behind us?….AARRGGHHH it’s too late to turn”), or from the front (Oi Grishank, the fools are charging from the front, we’ll devastate them”).
So ok, there are a few gripes, and if you are a more experienced gamer they may prove quite hard to live with. However, for those of you who love Middle Earth and/or are newish to RTS (Real Time Strategy) as a genre, then this may be a game worthwhile for your attention.
Below is a small video (585K), the quality isn't brilliat but you'll get the idea!
