Game Review: Lord of the Rings: Conquest

Billy O'Keefe - Mclatchy -Tribune News Service

The Lord of the Rings: Conquest

For: Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and PC

From: Pandemic Studios/EA

ESRB Rating: Teen (violence)

Hey, do you like "The Lord of the Rings?" And did you like "Star Wars: Battlefront?" Well guess what: You'll love "The Lord of the Rings: Conquest," even when the game itself dares you not to.

Want to play it for yourself? Find it in the Military.com Entertainment Store

Like "Battlefront" - which Pandemic Studios also masterminded - "Conquest" is a tactical action game. Your essential objective is to carve through opposing armies, but you're working alongside an army of your own and are free to swap between different classes (warrior, archer, scout, mage). While the number of times you can perish in a single mission is limited, "Conquest" otherwise operates like a multiplayer game: If and when you die, you simply respawn as a character type of your choice while the action carries on uninterrupted.

Naturally, a game that functions like a multiplayer experience also works best as one. "Conquest" (16 players online, four offline) takes no chances in terms of mode styles, but it doesn't need to. Unbalanced though the classes are, all four are fun in their own way to embody, and that's to say nothing of when the game lets you commandeer a troll, Ent or one of several iconic heroes or villains.

Additionally, while "Conquest" moves and controls like a Playstation 2 game, the somewhat archaic approach remains a perfect fit for this kind of action. Given all the sorry hack-and-slash wannabes that have surfaced this generation, Pandemic's decision to keep it fast and simple pays off remarkably well.

The retro approach is less glittering, though, if you're going it alone.

"Conquest" makes a big deal about its single-player component, which lets you relive the films' story as the good guys and then play a parallel-universe version as the bad guys. But while reenacting and rewriting these moments is fun, Pandemic's inability to create any kind of compelling artificial intelligence looms awfully large. In too many instances, whether you're playing as an iconic character or an ordinary grunt, every enemy on the battlefield seems determined to get a piece of you. And they will, because your computer-controlled allies are too busy doing nothing to have your back.

Fortunately, "Conquest" allows co-op play (two players, online or offline) during these missions, so you and a friend can watch each other's back while the rest of your army stares in amazement.

It says something about the "Battlefront" model, though, that "Conquest" remains fun even if you can't enlist a friend to save you or compete online. A little advancement the next time around would be welcome, but for now, this marks a fun return to a genre that has a lot of good days ahead of it.

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Copyright 2009 by Mclatchy -Tribune News Service