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1337ness:
I am indeed a fan of Tolkien's work (not the kind of fan that dresses up like Aragorn and totes his replica Narsil sword with him to the grocery store - those kinds of fans need to move out of their mothers' basements and get a life). I've read all of his books and consider every one of them a masterpiece. I saw the movies based on his books and thought they were pretty awesome as well. I've played The Two Towers and The Return of the King video games, and enjoyed them immensely. I've often fantasized about taking long, leisurely horseback rides through Middle Earth, drinking beer and practicing bad hygiene with Gimli the dwarf, and getting completely and utterly lost in the deep, gorgeous blue eyes of Legolas the elf...
Uhhh... I mean killing orcs and... um... stuff.
You can imagine my excitement when I heard about this brand new Lord of the Rings game which promised new playable characters and a more open-ended gameplay than its predecessors. I really really wanted this game to be good. Sadly, however, I was let down.
Conquest does offer players the ability to play one of four different classes (as well as the ability to switch classes at certain points during a mission): Warrior, Mage, Archer, and Scout. The Warrior is perhaps the class most familiar to those that have played the previous Lord of the Rings games from EA. The staple of the Warrior's attacks are melee moves, some of which are similar to those familiar with the other games. Players can execute strong, medium, or heavy attacks, and performing them in rapid succession will sometimes result in a semi-cool combo move. Players can further enhance their attacks by holding down the melee modifier button, which lights your sword on fire and generally causes more damage than regular attacks. In addition to the sword, the Warrior sports a throwing axe/knife (depending on the specific character), which works much in the same way as Gimli's throwing axes in The Two Towers and The Return of the King. The animation for this maneuver has been dumbed down quite a bit, however, resulting in your character performing a move much more akin to Clay Aiken hailing a taxi than a dangerous warrior slaying evil foes.
The tower of Orthanc. You think Saruman has some compensation issues?
The Mage is a slight departure from Gandalf from the previous titles, able to perform ranged magic attacks as well as melee attacks with his staff and/or sword. Mages can cast shields which protect themselves and allies from enemy ranged attacks, and they can heal themselves and allies within a certain distance. The Mage is definitely a support character, though, and if you try to tackle the hordes of Mordor alone with this guy, you'll more than likely get your ass kicked.
Orcs, huh? I dunno... I guess I'll throw some lightning at them... or something...
Archers are even more useless and less fun to play than Mages (that is, of course, my opinion, and you are free to have a different - albeit wrong - opinion of your own [yes, I do watch the Colbert Report]). The shooting mechanics of Conquest are pretty horrible, and probably the least realistic of any game I've played that features archery in combat. When it boils right down to it, Archers have two basic combat moves: kick and shoot. Kicking is fun when you can punt a goblin off a bridge into the abyss below, but is pretty lame on the open battlefield, and shooting gets old after the first five or ten orcs you kill. There are slight variations to shooting, such as zooming in or using poison, fire, or multiple arrows, but it won't take long before these too become repetitive and boring. Again, Archers tend to get their asses kicked a lot, especially when the orcs tap dance right around the front lines, ignoring your numerous foot soldier allies, and run right up to you for some unsolicited attention.
Legolas are ten ninjas. Too bad he'll still get his ass handed to him.
The Scout is perhaps the coolest class in its premise, but ultimately the most useless in its execution. This class's melee skills and durability in battle are severely lacking when compared to the Warrior's, and its "special abilities" really aren't that cool. The Scout is capable of cloaking, which sometimes means you can run around your foes undetected, but mostly means you'll look slightly more transparent than usual when the orcish warriors pummel your skinny ass into the ground. Provided that you are actually able to sneak up behind an orc without being caught and smacked around, you can perform a backstab maneuver, killing the orc in an overly-drawn-out animation sequence which takes a bit longer than simply beating the orc down with your blades. Neither cool nor time effective. Also, as with the Mage and Archer, the Scout tends to get his hindquarters handed to him in a fight, which really only makes him useful for very specific circumstances.
Now you see me, now you don't - oh, you do still see me? Crap.
The graphics in Conquest aren't bad, although they aren't by any means cutting-edge. The game does boast some reflective surfaces, and occasionally attempts to throw in some bloom effects, although these aren't nearly as well-done as most modern games. Almost all of the characters, models, terrain and buildings are in the likeness of the movies, so in most cases they look just fine.
The sound is, for most part, fairly decent. The musical score and battle sounds are similar to the previous games, although a bit more hollow-sounding than before. The voice acting is pretty good, featuring narration by Hugo Weaving (they guy who played Elrond in the movies, as well as Agent Smith in "The Matrix"), which seems to be done rather half-heatedly and with less enthusiasm than I would have liked to hear from this actor. What I found the most irritating, however, was the voice of your commander (or whatever the hell this guy is supposed to be). Throughout the entire human campaign, this guy shrieks orders to you at the top of his lungs, even if he requires something as mundane as retrieving a key. It's absolutely obnoxious, and the game certainly could have done without it.
As I've touched on before, the gameplay is far worse in Conquest than in either of it predecessors. In The Two Towers and The Return of the King, players could actually execute some pretty sweet moves with their button-mashing (my wife was particularly partial to the "Orc Hewer" move), and the balance between melee and ranged weapons was excellent. You actually felt like one of the heroes of Middle Earth, single-handed taking on droves of goblins and looking frickin' cool while doing it. In Conquest, however, none of the classes feels particularly powerful (even when you are given the opportunity to play as a hero such as Aragorn, Gandalf or Isildur), and each character's moves seem half-assed and sloppy. Furthermore, certain parts of the game are hampered by extremely poor camera angles (a problem which rarely plagued the other games), and other parts prove to be frustratingly - and unnecessarily - hard (I recall several instances where I used language that my mother would not approve of, nor would I want my eight-month-old daughter to learn only to repeat to my mother later on, which would almost certainly get me my ass kicked).
Gimli vs. the Witch King: EPIC FAIL.
The bottom line is: Conquest just isn't that fun. It doesn't carry on a shred of the quality that made the other games so great, and is extremely disappointing all around. I didn't even make it to the third level before giving up on it, and I don't plan to go back and attempt to either. Tolkien must be rolling in his grave.
Oh, and if you could do me a solid and not mention that thing about the elf to anyone... that'd be great.
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