The Lord of the Rings: Conquest

I first read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings at age 8. I haven't stopped reading since. They are the most important works of literature to me. Peter Jackson's movies are simply amazing. There are differences but that's a given with any film adaptation. Mostly he brought to life everything in the world of Middle Earth just as I have been imagining them since I was a boy. I just wanted to get that out of the way so as to put my feelings on this game into perspective.

I had my sons over the weekend and as soon as I picked them up they started telling me they wanted to play a Lord of the Rings game. Actually first it was Jaws Unleashed which after an hour we all remembered why I traded the game in so back to Gamestop we went. They had Conquest for PS3 for $12 and I hadn't played the game before so I figured we'd give that one a shot. I was very pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed it.

Conquest is a third person action game. It takes you from one battle set-piece from the movies to the next telling the story through cut-scenes from actual movie clips. You start as the good side making your way from the depths of Moria to the walls of the great city of Gondor, Minas Tirith and every other major landmark from the books and movies. Though the graphics are decidedly sub-par for a current generation game they did a good enough job of recreating Middle Earth so that I enjoyed the scenery despite being the graphics whore that I am.

The gameplay is repetative and amounts to nothing more than a licensed version of Gauntlet with the same four classes to choose from through the entire game of archer, warrior, mage and scout. Occasionally you will get the option of being a hero and can play as Gimli, Legolas, Aragorn, Gandalf and similar characters for the evil side. Once you die as a hero though it's back to the generic characters. Boromir is conspicuously absent in this game however.

Playing as the evil side is the most enjoyable part of the game as you are tasked with killing all the major characters on the good side. They even managed to take scenes from the movies and tell a completely different tale of Sauron becoming victorious. It was very believable. A couple of the highlights for me was playing as the Balrog and of course the final level of the game where you have to destroy The Shire and kill Hobbits including Hobbit women.

If they had polished the gameplay more Conquest could have been one of the best Lord of the Rings games available. As it is though I really enjoyed playing it for the 8 or so hours it took to beat it. I will not be returning it as it has some fun multilayer and games that I can play split screen co-op with my sons are rare. Up to 4 people can play the game together on the same console at once.

So close.