The Lord of the Rings: Conquest (PS3)

With this action game, Pandemic and EA are moving the battlefront to Middle-earth.
1/13/2009 8:58 PM | 0 Comments | Page 1 of 2

There's a moment in the movie "Clerks II" when some characters argue over which is the "true" trilogy: the original Star Wars movies or the Lord of the Rings films. With Pandemic Studios, the maker of the Star Wars: Battlefront games, bringing that series' all-out war gameplay to Tolkien's fantasy masterpiece in The Lord of the Rings: Conquest, it looks like those fanboys have something else to fight about. But with a deeper story mode and better graphics, we think we know who wins this round.

As with the Battlefront games, Conquest casts you as an unnamed grunt in the massive battles from the films, as well as a couple others only alluded to. Tasked with certain objectives -- capture a point, defend a point, kill this guy, defend that guy -- you take on hordes upon hordes of enemies on gigantic battlefields, mostly while on foot but also occasionally on a "vehicle." Instead of lightsabers, blasters, speeders and the Force, there are swords, arrows, horses and magic. (Both have fairy princesses; go figure.)

There are four different character classes, each with its own special abilities and attacks, and you can easily switch between them mid-battle. The most basic (and, for me, viscerally satisfying) is the Warrior, who hacks and slashes his way through his enemies with a flaming sword. For those who prefer to fight from afar, the Archer goes all Green Arrow on people with his poison and fire arrows, while the Mage (aka magician) can cast both offensive and defensive spells, as well as ones that will heal his allies. Finally (and least interestingly), the Scout can use a Cloak of Invisibility-like ability to sneak up behind people.

You can't go all willy-nilly with the aforementioned special attacks. All of them draw from your special attack meter, though considering that this gets replenished whenever you kill an enemy (which you will, often), you don't exactly have to skimp on them. Similarly, enemies often drop health boosts that will fill up your health meter. This isn't to say Conquest is easy -- especially on the harder skill levels. The real challenge comes from fighting bosses and huge swarms of enemies.

Conquest is less of a button-masher than you might expect. Those special attacks come in very handy, as do the attack combos, especially when you're in a boss battle or being surrounded. It also helps that the controls are as tight and responsive as, well, you'd expect from every videogame these days (and that the PlayStation 3's squishy L2 and R2 buttons are only used sparingly).

Some might think this is just Battlefront with a fantasy motif replacing the sci-fi one. This is true -- if you only play the competitive multiplayer modes (which include Team Deathmatch, Capture the Ring and Conquest, a capture point-like mode), and ignore the better graphics and slightly tighter camera controls. What really separates Conquest from Battlefront is the vastly improved story-driven single-player mode. Unlike in Battlefront, whose single-player mode felt like multiplayer mode with bots, the one in Conquest is far more developed, with more plot point-inspired objectives and even narration by head Elf Elrond (actor Hugo Weaving).