The Impression Game: LOTR Conquest

It's a fresh new year, which means right about now we should see the release of lower profile titles that were held over from the competitive holiday shopping season. Following in lock step with the movie industry, the months of January and February are traditionally viewed by game publishers as an ideal dumping ground for lesser (in either quality or marketing muscle) games that probably would have been eaten alive during the peak "Oscar buzz" months beginning in October of the previous year.

The upcoming LOTR Conquest from EA/Pandemic is certainly timed in a manner to suggest that it belongs in this category of Q1-released games of dubious quality. The demo was unleashed unto Xbox Live over the weekend and I gratefully gave it a test drive after throwing up my hands in exasperated frustration, blustering through Chapter 4 of Mirror's Edge as it were.

At it's heart, LOTR Conquest is a dressed up meld of DICE's Battlefield and Koei's Dynasty Warriors series. Comparisons to the latter franchise are never wholeheartedly flattering, so I did leave the demo's solo experience with an odd, unsatisfied aftertaste in my gullet (more on that later).

LOTR Conquest is a solo or multiplayer game that pits the forces of good versus Sauron's empire of infinitely expendable orcs. The demo guides you through various scripted sequences as you experiment with each available player class on the good side, of which there are 4, plus the opportunity to control a unique Hero character taken from the LOTR canon.

Victory is based on the aggressive capturing and holding of control points and it's this mechanic that draws the most parallels to the Battlefield games. Holding a control point confers a few advantages, such as offering the ability to switch classes and providing a respawn point closer to the front lines of war.

There seem to be all the core ingredients necessary for a rollicking fun multiplayer hack n' slash festival. Most of the player classes are tremendously powerful and capable of cutting down large swaths of orcs with only a couple button presses. The emphasis is on fast action, so there's no limit on mana energy for casting the Mage's pre-assigend spells or rationing the number of arrows in your quiver. The enemy hordes are constant, so your only real concern is to press the attack and keep the combos flowing.

The demo concludes with a clunky, lopsided duel against Sauron. Even stepping into the leather boots of a Hero character (sorry, his name eludes me now) did little to bolster my enjoyment of this set piece. Sauron freely tossed me around the battlefield, largely shrugging off even my stronger combos, interrupting my attacks and being a right pain in the ass like any good end boss should.

I can't help but have a very tepid first impression of LOTR Conquest. The rather mindless hacking of ineffectual enemy drones did remind me too much of Dynasty Warriors for my liking. I'm curious to see if there's any innovation to be found in the full retail's single-player campaign. Will it be a repetitious linking of the same control point conquest scenarios or will the developers surprise us with some interesting game play diversions along the way? Multiplayer is likely where most players will flock to and make their home, but even there I question the game's ability to grow the necessary legs to hold its audience's attention. I didn't get a sense of much strategic depth to the game play even though I'm confident some inspired strategies will emerge soon enough among the power elite. Yet what I played of the demo felt very superficial in both breadth and depth of design, so longevity should definitely a concern for anyone considering a purchase.

Finally, I just don't know if another game using the LOTR license really needed to be made. The mythology is old hat by now and while the Peter Jackson trilogy was superb, the Return of the King is coming on 6 years old now. This is one dead horse and I'm not sure any amount of genre plundering can breath new life into this revered but dusty franchise.