Review: The War of the Ring

I quickly cracked open the case and inserted the Install disk, my eyes were met with more beautiful artwork and, once installed, one of the best audio visual introductions since Diablo 2's cinematic intro. I recommend you turn your speakers up for the full experience, I ceased to be in my quiet home in Cupertino and was suddenly smack dab in the middle of Mordor, a dark language filling my ears.

Now had you told me a month ago, that I would be playing the Battle at Helm's Deep in an RTS Format, I'd have thought you were nuts! Not only was there too much going on in the story, but that just couldn't be translated to an RTS without totally destroying the flow of the event. Well color me surprised as my eyes cautiously darted about the battle field, surveying wave after wave of Orcs as Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli and Theoden along side a legion of Riders of Rohan and Rohririm soldiers defended their walls. Even the retreat fit perfectly with the RTS Style, occasionally cutting back to a scene of Dialogue between heroes. You could even click on Legolas and Gimli to see how many orcs they'd killed, naturally Legolas was whooping Gimli into next Tuesday by about 3 to 1.

The Single Player missions start off on the side of Good, you play a group of Dwarves lead by Gimli who must take back a mountain hall for their King. The level wasn't dumbed down at all, something that bothers me about many RTS games is that they baby you for the first several levels until you understand what each object is for. What War of the Ring has done so well here is to quietly give you pointers in the form of text boxes in the top left and bottom center of your screen. This way you can learn a little more about your units, but don't have to be taught the basics that we've all been taught a thousand times.

I must say it was a luxury to be able to experience some of these stories that were omitted from the film, as a major fan of Tolkien's texts I delighted in seeing Beorlings and Huorns throughout my game play experience. Through the game's Fate System you can activate special occurrences such as a beam of light to scorch your Orc foes or the appearance of a mighty Ent who crushes your enemies with massive boulders. War of the Ring truly succeeded in making this fans' dreams of a living breathing version of the literary text a reality.

The Game does have a couple of quirks that at first caused a little frustration. Each of your units is worth a certain number of character points, a simple worker is only worth one point and it goes up from a Warrior worth 2 to a Troll worth 5. These numbers ad up to your total number of units which can be maxed out at 100. I'm the type of player who will sit for an hour collecting resources and building an army worthier than my processor will allow. I crashed many a C&C: Generals game building more units than could fit on the battlefield and laying waste to an AI controlled foe. My frustration came as I learned to use this system, to my delight I learned that Heros like Aragorn or Frodo don't count against your total points, so rather than having a large number of so so characters, I had Aragorn, Gandalf, Gimli, Legolas and Frodo all out in a row in front of my army which laid waste to anything that approached it. So my frustration was more my own inability to accept something new, and not necessarily the fault of the game. Now that I understand all the little nitty gritty details I find myself having a hard time setting down the mouse, even to write this review!

Overall, War of the Ring isn't going to climb to the top and become the Number One game of all time, but it is definitely not just another WarCraft knock off. To truly appreciate the storyline to the game it helps to have read the Lord of the Rings Trilogy and some of the supplement books, especially when some things we learned as fact from the films are handled here as they were in the books. With the recent failures surrounding other Tolkien properties, it's refreshing to see a game triumph in such a brilliant way as War of the Ring has here. I don't hesitate at all when I say that this is the best Lord of the Rings game on the market, I expect Ed Del Castillo and his masterful artists at Liquid Entertainment to truly give EA a run for their money.

I give War of the Ring a very proud 9 out of 10. Now if you'll excuse me, my army has a date with Minas Morgul.