Download The Lord of the Rings: War of the Ring (Windows)

There's trouble brewing in Middle Earth. Anyone who has read the books and/or seen the films knows all about that. War is coming... to Cineplexes and to videogames. Vivendi managed to secure the book license to counter Electronic Arts' artful grab of the film license, and that's why you won't see anything from the movies in its new real-time strategy release, War of the Ring.

The voices don't sound like the movie characters, the weapons and architecture aren't what we've seen on the screen, and the orcs don't look like Peter Jackson's orcs. But that doesn't mean the game doesn't look very familiar. In fact, it looks almost too familiar; it looks like Blizzard's best-selling Warcraft III and, unfortunately, it suffers a bit from the comparison.

War of the Ring seems to imitate Warcraft III, all the way down to the menu screens for each campaign. It also features the same 3/4ths perspective, same limited camera options, same cartoonish 3D graphics, and the characters even run with the same hoppy-skippy gait (though it's toned down a bit). The larger creatures have the same blockiness (particularly the horse hooves), and this weakens Tolkien's somewhat humorless tone. It worked for Warcraft III because there were dark, foreboding (and gorgeous) cutscenes telling the story. War of the Ring lacks this and instead relies on clunky in-game cutscenes.

The game plays like Warcraft III, too. Similar mix of races: Human (Gondor), Elves, Dwarves, Orcs and other assorted bad guys. It's a similar rock-paper-scissors unit approach. And the heroes function in almost exactly the same way. Similar power recharge rates, and when they die, you can bring them back to life. All of this is pretty odd when you consider Sierra's claim that War of the Ring is based on Liquid Entertainment's Battle Realms engine and not on Blizzard's work.

But that doesn't mean it should be ignored.

War of the Ring manages to innovate in some clever ways. Every campaign mission has a nice touch. In one, the dwarves have to rescue, defend, and repair a giant catapult that you can use to rain death on the enemy. In another, workers must destroy a bridge as warriors fend off the attackers. There are barriers, ambushes, surprise attacks, and missions that require quick thinking and cunningly using your hero's powers. Some of the later twists count as (minor) innovations to RTS storytelling.

The opening of the "Good" campaign takes place East of the Misty Mountains and tells the story of how each member of the Fellowship fought the beginnings of the war before heading out to Rivendell to ask for help. The Dwarves of the Iron Mountain, led in battle by Gimli, fight off orcs. Legolas hunts down Gollum in Mirkwood and stumbles upon an orc invasion. And Boromir leads his men against the forces of Mordor as they try to cross into Osgiliath. This is all loosely based on Tolkien's writing, but some of it might give purist fans fits. The campaign eventually reaches key moments covered in the books (like Helm's Deep) and brings us to the War of the Ring itself.

The second campaign has you playing the bad guys and dealing with these pesky heroes out to stem your foul tide. How the Ring Bearer fits into this story, we won't spoil. The "Evil" side plays a little differently; they mine the same resources, food and ore, but they can't build without a Slave Master unit. These brutes have lots of hit points, but deal out little damage (essentially, they're mobile "farms"). Their purpose is to motivate their fellow units, and to construct poles in the ground that corrupt it like a disease. This makes the evil side more flexible when it comes to raiding and to constructing new bases.

Heroes don't gain mana like in Warcraft III; they gain fate points through combat. This makes them more effective fighters, but it requires you to seek out a fight with the enemy as much as possible, using a hero as a raider. This is odd when your hero is Frodo... but hey, it's a game after all. There aren't any creeps to take on (those neutral beasts that populate Warcraft III's world) so this means you'll be running into the real enemy. Watch out in multiplayer; make sure that you kill the enemy hero every time he comes calling. Meet him in force, preferably with your own hero or ranged attackers, to reduce how many fate points he's gathering.

The unit AI is mediocre. Your men will frequently run off screen and into enemy trigger points, releasing a torrent of orcs, or taking on giant trolls by their lonesome. To make matters worse, your men don't default into formation. So you'll find your ranged attackers in the front row bearing the brunt of an assault, while your melee units struggle to find their way around them.

Multiplayer should have strong legs, particularly for -- wait for it -- Warcraft III fans. Famine mode drastically reduces the amount of food available, making the game a contest of resources and keeping units alive. Catapult is our favorite: each side fights to gain control of a massive catapult in the center of the screen. Command of this weapon lets you rain death on the enemy base and army. Another mode challenges players to hold "places of power" on the map for long periods of time. All standard RTS modes are available as well.

War of the Ring's primary flaw is that it fails to really make use of its license. Remove the LOTR backdrop and names, and you could be playing any generic fantasy RTS game. It's missing the dramatic scope of the books, suggesting that game mechanics similar to Medieval: Total War or even Bungie classic, Myth, would have been better inspiration for warfare on this scale. That's not the game they made, of course, and RTS and Warcraft fans will find a good amount to like here in Middle Earth; it's the Tolkien fans who might be a little disappointed by the visit.

Review By GamesDomain