The Mediocrity of Middle Earth
When I tried this game, I expected EA to do the usual: find a satisfactory or even successful game franchise, skin it with whatever pop-culture deems necessary and resell it in conjunction with the movie release. Had this game simply been a Warcraft 3 in LotR's clothing, I would have been much more impressed.
You'd think that since the entire storyline, character design, script, FMV's and terrain were already predesigned they could have spent the resources normally devoted to that on other areas of the game. The character models look just plain gross when zoomed in. Due to the amount of characters on screen, I can understand why this would be. What I don't understand is why there was seemingly no quality assurance done to weed out the numerous bugs and design flaws.
Controlling ~12 heroes at once, managing each of their skills in battle and ordering various battalions simultaneously might have achieved the effect of frantic, constant battle that EA was most likely aiming for, but it turns out to be a nuisance more than anything. The pacing of the whole game is just off; the only truly fun battles were (predictably) the defenses of Minas Tirith and Gondor. The majority of the remaining maps turn into a painful game of cat and mouse.
This may or may not have been the fault of my computer, but when loading videos and when changing regions and loading any particular level, I experienced stuttering and horrible wait times. What WASN'T the fault of my computer is the terrible target acquisition by more or less every unit. Hobbits (while it may be true to the source) blow in battle. Not because of their weak attacks or limited vitality, but because they don't attack unless they are specifically told to. I don't know about you, but I'd consider that as something that should be weeded out before shipment. The addition of an "Attack to..." command a la Warcraft would have been a welcome addition, but I guess that wasn't important enough.
I could keep going on this, but if you've read that much, you should know not to even bother with this game. The only redeeming quality I found was the LotR license and the things that accompany that. I should also note that I don't blame the programmers at EA; I'm sure they did the best they could given their resources and work conditions.
You'd think that since the entire storyline, character design, script, FMV's and terrain were already predesigned they could have spent the resources normally devoted to that on other areas of the game. The character models look just plain gross when zoomed in. Due to the amount of characters on screen, I can understand why this would be. What I don't understand is why there was seemingly no quality assurance done to weed out the numerous bugs and design flaws.
Controlling ~12 heroes at once, managing each of their skills in battle and ordering various battalions simultaneously might have achieved the effect of frantic, constant battle that EA was most likely aiming for, but it turns out to be a nuisance more than anything. The pacing of the whole game is just off; the only truly fun battles were (predictably) the defenses of Minas Tirith and Gondor. The majority of the remaining maps turn into a painful game of cat and mouse.
This may or may not have been the fault of my computer, but when loading videos and when changing regions and loading any particular level, I experienced stuttering and horrible wait times. What WASN'T the fault of my computer is the terrible target acquisition by more or less every unit. Hobbits (while it may be true to the source) blow in battle. Not because of their weak attacks or limited vitality, but because they don't attack unless they are specifically told to. I don't know about you, but I'd consider that as something that should be weeded out before shipment. The addition of an "Attack to..." command a la Warcraft would have been a welcome addition, but I guess that wasn't important enough.
I could keep going on this, but if you've read that much, you should know not to even bother with this game. The only redeeming quality I found was the LotR license and the things that accompany that. I should also note that I don't blame the programmers at EA; I'm sure they did the best they could given their resources and work conditions.
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