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n The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth, fans can be immersed in a real-time strategy game that takes place everywhere from Lothlorien to Mordor. The game is an official tie-in product approved by New Line, with very brief clips of the movies popping up throughout the game. Players can try the game solo or cooperatively online, in campaigns or skirmishes. Between levels, players are dropped into "the living world map," an expanse that shows all the lands to conquer—either for good or for evil.
When players are fighting as the forces of light, goodness and lembas, the narration comes from Ian McKellen as Gandalf. When they're in evil mode, Saruman himself, Christopher Lee, guides the way. Other voice work is vague and indeterminate: Some audio clips come straight from the original actors (including Elijah Wood), while others seem to be filler—chatter and commands—from anonymous British speakers.
On each level, players have a certain number of points to spend improving the surroundings. Will you spend it on a shiny new orc pit, where fresh fighters—in a clever bit of animation—slide down a chute before popping out fully armed and angry? Or will you save up for some defensive upgrades at the armory? Throughout the game, players also save up One Ring or Evenstar points, which are used to buy special powers; for instance, one allows you to quickly restore a forest, providing cover and added benefits to the whole company.
Each battle also contains at least one hero, a main character such as Saruman, Gandalf or Eomer. Once their leadership is tested, they receive extra points and new skills. Some powers are passive (such as inspiring their troops), and some require players to activate them (such as Aragorn's power to heal the party or Gandalf's lightning attack). There are more heroes on the side of good, while the evil list is far shorter.
What would the professor think?
The appeal of real-time battlefield games such as Middle-earth lies mostly in moving all those little sets of armies around the map. Each area in this game is reasonably sized—big enough that players need to zoom from left to right to keep track of enemy attacks, but not so massive that it feels overwhelming or unfairly stacked. For example, the Rohan companies—most mounted on horseback—are fantastic. They fly across their compromised countryside, cheering each victory and shouting encouragement to their comrades.
But other aspects of the game are less successful. Some levels in good mode require players to keep close tabs on all nine individuals in the Fellowship. In essence, these segments undermine the best part of the game, the big map battles. Although it isn't terribly difficult, it's annoying at the battlefield scale to make sure that Sam or Pippin isn't under the feet of a troll that's just rolled through. (This type of very specific fighting works better in EA's action-adventure-type Lord of the Rings games.)
Whenever the game gets beyond just the Fellowship, it improves. In these modes, players can toggle between specific heroes and the regular battalions, dispatching elves into the woods to collect treasure or sending Aragorn out to scout for bad guys while his special attacks recharge. With a greater variety of armies and heroes to control, the gameplay stays more fluid, nonlinear and interesting.
Every new Lord of the Rings media entity inevitably reinterprets the landscape, and Middle-earth is no exception. Most of us can let the little missteps go (would Legolas really get so flustered that he'd lose track of his body count?). But playing on the side of Saruman might strike an odd chord for true fans of the story. Maybe it's the sound of peasants' death throes, peppered with what sounds like the screams of children. Or it might just be the thought of what Tolkien himself would have made of "evil mode," which encourages all of us to volunteer for Sauron, Inc.
My initial foray into Middle-earth involved a pit stop at Ye Olde Tech Support Line. Evidently, there's a known issue with some corrupt files on some disks. I was able to swap mine, but even after that it took a few tries to actually get the thing running. (Closing down virus protection software seems to be a big part of it, even more than with other online games.) At times, the game would cut out after the initial series of advertisements for New Line, THX and Intel. My overall impression is that this was a piece of software that might not have had all the kinks worked out before its holiday deadline. —Jennifer
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