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The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Ring

The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Ring

List Price: $19.99
Your Price: $19.99
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: cool but hard game
Review: its a cool game but only the characters are faled

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Waste of Money and a Test on my Patience.
Review: Pure garbage. Your $50 would be better spent on a Knights of the Old Republic or any other software where the developers actually removed the bugs before shipping. This game is full of bugs and crashes frequently. My computer is a P4 2.6 Ghrtz with a top-of-the-line NVIDIA (128mb) video card, so I know the crashes weren't the result of my system. If you decide to play, be sure to save every 3 minutes and be prepared to replay your game over and over again. There is an update available, but it didn't seem to matter... the crashes were all the more frequent after the update, especially in Fangorn Forest.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: This War of Middle Earth is Great
Review: Reading reviews from all over the net it is pretty clear this is the type of game you are going to love or hate. I personally love this game so I thought I would categorize the reasons why to help others with their purchasing decision.

The War of the Ring is based on the literary works of J.R.R. Tolkien, what does this mean exactly? First it means this game is not based on the Peter Jackson movies so do not expect things to look or feel exactly as the big screen version. However that said the developers of this game actually had more material to work with, just take a look at all the indexes and appendices (not mention main story elements) that were left out of the movies. War of the Ring does an excellent job covering both the main story line and events only glossed over within the book. This makes the game seem familiar yet fresh for diehard Tolkien veterans.

The graphics in this game are superb. The backgrounds are highly detailed and just interactive enough to keep them interesting. The first time you send 80 elven archers through a field of blowing grass and watch it realistically react to their presence will have you in awe. From Mind bogglingly beautiful waterfalls to nightmarish fortresses this game has a graphic style that surpasses Warcraft III in its majesty. The individual units are a little under whelming unfortunately. They seem to be just a few polygons shy of acceptable. That said this is an RTS game and 99% of the time you will be zoomed out so far that it is irrelevant. From a distance the units look great and the massive battles will make you a true believer.

The audio portion of the game is a mixed bag. The music and voice acting is top notch. A symphony orchestra keeps the pace as booming voices please your ears. However unit sounds leave a little to be desired. For example the gigantic Stonehurler makes merely a muffled noise as it rips giant boulders asunder from the earth, not exactly anything to get excited about. In all fairness most of the games unit audio is great from the elves shouting a battle cry to the noise of their arrows whooshing in the air. This high standard makes the bad or missing sounds that much more noticeable however and it does really detract from the immersion factor.

Game play is where this title will live or die for you. If you love fast paced, simple real time strategy, with little or no micromanagement you will cut off your ring finger for this game! Simple and sweet is the name of the game. The best way to describe the mechanics is to imagine a simplified Warcraft II. Only two resources proper exist they are easy to acquire and plentiful to harvest. Scavenging the map for resources is usually not necessary. Places of power can be found on each map that also act as a kind of resource, controlling a place of power gives your units a special bonus and weather you or the enemy control these can make the difference in a prolonged campaign. Speaking of the enemy the enemy and friendly AI in this game is beautiful. Archers smartly stay back from a battle if melee troops are in front of them. Units do not stupidly stand by if they are under attack. The enemy occasionally tries to lay ambushes and uses scouts to great effect. This makes the single player campaign very enjoyable.
Building units is very straight forward, and the tech tree is mercifully short. The recent innovation of adding hero units to real time strategy has been carried over to great effect in this game. Hero units use fate to gain more abilities; this caveat alone keeps you in the action as you have to fight intense battles to earn fate points. I could go on about how fun the evil campaign is, or how cool the Lord of the Nazgul looks. This review is long enough now so consider everything else just icing on the cake. To put it bluntly this game is just fun. Not perfect and defiantly not for the detail and stat freak this game easily scores 4 stars by me.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Multiplayer?
Review: The box said "Multiplayer" so I assumed it was playable on a LAN as many games are now days....WRONG! You can only have two players and both must play on the same computer, one on the keyboard/mouse and the other on a game pad. I found the term "multiplayer" misleading.

The game itself is a lot of fun, however you're limited on the characters you can play. You can't play characters such as Pippen, Merry and Faramir until you've completed the entire game. After that the extra characters will be unlocked and you can play any of the characters in any of the adventures.

You will get hooked.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Focus on War.
Review: The War of the ring is the game people really want, it's the game that FOCUSES on the war for the ring of power, and only focuses on that aspect alone.

This game allows you to control the Allience or the Dark Armies.And you can attack the other army, it is the way tolkien meant it, raw. You can kill everyone and run your towns.

This game is just like the Age of Empires Series but witht the added element of Tolkiens emagination.

Overview:

Fun- 10/10 A lot of fun to destoy the opposing forces.

Gameplay- 10/10

Graphics- 8/10 a little on the sketchy side.

Difficulty-9/10

Overall-37/40

This game is a lot of fun to play, but i wish the graphics were better, like the PS2 games' graphics. But this game is a lot of fun with or without the graphics.

Try out this game. You can't be dissapointed.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: BIG LETDOWN
Review: This game is not even close to what it could have and should have been. If you check out the reviews in any of the major gaming magazines they will tell you the same. Unfortuneately, I purchased the game before I read any of those reviews. The game runs on a two year old battle realms engine that is badly outdated, thus, the gameplay and overall experience does not even compare to that of Warcraft 3, or command and conquer games. The charchters are severely lacking in detail and this game is overall a big letdown, buy warcraft 3 instead!!!

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: BIG LETDOWN
Review: This game is not even close to what it could have and should have been. If you check out the reviews in any of the major gaming magazines they will tell you the same. Unfortuneately, I purchased the game before I read any of those reviews. The game runs on a two year old battle realms engine that is badly outdated, thus, the gameplay and overall experience does not even compare to that of Warcraft 3, or command and conquer games. The charchters are severely lacking in detail and this game is overall a big letdown, buy warcraft 3 instead!!!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Game is Just Like Command and Conquer
Review: This game reminds me of command and conquer or stronghold. You build men and send them into battle. Of course there are major differences. The graphics are better and more and better units. The buildings are better constructed and are able to be destroyed harder. Thanx

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Wow, wow, wow!
Review: This is a killer game. I've been playing almost nonstop for two days and this is the most fun I've had in a long long time. The art is rich and the environments lush. The units are full of character and each of the heroes are unique. I was really surprised, I was expecting a more-of-the-same Warcraft III, but this thing blew me away. Warcraft III came off as a big bloated over budget yawnfest. This game is a lean mean, hit and run, "screw them before they screw you" kind of game with some of the smartest AI I've seen yet.

I didn't know what to expect because I didn't want to play a game with the visuals that the movies have. I like the movies alot, but I don't want to look at a mishmash of browns and grays on my monitor. This game's art style is not that at all, it's just simply really cool. The colors are rich and it looks like you're in a painted graphic novel. The special effects are wild and the voice acting is great. The single player missions are awesome with scenarios behind the scenes and including the main storyline. The campaigns that take place in cities are cool with rich details like damaged buildings, rubble, and a bridge you have to demolish to hinder the enemy. Helm's Deep and Osgiliath are simply amazing.

This game really shines in multiplayer too. For the good side, you have Gondor Swordsmen, Rohan Riders, Elven Archers, Elven Lightbringers, Dwarven Axethrowers, Dwarven Shieldbreakers, Huorns (Ents) and Beorning (wildmen that turn into Bears) For the evil side you have Orc Slashers, Orc Archers, Uruk-hai, Wraiths, Haradrim, Troll Stone-hurlers, and Troll Bone-cleavers, Warg Riders, and Spiders. Also, each of the heroes are designed so that you have to adapt your strategy according to which heroes the enemy has in play. Gimli can steal your towers and temporarily stun melee units near him, Frodo and Gollum have stealth capabilities, the Witch King can convert Wraiths into Nazgul, Legolas can increase allies mobility and protection from ranged attacks, Saruman and Gandolf are just killer wizards that can turn the battle and Aragorn, man, Aragorn is the KING. He just becomes the melee unit of all melee units the more he gains levels.

In addition to all this are the Fate Powers, which you can use by accumulating Fate Points, which are acquired based on how much damage you inflict on your opponent. The Fate Powers are unique spells that can easily shift the tide in a battle. With Fate Powers, the Evil side can summon spells that can do things like slow enemy units down, or a giant cloud of crows that protect the evil side's units, etc. There's an evil Fate Power that summons a giant obelisk that bursts through the ground and absorbs damage for the Evil side. The ultimate evil Fate Power is summoning a Balrog with a flaming sword that just makes mince meat out of anything in its path. The Balrog's fire effects are just stunning! On the Good side, there are Fate Powers like Blind, and a spell that creates a field of brambles that damages enemies running through it. The ultimate Good side Fate Power summons a giant Ent (Treebeard) and he attacks by throwing a massive boulder at enemies.

I would really recommend this game to the experienced or novice game player. Have fun!

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: A disapointment for a LotR game...
Review: To start with, I am rating this as I could judge from playing the demo. My computer is lagging behind the recommended requirements now (I only have a nVidia TNT2), but I really couldn't even play with the lag I experienced. Vivendi is supposed to make its Lord of the Rings games based on the book. However, the first dwarf mission, finding a secret weapon from the Battle of the Five Armies, is pure crap. If it didn't have multiplayer, I would have given it one star. War of the Ring doesn't even have a map editor. This game is too similar to other RTS games, and doesn't match up to them in features.


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