Video Games Today

The Demo for LOTR: Conquest has been up on the Xbox Live Marketplace for awhile and we have a little demo impression/review in store for you. The game is designed by Pandemic, the makers of the Star Wars: Battlefront series, and published by EA. The game released January 13th 2009 in North America, and on January 19th 2009 internationally.

LOTR: Conquest, in general terms is Battlefront with LOTR skins, but much much more. The gameplay in LOTR:C goes back to the style seen in the first Battlefront game, abandoning the annoying "Must have 'x' points to get 'x' unit", excluding heroes. Heroes can be desirable in certain situations, but right now with the demo's selection of heroes the heroes can be more of a burden and arrow magnet rather than being helpful. For example, the Balrog is slower than any other unit in the game, so if your opponent is an archer and is backtracking shooting at you...you can never catch him to kill him. Plus annoying button setup on some heroes can cost you your life. For example, when using the Balrog for the first time, you might try pressing "A" to jump or move fast...instead he stops and taunts the opponent for a few good minutes.

The game has multiple modes on the retail, but on the demo you can only play capture points. In this gametype you capture flags to gain points every interval, the more captures per interval, the more points you get. These capture points also allow you to spawn on them, making wait times in between fights less prevalent. One holdup on the game is the small choice between classes and how deep each of these classes are. Sure, there are different combos and ways to play each class, but after you learn those the game gets repetitive.

My personal opinion on the demo is that the game could be a hit or miss. Due to the relatively low hype about this title in Q1, I do not see this the big sleeper hit of 2009. It is fun, but lacks the huge longevity of multiplayer giants like Call of Duty and Gears of War. Stick around for our full game review coming soon!