Cert: 18
Platform: Xbox 360, PC, Playstation 3
Genre: Real Time Stragety
Real time strategy games don't transition well to consoles. Aside from the better than expected Halo Wars there's little on either console to appease fans of the RTS genre. The Lord of the Rings: The War in the North is an admirable attempt to redress that balance but it falls foul of the familiar pitfalls of a genre which shoe-horns complex game dynamics onto a controller. Controlling large armies on anything other than a mouse just feels clumsy and slow and there's nothing here which re-invents the wheel.
The bland missions of LOTR are even less forgivable. Each one basically revolves around the player button mashing through one horde of enemy to the next. Starcraft this is not. LOTR fans may salivate (or baulk) at the relatively originally premise of the game which takes place outside the confines of the books and which includes co-op. Personally, I found the new characters a pale imitation of Tolkien's vision and the RPG-lite aspect of the game only serves to hark back to the far superior Warcraft III. At least the presentation and sound are a step up from previous LOTR games but that's hardly a reason to buy.
Rent or Buy: Rent
Graphics: 4/5
Game Play: 2/5
Replay Value: 2/5
Overall: 2/5
Reviewed By: Bryan Collins
