Genre: Action/Adventure
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Developer: Pandemic Studios
Release Date: January 13, 2009

I must confess that when The Lord of the Rings: Conquest was first announced, I was ready to toss aside my journalistic objectivity and jump right on board the hype train. Who wouldn't get excited at the prospect of taking part in the epic confrontations of the Lord of the Rings saga, especially when it's being provided by the very same people who crafted the Star Wars: Battlefront series? While it might seem like a simple recipe for success, Conquest still manages to disappoint by failing to create even the equivalent of a Battlefront experience, thanks to uninspired design and a list of shortcomings longer than all three parts of J.R.R. Tolkien's masterpiece combined.

Although multiplayer is obviously a big part of any large-scale action game, Pandemic has brought forth two different single-player campaigns that span every major engagement seen in the trilogy, and even a few extra ones. After defeating Sauron as the forces of good in the first campaign, an alternative scenario is unlocked that lets gamers fight as the minions of Mordor, satisfying that sadistic curiosity we've all had about what it would have been like if Sauron reclaimed the One Ring. With the inclusion of four-player co-op throughout both campaigns, it's quite clear that Pandemic wanted to give gamers a story mode that served as a deeper experience than a training ground for the game's multiplayer component. That task is naturally reserved for, well, the training mode.

Here new recruits will be able to get a feel for Conquest's combat system, which, like any Battlefield-inspired title, is broken up into four different classes including the archer, mage, scout and warrior. The warrior is the bread-and-butter melee unit that comes equipped with a broadsword and is most effective at close range with powerful fire attacks. The archer is capable of hitting distant enemies with poisonous arrows, and the scout has the ability to turn invisible Predator-style and deliver one-hit kills. Last, but not least, the mage serves as a support unit that can heal allies and throw up a protective magical shield when he's not tossing lightning with his hands.

Aside from the archer, most of the classes make use of the game's melee system, which entails standard light and heavy attacks that can be strung together with combos, eventually building up to a powerful special move. Since there aren't many rifles lying around Middle-earth, Conquest needed a quality melee system, which makes the half-hearted one that we got all the more difficult to live with. Although the three basic attacks can be modified with the left bumper, the combo list is very slim, causing the player to resort to simplistic hack-and-slash mechanics that feel choppy (and not in the good way), with very little sense of fluidity. Hitting the desired target can also be a bit of a chore since there's no lock-on system to speak of. The aiming mechanics for the ranged attacks of the archer and mage go off without a hitch, but the melee system is very bare-bones, and in a Lord of the Rings game, it's probably the most important area of combat to get right.

Fortunately, things get a little more exciting when a hero or villain becomes available to play, such as Aragorn, Gandalf or the Witch King. The heroes work more or less the same as their Battlefront counterparts, able to take more damage and dish out some devastating special moves, like Aragorn's ability to summon the armies of the dead and send any nearby foes flying back to the Shire. Despite Pandemic's efforts to supply an entertaining campaign, it doesn't take long for Conquest's single-player to feel like the inferior side of the game that it tried to avoid becoming. The story does cover all of the famous battlegrounds from the films, such as Helm's Deep, but the majority of objectives comes down to a formulaic pattern of taking over and holding areas before becoming a hero class to duke it out with a villain.

To make things all the more humdrum, the large-scale confrontations that everyone was excited for are just not there, leaving players with the skirmishes of an average action game that involve 10 or 12 combatants at the very most. Conquest was advertised as an epic action game that would even supply up to 150 characters on-screen at once. Those hundreds of characters are there, and if you squint really hard, they can be seen in the background but bring absolutely nothing to the gameplay. The four-player co-op might create some Gauntlet-inspired fun with each teammate using a different class, but other than that, the campaigns of Conquest are easily forgotten.

On the other hand, who cares about the single-player when there's an in-depth multiplayer game to be had? Conquest does come with a healthy offering of 13 maps that cover all corners of Middle-earth, ranging from close-quartered arenas within the Mines of Moria to the expansive rolling hills of Weathertop. The only problem is that those hills feel quite empty, and that's due to the shockingly low online player count that only supports up to 16 people. Let me put that number into perspective to show just how sad it is.

Star Wars: Battlefront II on the original Xbox supported 32 players, while another 360 game, Frontlines: Fuel of War, supports up to 50. What only exacerbates this problem is that the maps still feel as if they were designed for a much larger number of players, making all of the environments feel really empty. At least players can commandeer horses to reach the fight more quickly, as well as take control of Trolls or Ents that basically serve as the "tanks" of Middle-earth.

The classic Team Deathmatch mode is included, but because of the level design issues just mentioned, it's probably the worst of the bunch since everyone is so scattered. Hero Team Deathmatch allows every player to assume the role of a hero, which makes for the kind of brawler match where everyone can take a lot more damage. The core mode of the game, Conquest, features the classic fight for a number of control points that any online gamer should be familiar with. Finally, Capture of the Ring tasks each team with retrieving the One Ring and placing it in the enemy base. I found the objective-based modes to be a lot more enjoyable since the fighting is concentrated around a particular area.

One good example that comes to mind happened in a game of Conquest, where my team clashed with the forces of good on a bridge in Moria, the very same one where Gandalf made his stand against the Balrog, in an attempt to capture a control point. One of my teammates was playing as the fiery beast and leading the charge across the bridge against a group of mages, who were sending out shockwaves and knocking my allies off the narrow entrance. If only these moments had been more frequent, because when you finally get a group of people fighting together, it becomes apparent how well the different classes complement each other. Warrior units may be deadly up close but are defenseless against long-range attacks, so sticking with a mage or archer and fighting as a unit becomes a real necessity. These encounters might be enough to appease some "Lord of the Rings" fans, but they are a rare occurrence and a painful reminder of the enormous potential that Conquest had as a large-scale multiplayer game.

For those who have seen media of Conquest, it's already apparent that the game's presentation is inspired by the recent blockbuster films. Footage from all three movies is used to recount the story throughout the campaigns, but it feels a little cheap since Conquest is debuting quite a few years after the last film; it could've probably used some original cinematics instead of the same old stuff we've seen before in other series tie-ins. The in-game presentation is far worse, and just like the multiplayer component, looks as if it came out of a last-generation game. The environments resemble their big-screen counterparts but look incredibly rough around the edges, as do the poorly rendered character models.

Of course, the game rolls out the unmistakable soundtrack from the films by composer Howard Shore; I suppose that credit is due to him and not the game itself, but it's still a nice inclusion. The only cast member who decided to show up to the sound studio was Hugo Weaving, the actor who played Lord Elrond, and gives a commendable performance. The rest of the voice work is pretty mediocre, and the lines spouting from regular soldiers are poorly acted, not to mention token fantasy cliché.

The saddest part about The Lord of the Rings: Conquest is that it only had to do what was expected of it, which wasn't much more than taking the Battlefront gameplay system and slapping it onto the Lord of the Rings franchise. The developers didn't need to bring something revolutionary to the table, just the opportunity for a good number of players to jump into a crowd of Orcs and go crazy. Instead, what we got was a very hastily put together offering with gameplay that falls far behind what other titles have been doing on current systems for years. Die-hard fans will appreciate the team-oriented class structure and accurate depiction of Middle-earth, but anyone who was expecting Conquest to capture the epic nature of the films' battles will be sorely disappointed.

Score: 6.0/10