Save Middle Earth or Destory It. You decide.

Last night I downloaded the LOTR: Conquest demo on Xbox Live. I wasn't sure what to expect really. I had only played one other LOTR game in my life, for about 5 minutes. And I love LOTR so I was hoping that whatever the demo was going to show me was going to be good.

First off, if you are going to download the demo be warned that its something like 1.25GB so it will take awhile to download. After all the waiting I finally got into some matches. You can either be Good or Evil and can then choose from four classes (Warrior, Mage, Archer and Scout) They are all pretty cool but I stuck with Archer and Mage for most of the games.

The point to each game is that there are five capture points on the map and you are fighting for control. If a team captures all points then the other team cannot spawn and the game will eventually be over unless the remaining players can regain control of a capture point. You can also win the game by being the first team to reach 1000 points.

Getting around on the map is pretty quick. You start out in a swift jog and eventually you will go to a full out sprint. But that is not the only way to get around. Spawning in certain areas of the maps are mounts that you can ride, Wargs for the Evil team and Horses for the Good team. However, you can ride either no matter which team you are on.

One other way to get around the map is to become one of the special characters. From what I saw so far, for the Evil team you can control a Troll, Balrog and The Witch King. For the Good team I saw you can play as an Ent and Gandolf. I know there are other characters that you can control but thats what I saw in the demo.

In the single player mode you will also be able to choose to play as either Good or Evil it all depends on if you want to save middle earth or destroy it. Either way I think this game has a lot going for it and I will probably go preorder it today. If you are into LOTR at all I suggest you go and download the demo and try it out for yourself.

-Nick Recchia