Save Middle Earth or Destory It. You decide.(Part 2)

Last night I braved the winter storm and heading over to the mall to pick up my copy of LOTR: Conquest. I rushed home to play knowing that my friend was getting it as well and we were going to do some multiplayer. As I said in my first post about Conquest, I played a lot of hours of the multiplayer demo but I couldn't wait to play more than the same two maps over and over again.

When we started playing I wasn't let down. There are tons of maps and game types to play. I have to say the highlight of my night was when I got to control an Oliphant on the fields outside of Gondor. The other team didn't know what hit them. After that we had played through a few more matches and then had to quit.

A little later in the night I got to hop back on and play through a bit of the campaign. This is where I was a little let down. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that it wasn't enjoyable, I guess I was expecting it to be more...grand.

The first thing you do in the campaign is the battle for Helms Deep. This was by far one of my most favorite parts of the LOTR movies. Needless to say I was a more than a little excited for it. But when it started it just seemed so empty. In the movie there were hundreds of men and elves standing along the deeping wall. When you start out there are only a handfull of men and elves with you. I guess I just wanted a little more choas. I wanted it to feel like the battle that it really was. To me there was no sense of urgency. The only time I really felt like I had to hurry and make every shot count was when you must protect the main gate but even that only lasted long enough for me to clear out the first few Orcs. After that I was able to stop the Orcs with my arrows from a long long distance away.

I got through Helms Deep pretty easily and moved on to Isengard. This was kind of the opposite of what I had just experienced. I felt too overwhelmed. Not saying I couldn't handle it but it seemed that everything relied to heavily on me to get things done when there were tons of other good characters around you. Not only that it seemed as if everyone would die off really quickly and then every orc archer around had their sites set on me and me alone. It just seemed like a huge balancing issue from one map to another.

I did enjoy it for the most part and I actually can't wait to continue through the campaign but I feel that the multiplayer is what will get mine and most other players attention. It's a good change of pace having to use swords, arrows and magic instead of machine guns. Tonight though I think I will be playing Unreal Tournament 3. Thoughts on that game later.

-Nick Recchia