Lord of the Rings: Conquest

From the very first time I laid eyes on Lord of the Rings: Conquest at last year’s Games Convention Asia, I had pegged this game to be a mindless yet enjoyable hack and slash title that would give Lord of the Rings (LoTR) fans a decent bang for their buck. It was after all being developed by Pandemic Games – the same bunch of people behind last year’s most destructive game, Mercenaries 2: World in Flames.

While my analysis of the game had been pretty spot on, I never thought this game would turn out to be this monotonous. But before we get ahead of ourselves and discuss the gameplay mechanics, here’s a quick rundown of the story.

The campaign mode in Conquest has been divided into two parts – War of the Ring and Rise of Sauron. As the name suggests the War of the Ring is where you play all the good guys from J.R.R. Tolkien’s universe enacting key moments from all three Lord of the Rings flicks. During every mission you’ll be able to step into the boots of “Heroes” from time to time like Legolas, Gimli, Gandalf and so on. Be careful though; once the hero dies you’ll have to spawn as a regular grunt who’ll dish out barely half the damage as compared to your slain hero. Once you finish the entire campaign, you’ll unlock Rise of Sauron – the part of the single player campaign where you actually play as the forces of darkness aka Sauron and his minions.

While this alternate look at the LoTR universe is cool no doubt, the game is bogged down tremendously by mundane and repetitive gameplay. You see every single mission plays out in pretty much the same way. You spawn at a particular location, choose your class (more on that in a bit), slay mindless minions with a limited repertoire of moves, capture a particular area, protect the captured area for a give amount of time, rinse and repeat x 100 times and boom! Game Over! Even while playing as the Orcs and other such evil oddities, gameplay still feels painfully generic as a result of which you can never really enjoy the game or the universe for that matter.
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The game offers players four classes to choose from – Warrior, Mage, Archer and Scout. The Warrior is most useful for your typical hack and slash action, Archer for ranged attacks, Mage for magical spells as well as healing units while the Scout is your stealthy character specializing in back stabs. This diverse set of characters would have been awesome to tool around with had the game offered some kind of diversity in mission, but as it stands every mission plays out the same way so why would I go through all that trouble sneaking around as the Scout while I could very well just choose the Warrior and head straight first into the heat of the battle. It’s quick and efficient every single time.

Combat in Conquest is limited to heavy attacks, light attacks and a few special movies that fail to impress. While going up against certain bosses/mini bosses you’ll get to indulge in age old Quick Time Events (QTEs) that get boring really fast.

Once you get down with the single player campaign you can head online for some multiplayer mayhem in the form of Team Deathmatch, Conquest and Capture the Ring. Unlike most MP games on the block today you can’t upgrade your character or purchase unlockables like armor weapons etc., so there’s really no motivation to keep grinding over and over again. MP is a tad more enjoyable since human players are a smarter breed than the dumb as a dodo A.I. but after a few online skirmishes you’ll find yourself returning to Call of Duty, Gears of War etc.

Visually the game is mediocre at best. Pandemic has paid a certain amount of detail to lead characters but everything else is as generic as it gets. Had the game been released a few years ago it may have impressed us visually but in today’s day and age it barely makes the mediocre mark.

And that ladies and gentlemen is the game’s biggest downfall. It’s just about average in every facet be it gameplay, visuals or multiplayer. If you’re a huge fan of the series you may get a kick from playing as some of your beloved characters but if you don’t give a rat’s ass about Orcs and little hobbits, save your money for something else.

Lord of the Rings Conquest is only available for the PS3 in India for Rs. 2499.