I guess in the most general explanation, I’m supposed to tell people whether a game is
good or not.
But that’s kind of hard to do for this one.
Really, I can’t say in any definitive way which this game is—whether good or bad—because
I can see both sides of the argument.
On the one hand, this is a fairly typical action RPG with hack-and-slash combat, a description
that likely cements this game in the bad category for discriminating gamers and for good reasons.
But on the other hand, it’s Lord of the Rings, you can decapitate goblins and giant
talking eagles swoop down and destroy things.
Like, when you tell them to.
Again, I can see both sides of the argument here.
So to call the Lord of the Rings: War in the North a bad game wouldn’t be fair.
I’ve played bad games—this is not a bad game.
But it’s also not a game that’s figured out how to make hacking and slashing interesting.
Combat stays mindless for the duration and the RPG elements are also thinly applied,
so there are clearly some limitations to what this game can achieve...but that said, it’s
like...through me, this freaking game wields a power too great and terrible to imagine.
War in the North tells a story that runs parallel to the events of the films.
I love when developers that take approach, because it almost always pays off for the
fan.
You see lots of references to the scenes and moments from the movies, which not only makes
fans geek out, but also gives you added interest and motivation.
This works as described in War in the North.
In fact, Aragorn sends you on a quest to start as he waits for Frodo in Bree.
Pardon my elvish, but that’s pretty **** cool.
You play as a little fellowship of your own, a group comprised of an elf, a dwarf and a
human.
You can assume the role of any you’d like, and each has some unique abilities you’d
expect from their race.
So the elf is all wise and pretty, and the dwarf is a fat little drunk with an axe.
I don’t know, kind of seems like Middle Earth racism to me.
I thought we were past this!
It’s cool to have a group that, at least in its racial components, is very fellowship-like.
The problem is that your fellowship has a fraction of the character and personality
you got in five minutes from its movie equivalent, and the cool-but-disappointing vibe also applies
to the game’s combat.
If you guessed button mashing, you win a...uh, a little ring I found at the bottom of a river
the other day.
It’s probably not worth much, but hey, when life gives you lemons, make talking jewelry
that possess its owner.
But the cool thing about the combat is how surprisingly brutal it is.
Speaking of those goblin decapitations, you get these fatality prompts once your enemy
is close to death, and if you hit him with a strong attack, you get these really satisfying
kills.
Sometimes, you chop off their head...other times, you dice off their legs.
It’s pretty grisly, but the thing is, it kind of works.
And it’s never so gory that it feels un-Lord of the Rings.
Of course, the problem is the game’s combat does get repetitive after a while.
It feels kind of thin, and the same can be said for the game’s RPG and RTS elements.
You can level up and tinker with your weapons, but you can’t go much deeper than that...and
the options for commanding your team are limited to attack or defend, so the gameplay is going
to seem a bit shallow for seasoned RPG fans.
Of course, I am not one of them, so I didn’t have that much of a problem with it.
To be honest with you, I actually had a pretty good time with this game.
Maybe it’s the Tolkien fan in me, but I found the Lord of the Rings: War in the North
a solid romp with nice fan service, cool aesthetics...and freaking death by eagles.