Lord of the Rings: Conquest

More Images

Back in the days of the original Xbox and PlayStation 2, development studio Pandemic made a name for itself through ambitious and creative titles such as Mercenaries, Full Spectrum Warrior and Destroy All Humans. However, more recently, lacklustre sequels to all those initial games have somewhat undermined the studio's impressive groundwork.

Looking to inject a little consumer belief back into its vivid and iconic gasmask logo, Pandemic's latest creation, Lord of the Rings: Conquest, focuses on the notoriously unpredictable movie tie-in genre by offering up a tempting good or evil dual campaign adventure through the highlights of Peter Jackson's hugely popular big-screen trilogy. So, will the third-person action of Conquest mark the dawn of a new age for Pandemic as players battle to defeat the armies of Sauron, or will it be merely trampled underfoot by hordes of marauding Orcs and Uruk-hai?

Despite being a long-time fan of Pandemic, to call Conquest anything other than a poorly produced exercise in developmental painting by numbers would be an insult to other games that actually work hard to earn a place within the ranks of the acceptably average. And, given the current lofty standards being pushed on both the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, the lack of passion on show in Conquest really should leave its creators hanging their collective heads in shame.

For example, while tackling the single-player aspect across two separate campaigns and two separate narrative perspectives is a tantalising prospect, its promise is all-but shattered within minutes of selecting one of the game's four default character classes. Each of these classes (Warrior, Archer, Scout and Mage) comes complete with individual battle skills but, thanks to clunky animation and moves that lack weight, power and fluidity, their abilities are unlikely to hold interest for anyone other than hardcore fans of Tolkien's source material.

Similarly, Conquest also fails to deliver during intermittent moments when players are granted access to hero characters from the movies. While taking control of a leading character such as Aragorn should see players imbued with formidable skills and a revered battlefield presence, he instead offers a smattering of different signature attacks that fall flat, which is a shortfall repeated across the majority of Conquest's other cameo characters.

Although some players might be more tolerant regarding the gameplay's unimaginative mission structure of 'go there attack that, come here defend this' and the astounding lack of pacing and urgency it brings with it, there's simply no forgiving Conquest's positively last-gen blend of dour visuals and shocking audio.

Granted, while missions are segued by unsurprisingly impressive celluloid sequences plucked from the movies, and narrative preamble is afforded a little added gravitas thanks to King Elendil himself Hugo Weaving, players will likely be winded by the plunging quality once they take to the battlefield. More pointedly, when it comes to the graphics, environmental design and character models swing between bland and ugly, while atmospheric and special effects are largely devoid of atmosphere and are anything but special. Beyond the shoddy visuals, rousing themes recycled from Howard Shore's original movie score cannot mask the near-lifeless audio, which is further buried by a constant and annoying stream of barked instructions that direct the player from one objective to another.

The straw that breaks the sagging back of this particularly lame camel is that enjoying Conquest's single-player component from the point of view of Sauron's evil armies - potentially the game's core selling point - first requires that players trawl through proceedings with the might of man. Once again, only the truly committed Lord of the Rings fan eager to experience all-new battles from a unique perspective is going to find the energy to stay the course. Those players not overly interested in a new set of missions spawned from a different ending to Tolkien's core story may find themselves fingering the power button within a matter of hours.

Adding a modicum of longevity and value to Conquest's overall package is the ability to engage in both local and online multiplayer clashes. These include up to four player split-screen battles on a single PlayStation 3, and up to 16 players when facing off online in a variety of team-based modes. Away from the dreary single-player action, online multiplayer opportunities, while far from upper-tier, at least manage to conjure up more free-flowing, genuinely frenetic, and borderline fun battles as the game's default character classes run around haphazardly while frantically trading steel, arrows and magic.

Bottom line with Lord of the Rings: Conquest is that it fails on almost every level to re-create the breathtaking scale and impact of its source material. Generic at best, the game's poorly staged battles and uninspired set pieces drag the player on a plodding journey through a world of imagination and invention where both of those vitally important facets have clearly been lost in translation.

50%

By Stevie Smith