LOTR: War of the Ring

I sniffed around the forums and didn't see this pop up in any discussions really.

Has anyone played it yet? I spent 40 minutes in best buy at lunch looking at this game, and holding a copy of the original homeworld ($9.99) and put both down and walked out when I saw the line.

There''s a demo available in case you missed it. Let''s just say that the game is a heavilly uninspired WarCraft III clone. If you haven''t played WC3 yet, I''d rather suggest getting that one along with the Frozen Throne expansion. If you loved WC3 and want MOTS, WotR might be somewhat appealing. If you''re just lusting for some strategy I''d highly recommend trying out the Massive Assault demo. There''s no hype behind this one, but it''s a quite enjoyable turn-based title.

I agree, definite WC3 ripoff. I liked the look of it but something about the controls was wrong.

I just really want LOTR:Battle for Middle Earth. It is a nice looking RTS game based on the Generals engine.

I just really want LOTR:Battle for Middle Earth. It is a nice looking RTS game based on the Generals engine.

I''m crossing my fingers for this one too.

You know, I played the War of the Ring demo, and even though the gameplay was derivative, the graphics unimpressive, the music too muzak-y, and the overall experience lame, one thing really really leapt out at me:

their Gollum impersonator is pathetic. Heck, I can do a better Gollum voice than their ""professional"" voice actor! He sounds more like Yoda than Gollum, but it''s not even a good Yoda voice. Ugh.

""The force is weak with this one, gollum, gollum""

Heck, I can do a better Gollum voice than their ""professional"" voice actor!

There are two types of professional voice actor. Type one consists of about 100 people who do the voice work for basically every cartoon in the country. Everything from uncredited additional voices on animated movies to 2 minute space fillers on Nickelodeon. Type two are those people who by the hard work and tireless dedication of their uncle the producer find themselves in a sound booth, reading lines and thinking: ""Wow! I''m a professional voice actor!"".

It seems as though I may be the only one who has played WOTR so I''ll offer my $.02 on the title. Let me say up front that as long as you don''t have high expectations going in, you will probably enjoy this game. If you enjoyed Warcraft 3 then you should find the gameplay here fun with the added bonus of it being in the LOTR universe. The missions can be interesting because they usually involve stories or quests ancillary to the book regarding the Fellowship characters. The voice acting isn''t bad (excluding the aforementioned terrible Gollum voice) and the graphics are plausible but cartoonish. (There were some cool DX9 water effects but in crowded battle scenes my frame dipped even with a 3 gig proc.) Some levels are done very well (Helm''s Deep and the Balrog missions for example) while others unforunately replicate the build a base and destroy the enemy formula that has been done to death. The evil side was fun at times but at times the missions felt like the undead levels in W3. Overall I''d give this game a B grade.