Why do I still like Lord Of The Rings Games?

When I first got my PS2, around 2003, I was mainly encouraged to buy it over the Gamecube after seeing two games, 'James Bond 007: Nightfire' and Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers. Mainly because I was into the LOTR films at that point, and I really wanted to play out the movies. Obviously games like GTA: Vice City, were influential, but I was really wowed by 'The Two Towers'.


The settings were exactly how I thought they should of been, the blending between DVD quality footage and CGI were astounding to me at the time, having been a late adopted from the PS1-N64 era. Sure, looking back, it was pretty bland, but we can do that with every single game produced a while ago. At the time the movies were in full flow and they were capturing the minds of people who had never even heard of books.

In 'The Two Towers' and the follow up 'The Return of the King' you hacked and slashed your way through all the scenes and hidden scenes based on the movies (as the Fellowship game was based on the books, and was pretty crap and unexciting), with a variety of well known characters, all voiced correctly and made me think 'Yeah things really have moved on from the old days'.
5 years have passed since then, and there have been a variety of LOTR games produced, with varying degrees of success. The RTS series 'Battle for Middle Earth' has proved to have a small but loyal following, yet various console based LOTR games have been a bit hit and miss. 'Shadow of Angmar' has been gaining a following, as a similar type game to WoW, only based in the LOTR universe.

Now Pandemic, creators of the Mercenaries series and Star Wars: Battlefront series, are creating a LOTR style game, based on SW:B. This has mainly come about from them being bought by EA, who own the LOTR license. Now i liked the SW:B series, as they were probably the most enjoyable star wars based game i had played, with the emphasis on you being one soldier in a massive battle.


Now According to IGN, Pandemic are developing LOTR: Conquest, which aims to do the same for LOTR as Battlefront did for Star Wars. And I really want to play it. No real reason why other than I like Pandemic as developer I suppose. But the idea of being one soldier fighting against or for orcish hordes, alongside Aragorn and Legolas, kinda brings out the LOTR geek in me. It will also be interesting to see how Pandemic's development process has changed since being acquired by EA.

Lord of the Rings: Conquest is being released on 360, PS3 and PC around Autumn time.