Wednesday 10 May 2006
The battle lines of Middle-Earth have already been drawn on PC, where Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle-Earth II was released earlier this year. But in making the leap to Microsoft's next-gen hardware, the Tolkien-inspired RTS has undergone a clever and intuitive change that makes it more than just another fantasy strategy game.
The game drops the mouse-driven strategy style of using a 'rubber band' box, where you hold and drag a box over what you want to select.
There are a lot of reasons to be pumped up for next months release of The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II on Xbox 360. Not only do we stand to get a fresh serving of pure Tolkien goodness from a team that has proven itself pretty skilled at adapting the license, but were also witnessing the first next-gen attempt at a real-time strategy game - a genre that has been woefully scarce on consoles.
Now you can add another incentive to the list. Following our recent hands-on
Hobbits and wizards may soon be as commonplace on the servers of Xbox Live as soldiers, athletes and racecars. The multiplayer aspect of the upcoming real-time strategy sequel The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II could be the best reason to pick up the game and theres a lot more to it than just throwing a few armies at each other and seeing who bites it first (though thats fun too – read our impressions of the games basic Versus mode here ). Players will also be treated
By
Edge_
posted February 15, 2006
There were howls from purists when EA won the filmic Lord of the Rings game licence, and echoes of those howls when it united those with the literary game rights previously held by Vivendi. And for a moment, looking at the new ideas in Battle for Middle-Earth II, you can see why.
Gollum, it transpires, has been introduced as a hidden, neutral unit. Find him and kill him, and you can take the ring. With the ring you can summon a special attack in the form of Sauron or Galadriel. At first sight,
Lord of the Rings may have exited stage left from theaters, but itll be playing on PC screens for as long as Electronic Arts can wield the license. The second installment of the Battle for Middle Earth strategy series promises more violent slaughter and more flexibility ... and a lot more to sink your axe into.
Tuesday 18 July 2006
If you have any adventure in your heart, last week's news that EA is making a Lord of the Rings free-form action RPG should have sent your excitement levels into overdrive. We've had a sneak peek of the ambitious project - previously known as Project Gray Company - and now we're here to tell you all about it.
The White Council is set 80 years before the Lord of the Rings novels - Bilbo has yet to stumble upon the Ring and Aragorn is learning to tie his boot-laces. But
By
PSM2_
posted September 24, 2004
In their own, beards are harmless - but combine them with an axe and an angry goblin and you're treading on rocky ground. No one likes to admit it, but the sweeping fantasy of the Lord of the Rings films is entertaining, and you can't help but be impressed by the vastness of former jam maker J. R. Hartley's vision. EA's latest Rings title, The Third Age, is, oddly enough, the first licensed RPG to take place in the ethereal land of Middle Earth. Cor.Despite the developers' head-shaking, the
J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy tale of epic struggle across the war-torn Middle Earth landscape has always been full of death and destruction, but previous games haven’t quite captured the sheer brutality of war at its grisliest. That’s about to change. The next Lord of the Rings installment takes off the kid gloves and ramps-up the violence. Dismembered limbs, beheadings, splattering gore: War in the North has it all. After getting an up-close and personal taste of the mayhem during a recent hands-on session, it’s clear this cooperative hack-and-slash fest certainly doesn’t skimp on the bloodshed...
There simply are not enough cooperative RPGs in this world. Full stop. You wanna headshot your buddy with a sniper rifle, you’ve got dozens of options. But if you want to team up together and take down the evil anything, your options can be counted on just a few fingers. Thankfully, The Lord of the Rings: War in the North is looking address that scarcity in a very big way. Chronicling the efforts of a different fellowship of adventurers during the War of the Ring, if there’s a more satisfying-looking co-op fantasy romp coming this year, we don’t know it...
We set out toward the fortress where evil was afoot. A lone goblin slowly made its way towards my Elvin mage as if knowing he was on a death march. The developers on either side of me – controlling the other pair of warriors; Ranger and Dwarf – waited to see what spell we'd cast. We'd already played around with the weak and strong melee attacks, but wanted to inflict a different kind of hurt. We held the Right Trigger and hit A, ready to send out a blast of energy to knock the jerk backwards. Suddenly, a giant eagle pounced on the goblin, sending gobs of blood spurting and drawing heckles from my demoers. Ohhhh, I’d held the Left Trigger by accident. And that special mishap was our introduction to the newest character in Lord of the Rings: War in the North – a very large, very vicious giant eagle named Beleram, whom you can call in as air support...
