For years, it's been a real challenge getting your hands on the cult classic 2011 action RPG Lord of the Rings: War in the North, but today, Aspyr Media surprise-dropped a remaster of the game on PS5, Xbox Series X, Nintendo Switch and Switch 2, and Steam.
Lord of the Rings: War in the North, a hack-and-slash adaptation of the Tolkien novels and the Peter Jackson movies with its own original story by Snowblind Studios, first released back in 2011 for PS3, Xbox 360, and PC. Steam delisted the game a few years back and it was never ported to modern consoles until now, making it hard to actually play the darn thing unless you owned an original copy and still had a seventh-gen console plugged in. Now, that's all changed with Lord of the Rings: War in the North - Legacy Edition.
The Lord of the Rings: War in the North remaster comes with "a variety of modern enhancements," says Aspyr in a press release. You can still team up with three players online and in local split-screen, but now you can swap between player characters on the fly and enjoy new features like "refined enemy-target locking, improved UI/UX with the addition of Health, Mana, and EXP bars for party members," autosave, and gyro controls on PS5 and Switch.
Being honest, I don't have the fondest memories of War in the North and much prefer Stormfront's adaptations of Two Towers and Return of the King, but Aspyr buried a pretty significant tease in its press release for the new remaster. "Fans can look forward to even more classic releases by Aspyr from the beloved franchise in the future," it says, suggesting more Lord of the Rings adaptations are on the way. I would genuinely love nothing more than modern re-releases of Two Towers and Return of the King with local co-op on Switch 2, even if it remains to be seen how competently Aspyr adapted War in the North.
