Battle for Middle Earth - yuck!

[econ21]

I finally got around to trying Battle for Middle Earth. I had to install a DVD-ROM to play it (bought the game by mistake, not realising it was not a CD-ROM game). But although I am an absolute LOTR fanatic, it was not at all worth it. I've given up after the first two missions and about two hours.

The presentation is excellent - film clips, voice work by the original cast, those great graphics we all salivated over while the game was being made - but it is a Command and Conquer type traditional RTS and I guess I just can't stomach the genre.

Everything is super-fast and chaotic, there does not seem to be a pause. You have a lot of options in terms of units to control and heroic special powers (when controlling the fellowship), but maybe I am too old because it seemed the first scenario just played itself. I was too slow to have much impact on the fighting. Fighting the balrog at the end involves Gandalf continually running away and shooting it with magic - very gamey and totally contrary to the heroic spirit of the source material.

The second scenario was the real downer. Build up a base (only 5 buildings possible), build 5 units and have them run around in a horde, killing enemy units and buildings. I guess I am useless at these games, but there was a lot of frenetic movement back and forward, like squishing bugs, but no discernible tactics. You chop up enemy units, then chop down their buildings so you can build your own. It far was less stimulating and involving to me than filling in a sudoku puzzle.

It seems a world away from Total War games that it was sometimes put in competition with.

Oh well, now to find a DVD-ROM game worthy of my newly installed drive - maybe Half-Life 2 or Brothers in Arms?

[lars573]

First off it's a command an conquer game (bascially) they invented the blitzkreig fast RTS game.

Have you tried the book based vevendi-universal RTS War of the Ring? It uses the lords of the realm 2 engine. Has 2 sides good and evil. Has hero units same as BFME. That level up same as in BFME. But the magic system is very unique. You gain fate points threw combat with the enemy. Fate points are used for magic spells taliored to the good and bad sides, the ultimate spells are to summon the Balrog/and Ent. Also the hero units are trained and upgraded using fate points. The basic heroes (Gollum and Frodo) you get for resources though.

[Dutch_guy]

I have War of the Ring, I didn't really like it that much.
I have BFME and I like it better than War of the Ring

I found WOTR to be a cheap way to get lots of money from the poor LOTR fans very fast, without actually delivering a good game.It was -just like BFME only even more - very liniar ( sp ) / straight forward. not like the Total War series were you can do almost any thing you want.
That's why I like BFME better, I noticed that there had been put a lot of effort in the game ( although still a to0 simple campaign ), although I found that EA could have made trhe game much and much better than it is now.
I had high hopes or BFME but it didn;t quite live up to my expectations, sadley.
It is good for a couple of hours of gaming pleasure but after that you just put it away, until you watch a LOTR DVD ~;)

:balloon2: