The Lord of the Rings is actually a pretty significant epic in gaming. J. R. R. Tolkien's world of Middle-earth has been the inspiration for dozens of popular games in various genres, but specifically entails to high fantasy RPGs such as Dragon Age, The Elder Scrolls series, World of Warcraft, and the upcoming Kingdoms of Amalur. There have also been several games based on Tolkien's writings and the popular film trilogy, so developer Snowblind Studios isn't treading unfamiliar ground with their latest release, The Lord of the Rings: War in the North. Neither LOTR: Conquest or LOTR: Battle for Middle-earth II did much for me and I've wanted a decent Tolkien inspired game on the next gen consoles for awhile. So when I became aware that War in the North would have a unique story that coincides with the films, contain RPG elements, and sport a mature rated combat system; I was eager to get my hands on the game and find out how it fared. While I think it's better than Conquest and Battle for Middle-earth II, War in the North does nothing to improve the franchise and instead acts as a mediocre hack and slash with some RPG elements that could only please the most hardcore of Rings fans; but even that is a stretch.
You'll be playing one of three characters: an elf mage, a human ranger, and a dwarf champion. You can switch between the characters at particular moments or you can allow your friends to jump in local or online co-op. As soon as I attempted the split-screen co-op the room was met with sighing to find it literally splits the screen rather than allowing the characters all on screen at once. This may not be a problem for everyone but I have always found the vertical splitting of a screen very distracting. So with your poor man's Fellowship all together, they begin in Bree meeting Aragorn at The Prancing Pony (before Frodo makes his arrival) who tasks them with journeying to Rivendell to meet up with Elrond and during the trip they run into orcs, goblins, and really terribly designed trolls. There is also a giant eagle called Beleram who you can acquire as a special power for defeating enemies or getting to new areas. The rest of the story kind of falls through the gaps with the monotonous gameplay. It's called War in the North but I never really got the sense that this was a war. Since when are wars fought with three characters? There are some friends that help out along the way, but there were sequences in the last generation movie games that could at least make you feel like you were in large and epic battles. Each character plays differently with the mage using offensive and defensive attacks coupled with healing and attack magic, the ranger focuses on melee and ranged attacks, and the dwarf champion is mostly an offensive fighter with some crafting bonuses.
The biggest marketing appeal was that the game was rated M for mature. A mature rated Lord of the Rings game? Hell yeah...but not really. The violence is comical at best and a single heavy attack will have goblins pretty much exploding in black gore. It's cool when you get a standard decapitation but upon seeing so many body parts flying off with a single sword swing comes off a bit silly rather than visceral. This is one of those titles where the screen shots look a lot better than the actual game. I can't recall a single moment that I was impressed on a visual level and instead found myself criticizing the character and monster designs too regularly. The environments aren't too bad but I appreciate a game more if the environments stand out enough that I may actually want to stop the fighting and look around but I anxiously went from area to area hoping for a change of pace. The best looking areas are the more northern settings with mountains and snow. The color work here captures more of the grim atmosphere of the moment and probably got more attention from the artists than other levels. The music isn't really noticeable unless you're fighting something and it's your standard fantasy score that won't stand out far from anything else you have played. The voice acting is pretty flat despite coming from a veteran like Nolan North. I don't think it's so much all of the actor's faults as it is the audio sync and the fact that there really isn't enough quality to the characters to really care about their involvement or what they have to say. You'll get the standard repetitive grunts and growls from each of them during combat.
War in the North is not a bad game, but it is an average one. It's rather disappointing considering it's developed by the same studio that brought action RPG fans Champions of Norrath and Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance but those were last generation games and aside from some updated visuals, War in the North doesn't provide a lot of evidence that the studio has grown much. The biggest problem I think is that this isn't an independent license. It's the freaking Lord of the Rings. If you want a game that's like those other titles but takes place in Middle-earth then you will certainly enjoy War in the North. For me personally, I'm a gamer that always wants something a bit fresh and to see popular licenses head in different directions and offer players the best experience they can get. I got bored with this game only an hour in and while the pace does pick up as you gain new abilities and ascend to new levels, I didn't feel any desire to play it again. If I'm being absolutely honest...I was actually playing co-op with a friend and started falling asleep with the controller in my hand. That isn't an exaggeration. I get easily bored if all I have to do is enter an area, tap some buttons to kill the bad guys, pick up items, and then repeat the process to the next area. I've been playing games like that for as long as I can remember so excuse me if it just isn't my cup of tea anymore.
