As I played through Lord of the Rings: War in the North, it made me realize how much I've missed the hack and slash adventure titles of the past. Being done by Snowblind studios who are single handily responsible for putting me in this position with their addicting Baldur Gates: Dark Alliance series, Champions of Norrath, and (to a lesser degree) Justice League Heroes. There's a strange trigger in me that craves loot, that must always see the next level of armor or weapons that I can obtain. It's the reason why I fall so hard in love with games like Pokemon and World of Warcraft and even managed to forgive something as truly terrible as Too Human just because it kept giving me shiny new boots when I shouldn't even be playing! That's the player War in the North wants; the one that wants just one more trinket before leaving.
The game begins by setting up the new cast of characters to have an impact on Middle Earth. The player takes control of one of three generic adventurers that come in one of three obligatory flavors, the Dwarven Warrior, Elvish Mage, and Human Rogue. A plus of the game design is that even if a player chooses one class, they can still swap out at the end of any mission for a new one without losing their progress through the game. After choosing which, the game instantly puts the trio in the town of Bree at a time just before Frodo and his Hobbit band arrived. Meeting in a bar with Strider (aka Aragon) this small group is tasked with the tracking down and defeating of a new evil that's arrived to lay waste to the land in the form of a Sauron-esque tyrant named Agandaur. Now it's up to this seeming B-team to defend the north of Middle-Earth while the other fellowship goes south with the Ring.
My biggest problem with the story is the three main characters. They are really just card board cut outs that are supposed to resemble Aragon, Gimli, and Legolas. They don't really ever show true personality, and I have a major problem with the fact that you have an elf and dwarf on the same team that never have fun racial bickering. In fact, these three seem to be the bestest of friends, never letting anything even remotely emotional come between them. No personality quirks, no shortcomings, they are absolute good, making them incredibly boring. Thankfully, some side characters show up to keep the tale interesting. I got a chance to chat things up with all the main characters from the books, Frodo and Bilbo Baggins included. The best of these is my eagle ally that I saved early in the game, Beleram. The game even manages to work in a cameo by Radagast the Brown. It's just a shame that the people I have to spend all my time with aren't better fleshed out.
My other major complaint is the sound work of the game. The developers decided work with Peter Jackson's film interpretation and while it works well here visually, my gripe comes from the voice work and music. It's incredibly saddening to see that with so many chances to interact with the original cast that none of the actors come back to voice their roles. Some of the replacements work well enough, but others really stand out trying to do their best to mimic their on screen persona (namely Gandalf). This is incredibly jarring to me, constantly pulling me out of the game to see Elijah Wood's Frodo and Hugo Weaving's Elrond only to hear a voice that doesn't sound remotely like the actor's. This continues with the musical score. Instead of taking aspects of Howard Shores iconic work on the film trilogy and fill this game with so many of those amazing and heroic tunes, it has it's own original soundtrack. I can't think of a single time that the music stood out to me, that it amplified any of the combat. In fact, I found myself humming the original score to try to amp up my enjoyment. I think this was a massive misstep.
Now time to get to what I did enjoy about this title. While I made the observation that the sound design hurt the game but using Jackson's look does much to help it. All of the armor designs and locals of Middle Earth take direct inspiration off of the film's aesthetic choices for each race. This really helps with the three characters, with all of them constantly being clad in armor and weapons that give a unique look to each class. It's really a sight to watch your character start out in rags and slowly work their way up to full plate armor. It's truly a thrill to open a chest with anticipation over what look you will have next.
The graphics churn out some great looking loot. The armor and weapons are very detailed and can certainly look awe inspiring in the late game. The same can't be said for the character faces though. They have a deadness to them as they speak, never convincing of any form of emotion. The only one that was the exception was the talking eagle who spoke with bizarre articulation in his animations. The enemies do a great job mirroring their film counterparts but, like the game itself, lack the variety needed to hold interest over the long period the title asks for. The environments benefit a great deal from the film source. Rivendale looks vibrant and the dwarven stronghold has fantastic stone work. The game definitely takes full advantage of the places to show, from Mirkwood to frozen mountain tops. While it never gives a chance to fully explore beyond a laid out path, it certainly gives the depth of a vast world beyond developer made borders.
The combat is well made but never unique. It keeps things very simple with only a quick and strong attack and no combos to speak of. While the characters do level and pick up new skills along the way, it never introduces any complicated gameplay elements besides chopping away with a sword/axe until said body falls down dead. This works for and against the game. The simplicity keeps the game easy to pick up and play but really causes repetition to set in very early. It doesn't help that the enemy designs quickly repeat themselves. The first time a Troll happened across my party was a terrifying thing, but by the time I was taking on 2 or 3 at a time no more than an hour later, it just became stale. It doesn't matter if it's orcs, goblins, or giant spiders, every enemy type repeats and repeats constantly. It rarely becomes a challenge of overcoming difficult foes but rather is just dealing with crowd control.
Overall, my experience with War in the North made me realize how much I have missed the hack and slash genre, or at least a well made one. The game, while never showing any brilliance of game play, still got its hooks in me through the constant reward of loot. I felt a constant drive to get a bigger and better sword, or to see just how awesome that new chest plate would look on my ranger. Yet, for every step forward, there was one more step back. The story failed to engage me by using parodies of the main characters from the books. War in the North never has a problem with filling me in on the enormous depth of detail of Tolkien's world, it just never does the same for the main cast. I can only really recommend this to people who are like me and get addicted to the craving of loot and have been needing a good hack and slash adventure. I advise LotR fans to rent it first as I feel that the use of the franchise does more to hurt rather than help. There's a fun game to be played here, but if you can't find a good reason to excuse it's many shortcomings, you're going to have a harder time than me with cutting through the next mob with the hope for a new suit of armor.
"Lord of the Rings: War in the North" is on sale November 1, 2011 and is rated M. RPG. Developed by Snowblind Studios. Published by Warner Bros Interactive.
