The Lord of the Rings: Conquest Review

Platform: PC

Genre: Third-Person Action

So EA Games thought it was about time to milk the LotR franchise again.

They took a look at Battlefield and thought... why not put swords and axes?And they did. What world should we create? After some days of counting the dust-bunnies, they had the solution. Let's use Middle-Earth.

I will admit now that I haven't played any Battlefield games, only Star Wars Battlefront ... which I heard was pretty close to them, and LotR Conquest is very close to SW: Battlefront...so .... it resembles Battlefield... I guess.

Anyway, the game is mostly directed on it's multiplayer part. In singleplayer you have two stupid/stressful campaigns. First is the good campaign, then you unlock the evil campaign. The Good campaign let's you play through some of the key battles from Lord of the Rings. Before each mission a cinematic with clips from the movie will be played (getting somewhat tiresome...after so many LotR games). Then you get to choose a character. There are 4 classes each with their different weapons, attacks and special attacks. Each have low/medium/heavy strike mapped on the mouse (in my case the medium attack was set somewhere in the void of the keyboard, my mouse-wheel just won't click). Anyway, except these basic attacks, when something fills up (what fills up, depends on the class you are playing), you get yo use the "specials". So, the classes:

Warrior: the most stupid class to play, At first this was my choice, I always like playing with the guy with a biiiiiiiig sword. It has some combos and fierce special attacks but it dies quickly and.... that's it.

The scout: a.k.a. the rogue. He can sneak behind the enemies and insta-kill them. Also he can single-handed beat any enemy as long as he is in stealth-mode and gets behind them. Even Mumakils, trolls or siege towers.

The archer: no clue, only used him in the tutorial, where I had to.

The mage: the most powerful class. In one mission where I had to defend a spot, I went with the warrior. It didn't work so well, but when I tried the mage... well I went through the whole game only with the mage afterwards. He has healing, a spell-projectile shield, fire wall, chain-lighting and physical-staff-in-the-head-bonk attacks. And as Baku would say, the greatest class in the game would be Gandalf.

Heroes: They are more-powerful versions of the above only with one extra-damage-doing-thingy (Aragorn has the army of the dead).

Well, I haven't played the game in multiplayer, but it doesn't really look balanced to me. The campaigns are short. After doing the good campaign, comes the evil one. Here, I was expecting (as always) a plot with a some side-turns or whatnot, but instead in every mission you have to kill another one of the fellowship's

members while resurecting some of the bad characters (Witch-king, Balrog).
The sound is pretty neat, well it's the LotR OST which I listen tosanyway when i play Oblivion/Morrowind. The graphics look old and dusty, but sometimes they can catch your eye.



the bad: no saving (I know it's a multyplayer based game, but they could've made a quicksave), crappy balancing (my opinion), faded graphics
the good: it ends quickly, the soundtrack

The Elder Scrolls IV: Shivering Isles Review

Platform:Cheese powered PC

Genre:RPG

"Everywhere I look, I see ... butterflies. They come with me everywhere, all the way to Sheogorath's Palace. How did I get here ? I found a strange door in the water. The door was calling me, shouting my name with the power of cheese. Walking towards the palace I came back and went on the other way. I lost my mind, the despair caught me ...everything lost it's color, my lips couldn't form the shape of a smile.

Everything was hard. I could barely place a foot in front of the other.

When I finally arrived, Sheogorath spoke to me. I couldn't make any sense of it. The pure genius of his madness overwhelmed me. I think he was one of the most brilliant men ever created. My bag and it's content made me remember of my previous days spent in Cyrodiil but as time passed it got full of new interesting things. I started collecting madness ore so Cutter could make me mad armour.

I met a lot of interesting people on the way, they were... unique but most of them needed help. I helped them and I had to go to the craziest places. The landscape, either if it was gloomy or colorful amazed me all the time.

The only thing I started to dislike were the corridors. I think I went through a lot of them, especially upon finding out the truth and ending the madness.

Overall, this was one the most amazing adventures I've ever been on. "

the bad: maybe a bit too many dungeons at some point (but this is a thing of taste), the really bad part is that it ends

the good: it's a piece of art