The Lord of the Rings, The Battle for Middle-earth II

"The One RTS...for the 360 that is"

Well folks for the first time in quite a good long while an rts has finally made its way to the consoles, and thankfully its a damn good one

Graphics: 7/10
The graphics in Battle for Middle Earth are solid, while nothing amazing they do the job well and allow you to enjoy the action, you can clearly see details in the action, the only issues are the design of some of the interfaces which are difficult to deal with on a SDTV.

Controls: 8/10
For a console the controls on this RTS are remarkably solid, everything feels very tight and the controls are very responsive. The biggest issues with them seem to be that they are incredibly complicated and some functions just seem hard to keep track of, still thats a minor price to pay to get controls this good onto a console

Sound: 9/10
EA really hit a home run with the sounds on this one, the music is excellent and the tracks seem to run at the perfect times, the voice actors from the movies put in some time on the game and it paid off, Hugo Weaving and Christopher Lee do an amazing job narrating the single player campaign.

Gameplay: 8/10
Ok heres where the 360 shines and fails, EA did everything they could to port this game over to the 360 and its clear the 360 has the power to run it but there are some flaws that come out, first theres some minor lag when trying to scrolls around the screen quickly, especially if theres a massive army on screen, also the unit limit on the game has hurt it to some extent. Now complaints aside the game plays great, the action is tight and always feels hectic in a good sort of way. The magic powers are awesome and some of the summons are incredibly cool. Overall it plays very very well and besides the technical issues the gameplay is awe inspiring

Overall: 8/10
This game is excellent and on some level I'm sad that the best I could give it was an 8, but truth be told the technical issues and minor graphical weaknesses do hold it back some, still if you can overlook those minor weaknesses its a great game and worth owning

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 07/19/06