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

"A very good cosole RTS game"

Real Time Strategy games are very hard to find on consoles and when you do happen to find them they usually turn out to be the biggest piece of junk ever.RTS games were made with PC gamers in mind, a mouse and a keyboard was all you needed and it worked almost flawlessly. Consoles on the other hand had controllers with not enough buttons and so became a very complicated game to understand and use. EA now believe they found the controller and control configuration that would suit old PC veterans and console RTS newbies like myself. Have they found the right combination, yes they have.

The Lord of the Rings, The Battle for Middle-earth II on Xbox 360 may change many peoples mind when they think of console RTS games. They have created a very simple pick up and play control system that anybody could play. Quite possibly, EA may be opening the floodgates to more Real Time Strategy games on 360 such as Command and Conquer and this is a very good thing. They couldn't picked a better franchise either, The Lord of the Rings is most suited to this genre, its the perfect backdrop for a game and something that well almost everybody knows about.

Now about the game, single player compromises of sixteen missions, eight for the Good side of the story and eight for the Evil side of the story. All in all, both sets of missions are really different to each other and aren't really re-hash's of each other. The story to the single player really is impressive as its taken some of the battles we might not have in the movies and placed it in out hands. The game has that Peter Jackson feel to it providing the game with music and story telling. There are also skirmish missions to get involved with in single player mode and then we get multiplayer online giving us some great games such as capture the flag, king of the hill and other memorable gametypes. I've found it very fun online with the right people especially newbies like myself but a lot of the time you get guys trying to rush you straight away in a game
, and thats not very nice.

In terms of visuals, nothing too exciting as its basically a port of the eight month old PC version but it does give us some spectacular effects with probably the most realistic view of the sea the sea, large battles with hundred of men and great cut scenes.

Overall, an impressive start for RTS games on 360. EA have started the ball rolling and have provided proof of how they can be put on consoles properly. I highly recommend this game to either Lord of the Rings fans and RTS newbies, Im not sure how PC find this game on console but trust me, its very easy to get to grips with.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 08/18/06