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Middle Earth for Dummies

Less ambitious but much closer to being released is War of the Ring, an RTS by Liquid Entertainment, the creators of Battle Realms. Although they swear they're not using the Battle Realms engine (as if that were a bad thing -- that engine looked great!), War of the Ring bears a very strong resemblance, from the terrain to the detail in character models to the interface.

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However, the gameplay appears to be much more streamlined for a wider audience. Resource gathering and base building seem to be downplayed so players can spend more time twiddling around with their hobbits and elves and unique heroes. There are some special abilities, like arrows that can knock enemies back, and the power to summon a balrog to wreak havoc. To keep things simple, there are only two sides, good and evil. Liquid Entertainment was almost apologetic about how lean the gameplay was, but they're obviously building War of the Ring with a strong emphasis on visual gratification. This seems to be an RTS for casual players who just want to watch orcs and dwarves whacking away at each other. And since Liquid is working with Vivendi's licensing for the books, they're using their own visual concepts. Don't bother squinting to see if your heroes look like Viggo Mortensen, Ian McKellen (That’s Sir Ian McKellen to you, Tom. -ed.), and Orlando Bloom, because they don't.

The Amazing Jumping Gandalf

However, Electronic Arts' Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King does use the movie license and therefore the actors' likenesses. In fact, for this "action/adventure" game, the actors all provide their own voices. The Return of the King is the third action game based on the movies, but the first iteration for the PC. Although it's billed as an action/adventure, it looks like action through and through, with perhaps a few puzzle elements. In the demo, players have to figure out that they can use a catapult to shoot a menacing dragon. I guess that qualifies as 'adventure'.

The game will be out a few weeks before the movie, featuring scenes that won't be available anywhere else before the release. Although PC gamers won't have the co-op multiplayer support that'll come with console systems, they will enjoy higher resolution graphics. In addition to new settings, there are new playable characters like Sam (as if anyone's going to want to play as poor Sam) and now Gandalf.

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One of the most amusing things I saw at E3 was this game's representation of Gandalf jumping around and kicking ass. He does spinning kicks and twirls. He leaps from walls and does fancy Gymkata tricks on conveniently placed ropes. He does Mortal Kombat style fatality moves with his sword. He’s old enough to throw his hip out doing that kind of stuff, but he won’t be deterred, come hell, high water, or a thousand uruk-hai. He may look like Ian McKellen, but he moves like Jackie Chan on twelve cups of coffee. The Prince of Persia has nothing on this guy.

As a final note, there will also be a version of The Return of the King for the Gameboy Advance, created by Amaze Entertainment. It looks like they'll be reprising their work from the superlative Two Towers, which was essentially a feature-rich Diablo clone for the Gameboy. Oddly enough, this is the Lord of the Rings game I’m most looking forward to, so I may have to turn in my hardcore PC gamer card.