Ah, here we go. This is the closest thing to a “serious” game I’ve played in a long time. You know the ones, the mature, the big-budget, the “hardcore”. I’m not sure those labels really would apply, but it’s further up on that spectrum than the Avatar games, you know. It’s a Western action RPG and all that.

The real reason for playing this was the LOTR connection. The wife and I are big fans, and even if this wasn’t exactly penned by JRR (we’re on a first three initials basis), it’s at least in the cinematic universe and it explores corners of Middle Earth we don’t often see. I was just interested in being in that world.

As a bonus we got a game that we didn’t mind playing together. We picked the easiest difficulty, which I think was a bit easy for me but to be honest l didn’t want it to be more than breezy, it would have been frustrating. Doubly so for my wife. We had enough issues with the bugs and the clunky UI, I’m not sure the game would have handled loading from a checkpoint. One of the more amusing bugs was a persistent chain-rattling in an Orcish fortress that steadily grew louder until it overwhelmed all other sound effects, even when we left that room far behind.

There was also a heavy Uncanny Valley element, along with environments jam packed with invisible walls. It’s clear that this is one of those games with more vision than budget, although having said that in terms of ambition it wasn’t overly creative. But again, we weren’t there for an amazing gaming experience, we were there to play around in Tolkien’s world and laugh at the cheesy voice acting. Actually a lot of the voice work was quite good, but any character who has appeared in the films (Elrond, Gandalf, etc) was a pale imitation.

But yeah it was just fun shooting orcs, finding phat lootz, meeting new folks, getting a bit lost, levelling up. Because we were doing it together. There’s a new LOTR action game in development that looks kinda interesting, Shadow of Mordor. But it’s single player only. You just can’t forgive as many flaws when you’re playing alone. I was excited thinking we could play that together too, but nope.

But oh, I just loved meeting Radagast, finding a hidden dwarven fortress, learning the history (which is canon) of places like Gundabad or Fornost, interacting with eagles and dragons and Black Numenoreans. I’ve said before that I don’t care what the general consideration is whether something is canon or non-canon. It’s all canon to me, as much as I can make. I just can’t learn and remember details and characters and then dismiss them as not real. We had this experience, it’s real to me.

I played the ranger Eradan, and Everbloom played the elven sorceress Andriel. Local co-op ftw baby! We had fun poking fun at Farin, the AI third wheel. You also get in your party a personal eagle taxi who flies you all over the north like an obedient Pidgeot, and can do Sky Attack to enemy formations. I got pretty attached to these characters, and they in particular are voiced very well.

I had a look at some PC videos afterwards and oh my goodness that version looks so much nicer than the PS3. I would have thought that by 2011 developers could have worked out the kinks in developing for the console, but I guess that whole graphical creep issue had come into effect. Loading times were pretty long, but for all I know that’s normal. Like I said, not really into playing the newest hottest games on the scene, dudebro.

Well I think I’ve said what I wanted to. This game was a real novelty, it had a lot to like, but mostly for the lore and the co-op play. As a game apart from that it’s competent but not amazing. It’s also different to my usual forte so familiarising myself with that style was fun. Just don’t compare it too closely to Skyrim or whatever you kids are playing these days. Any LOTR fans though should definitely check it out, and set it to easy if you need to.