The Battle for Middle-Earth 2 & Rise of the Witch King Expansion
Platform/s:
Pc
Xbox 360
Developer:
EA Los Angeles
Genré:
Real time Strategy
Review:
Disturbingly enough I find my back to the wall once again.
EA have this really bad habit of making the occasional game that is so exceptional that I start to feel all the past betrayals begin to ebb away into a distant blue fog, then they go ahead and give me a backhand slap to remind me that with something good there must always be a sting.
I would ask them why this point must always come in the form of a red hand imprint on my cheek that takes a lot of cream and crying in a dark corner to recover from but like the abused lover I am, I always seem to give them another chance to impress me.
EA seem to stick to this routine of making sure that each time they make a decent game with a compelling story or a skirmish mode so addictive you end up whittling away countless months on it they, they automatically run to the Concept Studio and yell at each other in loud voices,
“We need a half baked expansion pack that adds just enough to qualify as something trading standards won’t immediately stomp on and while we’re at it let’s make sure it fixes absolutely no bugs and if we’ve really got the time, Id like to see a few more errors put in that we don’t plan to ever patch out!”
And thus Rise of the Lich… I mean Witch… king was born.
Ah EA, if for no other reason I love you for just being the corporate whore you are and the physical embodiment of everything Karl Marx and the U.S.S.R stood against.
To Middle-Earth we go then…
Battle for Middle-Earth, as the sharper amongst you will have no doubt deduced by now, is a game about a lot of rugged men, rugged women, dwarves who, like an ex-girlfriend of mine, seem to be pissed off about being five foot and constantly reminded of it (in hind sight may be why she left me) and some rather pretty, fair haired warriors with stunning complexions.
No I’m not talking about the Handmaidens from Knights of the old Republic!
No the people I refer to are actually the Elves... Male elves to be specific…
Anyone who has spent more than 30 seconds on the character creation screen of Lord of the rings online will know what I mean.
Moving on from that horrible joke I find myself in the games story mode.
AH HA! You yell at me. How can you discuss the story mode of Lord of the Rings? It’s obviously just going to be you fighting all the biggest battles form the movies "Lord of the Rings: Conquest" style to which I borrow EAs huge pimp ring and backhand you as only a pimp can.
We’re dealing with multinational corporations here people! who care as much about what you actually want as much as Allah is a reasonable deity obsessed with peace and love.
The story mode therein is actually barely, if at all, related to the actual books.
I can happily say I am sexed enough as a rugged handsome man of 23 with a rather stylish goatee to say that I have never read the full trilogy. There was a sadder darker time in my life called my “school years” where I did voluntarily read Return of the king, which ironically enough was king size edition, and in response lost interest in reading anything other than Terry Pratchet books ever again.
So I may be wrong in this regard but I’m a games critic so to hell with it, I’ll just assume.
The “Good” campaign consists of you playing as a load of characters significant enough to be mentioned in the books and the online “lets be like wow but not nearly as successful or fun” game... and Elrond, who is voiced by Hugo Weaving and ever since his part in V for Vendetta cannot be called anything other than the perfect voice for an arrogant sneer about someone’s attempts at cooking, art or their appearance in that dress.
It apparently focuses on the “War in the North” another spin off side tracked piece of garbage pulled wholesale from Lord of the Rings online and its original content before it pumped out two expansion packs not even remotely mirroring World of Warcraft at all. Really!
Too much lotro hatred at the minute, there will be plenty of time for that come the MMORPG section and my part in tearing the bastards to shreds.
Ssssh, its ok. Not yet.
Sorry, got totally sidetracked there for a minute,
So Battle for Middle Earth 2 or Bfme2 as it is commenly cut down to by the lazy creatures known only as the “gamer scene” by the pretentious and “slackers to society” by those of us not phased by looking good in the eyes of the community.
It features 6 races, 3 good, 3 evil (innovative stuff there EA) consisting of Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Goblins, Mordor and Hobbits.
I am of course lying because no game company in its right mind would make hobbits a playable race in any context … oh sorry about that Turbine, I didn’t see all the Hobbit Guardians and Wardens who you seem to think are perfectly capable of tanking The Witch King, I guess Lore means as little to you as it does EA.
ARGH, Damn it!
New paragraph, go!
No the 6th race is in fact Isengarde and its nice to actually see EA taking an interest in its customers this time around because in the first game you had 2 different humans, Mordor and Isengarde and in the first game if you chose any army but Isengarde then you had already lost upon loading in to everyone else who did take Isengarde.
Likewise in the sequel if you take any army other than the dwarves then you will have just enough time to build two farms and a barrack before the inevitable steamroller that is the dwarves rolls through your base and laughs at you as you rage quit the game.
Its around about at this point I sit and ponder the games creativity. Can I truly sit here and hark on at how the game lacks inspiration and isn’t exactly going to stop me hot boxing my bedroom with last nights weed supply just to play it with a clear mind?
Yes, Yes I can.
While Tolkien is the man who brought elves and dwarves from Norse mythology into the modern age of literature by means of wanting to create a beautiful mythology for England, England of course being one of the most boring countries to ever exist since it was invaded by the Romans.
Still, I find it exceptional that a company like EA can take this wonderful form of escapism and make it so mundane. That’s impressive even for EA in all honesty.
I spoke to my friend earlier with whom I have played over one hundred hours of this game online. Usually he and myself spend a few hours grinding the npcs and making racist, sexist and out rightly harsh jokes about how easily we are rampaging over the faces of the npcs on their hardest settings as well as the varying sections of society foolish enough to be human.
Why would I play this game so much if it were truly as awful as I said?
Because it works, everything makes sense. Its simple and when you scrap away the bugs left behind like so many vaginal scrapings in a pap smear clinic its actually a fun game because its so simple not in spite of this.
Each race has a handful of heroes you can call up to assist your army; they come with a selection of powers, both active and passive of course, ranging from leadership buffs for damage and armour to whirlwinds you can use to clear our entire legions.
The units work on the tried and tested rock, paper, scissors formulae and even have in the unit icon at their point of origin what they are good against. IE Spears beat horses (I honestly did not see that coming!) archers beat spears, horses crush everything that isn’t a monster, spears or hero.
This again works well because it forces you to have a multitude of units and to make a varied army rather than roll out a hundred mammoth tanks and steamroll the enemies base.
Speaking of heroes they added a “create a hero” function for this game and its actually kind of nice to have your own warrior, elf or wizard (because elves are a way of life and not just a class and don’t you forget it!) running around destroying the enemy. You choose 5 powers for them from a menu and each power set is based on the class you chose.
Now anyone with a clue will simply go on Google, look up “Captain of Gondor” and in the short description under the header look for the word “Rigged setup” thus which follows is a character capable of mashing an enemy army and base in the first minutes of the game which can cause the most ironic of events, a Dwarf player to rage quit!
Graphically speaking the game isn’t really up to much. It’s pretty on high spec I guess and around what you would expect for something launched in 2006 by, Hey lets milk these jerks some more, EA.
Sounds?
What do you expect? Your choices are – dwarf who sounds like he got punched in the gut, men a little too eager to polish their armour (wink, wink) and the effeminate elves… with Hugo Weaving.
The evil side seems to have the slightly strangled sounding goblins and the, I just recovered form major jaw surgery sounding Uruk-Hai.
One major saving grace in this game is that both stories are narrated by Christopher Lee and if I’m being honest, he could tell me the world is about to end and I’d be ok with it because the man just has the most awesomely dramatic voice I have ever heard.
Imagine if you will him calling out "Your lunch... Is READY!" wouldn't that be the most awesome lunch you ever ate?
What did the inevitable wallet leech of an expansion pack add?
Erm…
Eerrrr….
More multiplayer maps?
Something that could have been done in a patch.
HAH As if EA patch a title after its more than 6 months old.
Who do you think your dealing with here? Mythic?
It also added the not really needed and totally a square peg in a round hole army of Angmar. The Witch Kings personal army and please stop me if I’m wrong here but during the whole time the movies ran, did anyone ever see the Witch King leading an army of wolves, trolls and fallen men?
No I didn’t either so I’m left to assume this is a prequel, not that its ever explained to us where or how this fits in with the first game but as already mentioned the first game made little to no sense in the order of things so to hell with it and the movie tie in whore it is.
There were some other additions to the game made via this Pre/ Se /quell (adjust as seen fit) such as the addition of a new troll class in the create a hero and some modifications to the war of the ring mode.
Ah Yeah I should explain about that while I’m at it.
Have you ever played a game and thought, man this would be just perfect if it had an 18 hours of the day time consuming conquer the world mode like that seen in Dawn of War Dark crusade or Kane’s Wrath only much slower, more time consuming and no where near as action heavy? Well now you have it!
In the 1st design of the mode it consisted of 3 heroes from you’re chosen faction dumped on the map of Middle-Earth and you had to take control of the whole world one region at a time. This might be seen by those with no girlfriend, regular friends or in fact no human contact beyond the pet cat you put a mask of Hugo Weaving on and say things like “Agent Smith… We shall fight once more!” to it before hocking it on your bed and tickle fighting it to…
Where was I…
So this mode is basically the biggest of time sinks and while I appreciate videogames are meant to be a time sink, to while away hours between bed and breakfast this just doesn’t do it very well. Probably why NO ONE plays It online and why I rarely even look at it let alone trying to complete it.
The expansion simply added a new feature which meant that after each battle in a region (using the multiplayer maps, good or bad you decide) you go back to the map with the hero you used to initiate the battle plus the army he / she used to win it.
The heroes were always persistent, the addition was the armies sticking around once the fight is over, something I feel shouldn’t have been an expansion element so much as a launch title element, but if EA wasn’t scamming every penny out of us it could it just wouldn’t be EA now would it.
The other additions consisted of some new heroes, such as Prince Brand among the dwarves. A hero who has a power unlocked at lvl2 that can wipe out large numbers of clustered troops because they must have felt the dwarves weren’t rigged enough before and the inclusion of some heroic units which suck more than a Thai hooker in a bar for lonely Marines on leave. Quick mention here - Prince Brand wasn't IN lord of the Rings, he was a "The Hobbit" character. Incedently why can all the Men of Dale in the Archer battalions they come in (dwarf units) fire black arrows? THE Black arrow was a unique arrow owned by Bard of Dale in the same book used to kill Smaug!
I never read the Hobbit in my defence I had it read to me like the notoriously smug middle class bastard I am.
Seriously, I played as the dwarves offline to test out the berserkers they got. This was my literal thoughts as I played the skirmish:
“Holy Crap Dwarf Berserkers! Limited to 3 squads of them and its a heroic unit type! They must be so awesome just the sight of them will make other players quit the, oh they’re all dead.”
And this is true of all the heroic units bar 2 – The Elven Noldori and the Human Knights of the Silver Swan.
The Noldori aren’t bad as they can switch between melee and ranged and do both jobs equally well even if they die a bit easily in close combat. Knights of the Silver Swan however can trample an entire army and not even notice ‘til they dismount and notice all the limbs stuck in their armour, These guys can knock trees down as they ride and have a power called “Heroic charge” which mitigates 90% of damage taken while active. So that takes care of the balancing between units to make it all fair. Har, Har, Har, epic fail etc.
Final Thoughts:
The community sucks, mainly full of spammers and failed abortions who spend all their time cussing each other out, discussing their plans with your mother the night before in a very poor show of kiss and tell or just speaking languages that even their host countries probably don’t even understand.
The game is pretty buggy and to say the AI is decent would be something I feel I could be fired by this site for stating, due to how inaccurate that statement would be and the weird part is I’m not even on the payroll here… Yet… Hint, hint…
Some of the bugs include the ability for enemy AI to capture inns, beacons and so on while their troops run away, whereas if my men even sneeze during a capture its reset.
In a 2v2 game versus the AI with a human team mate like I did with my buddy we soon learnt he AI will go for one AND ONLY ONE of you.
This being the case put the AI on Brutal difficulty, get a friend who is an awesome turtle player and wrack up the pro wins.
One grievance I have is a tactic called Farm hacking. Most online players call it a pro tactic I call it a good reason to cut your lungs out with a rusty razor and make you eat them with a side helping of extra fat Mayo.
All resources come from farms and if your evil lumber mills too, these buildings also count as your pop cap so as soon as one goes down your max army size and income per x seconds falls pretty sharply.
The AI and most of the 12yr olds who call themselves things like SGTXXAwes0meXX will literally ignore your army to hack your farms then call you a noob when you say – “Here is my F**king army come fight it you post natal mistake!”
Usually here I say if you got the spare cash buy it and I guess that still stands but when I say spare cash I mean you literally have absolutely nothing else you can buy with that money, like not even a cheeseburger within a 30 mile radius you could chow down on because that cheeseburger will be more satisfying and either way your going to feel sad once you finish the burger or pay for this game due to seeing the empty burger bag or the intense feeling of buyers remorse brought on by thinking you could have had a cheeseburger.
Pros:
Simple to play, simple to master
Large variation in maps
Numerous multiplayer maps
No two armies are the same
Heroes allow for some interesting diversity in the same army
Cons:
Community needs to disinfected (would clean up the gene pool too)
Buggy (Should just put here – Is an EA title)
War of the Ring mode is a bad ratio of action to tedium
Too many OP units
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