War in Middle Earth

Copyright : Melbourne House | Reviewed by : Ritchardo

The fouth journey into Tolkien?s Middle Earth and a change in direction for Melbourne House, rather than complete the text adventure trilogy, they opted instead to try and capture the full epic War of the Ring in a strategy game that allows you control of just about every character mentioned in the book and literally armies of men, dwarves and elves as you attempt to guide Frodo from his home in the Shire all the way to Mount Doom, fending off the Dark Lord?s forces at every turn.

Graphics

Both map screens are excellent. The main campaign map is a good depiction of the famous Eastern Middle Earth map printed in Tolkien?s books and the ability to click on and explore the map at your leisure adds to the game enormously. Although a little murky in terms of it?s choice of colour, it?s still pretty easy to see what?s going on.

The close-up map gives more geographical detail with pictorial representations of mountains, pathways, rivers and trees as well as the units themselves with a sensible range of colours and it all moves at a reasonable speed.

The other main graphic is the battlefield. Although the background (a dirty terracotta) is a little disappointing, the movement of the characters is perfectly acceptable and moves at a decent rate. The only real snag is that you can?t pull away from a battle and abandon it which can be frustrating when the odds are stacked against you as much as they often are and are forced instead to watch the massacre.

There?s a lot to be seen in the game and bearing in mind that this is all taking place on 8-bit without any multiloads, it?s hard to imagine how they could?ve made things any better.

Sound

Restricted to some spot effects, for the main part of the game they?re not that great but do their job acceptably. The battle features the sound of both armies stomping over the fields and the clash of swords which, again are perfectly acceptable. Victory unleashes a neat tune that will play until you press fire and continue on with the game.

Gameplay

The majority of your game will take place on the campaign map. From here you can see all allied forces and their positions. By pointing your glove over an area of the map you can zoom in and can then choose a number of options for each unit and give them commands such as go to a certain location or merge with another unit. After issuing these commands you will soon see the groups moving to the location in which you intend them to be, spreading out as they go as you would expect an army to do. This requires you to think in advance and prioritise who moves were and when - a difficult juggling act on this scale and a real challenge.

The problem with this movement pattern though is that it?s not just armies that spread out like this, individuals do so too which means that when an opposition army attacks your position, chances are if they attack an individual, they?ll be on their own and will have had their chips!

When contact is made between one of your parties and the enemy, action flicks to the battlefield screen and gives you full control of the battle. Movement here is just a little bit too slow when taking into account the frantic fighting that is going on. The orcs continue to drive forward (or wizard as you occasionally will have to fight Sarauman - death will follow you can be guaranteed!) until all of your soldiers are dead so you must select each your player and then the position for him to attack. Unfortunately the computer AI is not up to scratch and if you don?t tell them what to do, your foot soldiers will stand around until they are attacked and will only defend themselves so if you take your eyes off one area of the battlefield, chances are you?ll get slaughtered there. The battles do get repetitive after a while too.

Control with either keys or joystick are sluggish and you can?t help but think that if the mouse had been more popular on the CPC then it would?ve been the way to go and the game would?ve benefited immensely.

There are fifteen levels of difficulty and even the first one is rock solid.

Strangely, the game was originally written by Mike Singleton of ?Lords of Midnight? fame. The irony is that had they done a Lords of Midnight style version of The Lord of The Rings then it could and would have been a massive hit but I?m sure they had their reasons (copyright ones probably but such is life!)

War in Middle Earth could have been one of the greatest game of all time and had all the pieces in its hands but it just doesn?t hold together as well as it could?ve. Certainly more ambitious than just about any other game of the time, War In Middle Earth was just a little too complicated for the CPC but there?s still enough for Tolkien enthusiasts to get their teeth into.