Quick Look: Lord of the Rings: War in the North

@thebigJ_A: I completely agree with you. It's why I don't play any of the games that are based on the movies -- the people that make them don't seem to care about staying true to the lore. Only Lord of the Rings game I play is Lord of the Rings Online. Turbine does an admirable job with the license (which is for the books and not the movies, thankfully), though even they stretch things at times.

This reminds me of the old ps2 era Twin Towers/Return of the King games. A lot of good memories playing those.

Why does the staff cut off heads?

Love that sick eagle.

is this like dark souls for stupid people?

am i a dark souls snob now?

that game fucked me up man

From the look of it, I thought this was an XBLA game.

@Flashzappa said:

I just had to say that D&D is based on a lot of elements other than Middle Earth. Both are based on English folklore (elves, orcs, wizards, etc.) so are alike in that they share the same common ancestor. Halflings and maybe dwarves were lifted out of Middle Earth, but other than that, there isn't very much in D&D that does resemble Middle Earth.

Before Tolkein, elves were basically fairies, and "orc" wasn't even a modern English word. The whole concept of high fantasy was pretty much invented by Tolkein. D&D owes EVERYTHING to Lord of the Rings.

I don't even like the Lord of the Rings all that much, but to say that D&D didn't originate as a straight copy of Middle Earth is just wrong.

@McGhee_the_Insomniac said:

@zoner said:

@GioVANNI said:

God, what does Jeff like?

Less brown games

That's so racist.

Pack it up everyone, nothing beats this exchange. Hilarious.

@phrali said:

is this like dark souls for stupid people?

am i a dark souls snob now?

that game fucked me up man

Not every fantasy game is Dark Souls...and really this is NOTHING like it, so I'm gonna say: No. Yes. Yes.

Pretty stoked about checking this out, seems like a good rental. And I love Jeff's crazy overreactions to unexpected things happening in these videos.

This looks fun and it seems well made. I love that the lore master isn't completely useless at melee. I always think mages should be able to fight with their staffs if needed.

I'll probably wait until it's about £10 but I used to love Lord of the Rings.

LOTR is a lot like Star Wars. The main story is really bad but the world set up to tell the story is fantastic.

Lord of the Rings has always been boring. Tolkien was a hack.

This looks super boring, like the American equivalent to Dynasty Warriorsr. Except awash in shades of brown - every brown you could possibly ever want, and more! Even Jeff + Ryan were struggling to not fall asleep here, struggling to even think of talking points. When, after a little bit of silence, Jeff says, "Uh..is there a block at all?" you know the combat ain't very interesting.

Maybe if you're used to clicking a mouse button, this is interesting. But considering the bar for brawlers has been raised by Devil May Cry, God of War and it's ilk, this dumb hack n' slash/loot drop stuff blows.

Looks painfully average, why will no bloody developer make an open-world LOTR RPG game? That's what we're missing!

Looks kind of generic and not as good as their previous games. Really weird that almost 10 years after the first game, they suddenly can't do drop in/drop out co-op, which worked flawlessly in the old PS2 games. You could even bring your character with you on your memory card if you played with a friend, and just import it into the game, or from any other save file. Really strange that they couldn't do that here, when the characters could be stored in the cloud or something.

The brownness is also a bit odd, now I haven't read up on "The North", but I always pictured the world as very colorful pretty much everywhere except in Mordor when I read the books 15 years ago, even Peter Jackson's movies where generally pretty bright and colorful.

Odd stuff aside, I kind of want to get this game.

@Bummey said:

Lord of the Rings has always been boring. Tolkien was a hack.

Your mom's a hack.

Jeff saying "Bubble UP!" just made me realize how much I miss the bubble shield.

Giant eagle kinda makes this near looking into. Once it drops to <$30.

War in the Nolan North

@eagles_band: What you're asking for was Called "The White Council", but was sadly cancelled. Some info can be found here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings:_The_White_Council

THERE ARE NO WIZARDS IN LOTR

Whoa this actually looks pretty fun to me, loot lust can carry me pretty far though. Also was she blocking from behind? That looked cool, only thing I'm not liking is the way it looks when they go into ranged mode.

As far as i'm concerned, Nolan North is GOTY.

I feel like this is for all those movie fans who really enjoy the series but aren't so anal about the lore that they're going to nitpick it apart. Seems like an alright game but just enjoying it at the time of reading/watching and not really considering myself a fan I don't think the game is dynamic or complicated enough to draw me in. Seems better than Hunted: Demon Forge but less worthwhile than Dragon Age II.

Tough call. I feel like even more than Space Marine loving this universe is necessary to enjoying the game beyond its kinda simple gameplay. Personally? I'd rather play DAII.

"War in the North" sounds like some kind of Black Metal album or song title.

@Bratcher_Lev said:

@Bummey said:

Lord of the Rings has always been boring. Tolkien was a hack.

Your mom's a hack.

BOOM!

I find it so weird that the staff ranged attack has a visible recoil... Implying that whatever she's firing has mass, not just energy. And since the recoil looks fairly severe but the projectile moves so slowly, it further implies that the little ball of magic has considerable weight to require that amount of force to get moving!
 
I don't like this game's idea of magic at all...!
 
Edit: Wait a minute, the dwarf is Farin? I recognize that name! Research time! Oh, cool, Farin's the grandfather of some of the dwarves that went along on Bilbo's adventure. That's nifty, at least.

My brother and I agree that the Dark Alliance games offer probably one of the best co-op experiences in gaming. There need to be more co-op, loot-based RPGs. Hopefully this will live up to the developer's history.

@username1121: Tolkien orcs originated with Tolkien but the term orc as invaders from the north vaguely referencing the Scots long predates that.

"Who is Eragorn" a million nerds cried out in anger.

@Theresonlyone said:

"Who is Eragorn" a million nerds cried out in anger.

Eragon is the kid with the dragon and Vigo plays Aragorn.

Looks kind of average but I guess I'm not a huge LOTR fan

@Eujin said:

Giant eagle kinda makes this near looking into. Once it drops to <$30.

Exactly my thoughts as well.

@MrKlorox said:

"War in the North" sounds like some kind of Black Metal album or song title.

As does any quote from the Tolkien universe.

@Chipbutty said:

Looks painfully average, why will no bloody developer make an open-world LOTR RPG game? That's what we're missing!

Lord of the rings online?

@MrKlorox said:

"War in the North" sounds like some kind of Black Metal album or song title.

As does any quote from the Tolkien universe.

Wasn't that impressed by the pre-release media, but I picked this up.

It's surprisingly good. Still a hack and slash, but enough RPG and good enough production values to stop me from setting it down until I finished the game at least once. I just wish there had been more side quests in the late game - you pretty much stop getting them about 2/3 through the story.

"Ok guys, what can we do with the rich tapestry of story telling that is Lord of the Rings? I mean we have to really make the game as adventurous and intense as befits this mastery tome of literature"......"I KNOW...HACK N` SLASH!!" "sigh"

one thing i dont really like in this game is the trolls the first troll you fight you fight in daylight trolls in Tolkien mythology can not for one instant be in daylight if the sun touch's them they turn to stone forever

I'm off to make a "BUBBLE UP!" yell macro for my discipline priest.

This is the second game that, after watching the Quick Look, has made me want to buy the game. The first was Dead Island.

wait, how did i miss this?

Bought this for $2 blindly on a steam sale. Glad I did it.

Just got this in the latest Humble Bundle. Glad there's a quick look of it as I have no idea what kind of game this is!

This post is incredible.

I still find myself looking for old Ryan QL's. It's weird how you can miss someone you never met.