Even though I've been blogging less I still have been gaming a good amount. I recently got Lord of the Rings: War in the North on the PS3 and wow this game really surprised me with how fun it was. I couldn't put the game down for a few days until I beat it. It has its share of problems, mostly in the form of semi-unforgivable bugs because it was rushed by its publisher WB Games probably. There are a few bugs that are game-breaking, forcing you to have to restart your game due to you being unable to progress in the game. I didn't have it happen to me, but my friend did, and so have lots of other people when you search about it online. Also, It is marketed as a 3 player co-op experience for online play, however the game seems to handle lag terribly and is pretty unplayable online. That saddened me as I looked forward to playing this online with 2 other guys, but playing it in singleplayer was really fun even still.The computer controls the 2 other co-op partners in the game, but they have an acceptable level of intelligence for video game AI and you can order them around a bit and make them act slightly less dumb.

I am a fan of the Lord of the Rings world. I found the movies to be so-so after re-watching them for the 2nd time recently. I read the book The Hobbit when I was in the 6th grade but dont know how I would feel about it now and I never read the rest of the books because the movies came out and ruined the story for me anyways. My opinions about the movies and books doesn't matter though since I am just a big fan of the setting of the series. I like the whole middle age era with crazy magical sh*t going on thing the series has ha. The enemies and villains in the Lord of the Rings are just so awesome too.

The above paragraph, although a bit of a tangent, does relate to how I feel about the game. The game does a great job of making you feel like it's part of the Lord of the Rings universe. It feels like the quality of a movie almost in the story and voice acting. It tells a tale of a dwarf, sorcerer, and ranger that is supposed to happen at the same time as the main story of the Lord of the Rings. It was cool to go through a new adventure rather than the same one from the books and movies again.

I am a big fan of the Two Towers and Return of the King games on the Playstation 2 and Xbox. They had great combat systems, cool level design, and nailed down the feeling of the Lord of the Ring movies. Lord of the Rings War in the North surpasses those games even imo. The combat doesn't use button combination style combo's like those older games, but feels actually more like a beat-em-up. You mash light attacks on enemies until and indicator pops up that lets you do critical hits. I've been told that the combat system is similar to the newer Batman games, even though I haven't played those myself. This combat system has healthy amounts of gore in the style of awesome beheadings and limb severing though ha. You also can shoot projectiles with your crossbow, and as you level up your character you unlock lots of special attacks that you can do easily by pushing two buttons together. The pacing in this game is really good too. The environments and enemies you fight change right at the best moments, right when you feel like you are almost getting bored of things. One other thing that keeps the game interesting is that you find tons of new weapons and armor throughout the game. You are rewarded for exploring the less obvious areas in levels with treasure chests and other goodies that help you a lot in the game. There are tons of different weapons to choose from and they alter your play style quite a bit which is nice since it gives the game a lot of replayability.

I wasn't expecting much from this game as it had fairly low reviews and I knew it would be a bit buggy. Despite the bugs though I had a huge amount of fun playing it as a singleplayer game. I would highly recommend this game to play offline either alone or in split screen. YEP, this game actually has at least 2 player split screen and seems like it would be a great local co-op experience. If you are looking to buy this game to play online, I'd not bother as its online mode seems to not have been tested enough and cannot handle the slightest bit of lag before things get unplayable. It is a shame since the core game is really well- made.