The Lord Of The Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar (PC)

...sold millions because of all the hype and promotion it got. So did the Turbine go lazy on us and create a crappy game just to rake in the cash? Actually no! Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar is one of the best movie/book licensed games ever and if that point alone doesn't do it for you, let me just say that this is also one of the best MMORPG games ever created as well. Yeah, I thought that would get you pumped up.

The story ...
...leaves the Shire. You probably already know the story… you are a good guy on a quest to defeat the bad guys to get the ring. Depending on which race you decide to pick, your story will move differently. The game is very story reliant and not only does every mission have a ton of text that explains what is going on around you, but you'll actually get CGI cut-scenes that explain what is going on around in the world, explaining what's good and bad about ... more

Truth be told, this game could have been horrible and would have sold millions because of all the hype and promotion it got. So did the Turbine go lazy on us and create a crappy game just to rake in the cash? Actually no! Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar is one of the best movie/book licensed games ever and if that point alone doesn't do it for you, let me just say that this is also one of the best MMORPG games ever created as well. Yeah, I thought that would get you pumped up.

The story takes place during The Fellowship of the Ring after Frodo leaves the Shire. You probably already know the story… you are a good guy on a quest to defeat the bad guys to get the ring. Depending on which race you decide to pick, your story will move differently. The game is very story reliant and not only does every mission have a ton of text that explains what is going on around you, but you'll actually get CGI cut-scenes that explain what is going on around in the world, explaining what's good and bad about the world is at right now and it also moves along with the trilogy. To my knowledge, the story is very accurate to the story of the books and it's awesome to go and see what was going on around the world while the stuff was happening in the movies and books. You'll be able to meet with characters from the story, including Gandalf. The story in the game is just so deep that it's pretty hard to bend your mind around it. Each of the four races have different stories!

I'll get down to the nitty gritty. Lord of the Rings Online is pretty much a complete clone of World of Warcraft. The graphic design, the screen layout, auction houses, heck even hotkeys, everywhere you look you'll see something that looks or feels exactly like World of Warcraft. The thing is, Turbine has taken the design of WoW and made many subtle changes and these changes really fix most of the things that really bothered you or even just slightly bothered you about WoW. With all of the improvements of the game and the fresh feel, this game is perfect for those who have played the heck out of WoW and since it is so similar, you'll be able to jump right in and get the feel for it. For those who haven't played World of Warcraft, yeah, the one percent of the population, this game is even better for you because everyone is new at the game and everyone is learning; World of Warcraft is definitely not very suitable for new players at this day and age.

One of the big improvements for me with this game over WoW was that the game presents you with a real story from start to finish. In most other MMORPGs the stories are extremely convoluted, and the quests you were doing didn't really have much effect on the world around you, they just feel like busy work. With Lord of the Rings Online, since the game needs to stick to the book's story to make any sense at all, the game feels more like a regular RPG's story mode mixed with the huge world and community of an MMORPG. So instead of having to go back and forth because Aunt Jemima's chickens got loose, what you do really has an impact on what happens to the story, because it advances as the book advanced. So while you do have some optional quests of helping town members, you have a bunch of quests that you need to finish to unlock the next part of the story.

The quests in the game do tend to get a tad repetitive, which is a big minus, but they definitely are an improvement over WoW's. Like WoW, pretty much all of the quests are either fetch quests or "go out and kill certain bad guys" quests. While often boring, I have to admit that the diversity of your enemy and some added puzzles really helps a lot. A big problem with the game that they may patch up is that on your map it never really tells you where you need to go to finish your quests, you just have to go where the person told you to which can often lead you to the wrong place. They do throw in a few oddball quests that are pretty fun, one for example, is that you must take a fox with you to hunt, but still, if you have grown tired of the quests in World of Warcraft, expect to do the exact same thing in this game with a few bonuses here and there. Quests have some puzzles in them; for instance, in one instance you cannot get past a certain fire, so you have to grab a bucket and get some water to poor on the fire. Instead of having to wade through quests, spending hours to travel, most of the quest areas are right by each other, so where in WoW and other MMORPGs you may have to dedicate hours to get one quest done, in this, some can be tackled and finished within five minutes; this was something that I and other people I talked to on the game agreed was way better than others. If you die in a level it just teleports you to a safe area and you can redo the quest. There are literally THOUSANDS of quests to complete! Everywhere you go you'll see new quests and Turbine has promised to add more quests in the future, which isn't really needed, but still very cool.

The combat in the game is almost identical to that of World of Warcraft. You right click on the bad guy and your guy will start attacking. You have three sets of attacks: toe to toe, spells, and long range. Depending on which class you are, you'll be better at different things and can learn different spells, hand to hand combos, and can wield better long range weapons. As you play the game and gain levels you can go to trainers to help you get new attacks. There are a TON of attacks that you can learn in this game and many are very interesting. You can even turn into an animal or send animals to attack your enemy! There are just more attacks in this game than World of Warcraft's or any other MMORPG I've ever played. Another cool little feature that is kind of similar to the Xbox 360's achievement points are these titles that you can display in your name above your head. Strictly for bragging rights, these titles show if you killed certain bosses or completed certain quests. It's really pretty neat and I can see some people going a little crazy with trying to earn new titles.

Since there were so many dungeons in World of Warcraft, they tended to all blend together and it felt like the developers used a random map generator to make them. What I like about Lord of the Rings Online is while there may not be as many of dungeons in Middle Earth, the ones that are here are brilliantly crafted and all feel different. They'll have a magnificent sense of scale; you'll stumble across underground palaces or libraries and the whole time you'll be thinking "Wow! They actually spent as much time creating the underground environments as they did the above ground environments." The instances are long and satisfying and even have some puzzles thrown in. While most puzzles don't take a genius to figure out, some of them are pretty interesting as most of the time these MMORPG instances are pure combat. Instances can last a very long time and there seem to be more than there are in WoW. They generally have you going through various corridors killing all the monsters you see in your path and eventually killing the boss at the end.

For each race in the game, (Dwarf, Hobbit, Human, and Elf) you must choose one class for them. Each race has up to seven classes and they severely make an impact on your character. One class may make you great and hand to hand battle; one may make you good at long range; one may make it so you are great at casting spells and one may even make it so you can turn into an animal. You cannot make your character look all that different from the other characters in the game, which really isn't a big deal because your guy will be covered with armor in no time.

Turbine is already announcing new content coming out in June including over 60 new quests, a new area to explore, a new raid (instance) area, and an update to the music system.

So PVP wouldn't really work if we had Elfs attacking Elfs and Hobbits attacking Hobbits. So what Turbine did for the PVP is when you join the battlefield, you'll play as either a good guy or a bad guy. Your player will automatically be turned into a level 50 orc, goblin or troll if a bad guy. Instead of just being a deathmatch, there are various quests you can do in PVP and in the future when people level up their good characters this is going to be an absolute blast!

The game does have guilds called kinships, (it just rolls off the tongue doesn't it). There really isn't anything much different about this than the WoW guilds. You have a guild private chat and you can show your guild rank in your title. If you can get into the right guild with friends it can be a ton of fun.

Like WoW, a lot of the games fun is derived from the amount of stuff that there is to do. You can do long instances with a group of friends, stick to the main quest, try to get a new title, adventure and kill monsters, mine minerals, make potions or armor and even learn how to play an instrument and play songs for the people around you. The list goes on and on. There is just so much to do within this game.

The one thing that I must say about Lord of the Rings Online that is worse than WoW is that you cannot be the orcs for the main story. I can't express enough how much I'd love to get in the game and beat up some Hobbits and Elfs with my bad guy.

The level up system is much more lenient than that of WoW's. Instead of your character improving on certain stats like guns or two handed swords, all of your stats level up when you level up. This makes for a much broader later game as you can pretty much wield any weapon with no sweat, as with WoW, if you had spent your whole game training with two handed swords, you're probably never going to even pick up a one handed sword. As you level up your guy gets stronger, gains hp, and can also learn new skills in combat and equip higher level weapons and armor.

The bad guys in this game can be described in five words: "Cooler than World of Warcraft." There are so many different bad guys in the game that it can be fun to just run around and check them out. They have a great diversity in size and attacks. Unlike in other WoW, the enemies actually feel smart! They'll attack you from long range with poison darts, they'll burrow underground and come up and attack you, they'll cast spells on you, and they'll do a whole lot of other stuff. The diversity of your enemy makes the game feel fresh throughout, unlike in WoW where the enemies generally just ran at you and attacked hand to hand.

Middle Earth is HUGE! You can play for ten hours and explore only 5 percent of one of the 11 or so countries. It's truly an amazing site and the levels look very diverse. You'll see amazingly tall palaces, and underground structures, beautiful landscapes and dark and mysterious forests. On a graphical scale, this game is absolutely insane. They put so much work into adding textures; every area you go in will look different and fresh, which adds a ton of fun just roaming around and exploring the world. The graphics in the game are absolutely stunning. Armor is shiny, extreme detail is put on character's faces, landscapes, and buildings and everything looks really smooth. The game is just beautiful and really makes you feel like you're in Middle Earth. There are however, the clipping issues that are seen in World of Warcraft; you can run through any character in the game. The frame rate generally stutters when the game gets started and then smoothens out over time. There isn't a lot of lag in the game, but even if you are running on a top of the line PC, you will probably have to shut down several programs before playing the game; they tend to dramatically slow down the experience.

They weren't lazy on the sound in this game either. Every type of enemy has its own realistic battlecry. Every step you take you can hear. You can hear the sounds of the town, the birds, the people talking, and the sounds of a good guy and an enemy fighting; it all sounds great. You can even play instruments and play songs for the people around you. The soundtrack is orchestrated and is superb. It has that Lord of the Rings sound to it that gets very dramatic at times and upbeat at other times. It all flows perfectly with the feel of the game. This is just an amazing sounding game, and while I found the soundtrack to be repetitive on other MMORPGs quickly, this one is just so good that I really can't see it ever getting annoying. On top of that, it doesn't really loop, it all sounds like one constant song that doesn't repeat itself.

So is this game okay for kids? The game can be extremely addictive, and is one that you are going to need to play for very long periods of time before you can do the really fun stuff in the game. So if you are okay with your kid playing a game like that, yes, this game is suitable for kids, for the most part. Obviously you are going to have those people online that may not be the best for your kids to be chatting with, but online censorship will block out the cuss words. The game is fairly violent, but there isn't any blood.

All in all, the game makes subtle improvements over World of Warcraft's gameplay and gives us absolutely amazing storytelling that feels like a standard rpg. Right now you can actually play the game and be new and can generally always find someone to do the quest you need help on. I've really found only a few minor flaws with this game. This is the best MMORPG I've ever played, and I've played a ton of them! However, the game does start to give a little bit of a "copy cat" aroma and at times I wished the game could be a little more original. This game is better than World of Warcraft though, making it a must play, especially if you are a Lord of the Rings fan or haven't played WoW! Go out and buy this! Even if this is a clone, they spent so much time developing the world and all of the quests to do and characters to meet that this game is absolutely groundbreaking. It may be a lot like World of Warcraft, but it improves at everything that WoW did wrong.

Great game for: Newcomers to the MMORPG genre. People who haven't play WoW. People who have played WoW and want a better version of the game in a new world. Lord of the Rings Fans

Horrible game for: People who didn't like WoW. People who are devout WoW fans that would get mad when they see a game that copies many gameplay elements.

Game Design - 9.7

Visuals - 9.5

Audio - 9

Control - 8

Story - 9.9

Fun - 10

Value - 10

Style - 7.5

Overall: 9.0

-Written by Josh Stevens

Minimum system requirements:

Processor: Intel Pentium 4 1.8 GHz or equivalent Video: 64 MB NVIDIA GeForce 3 or ATI Radeon 8500
DirectX: DirectX 9.0c OS: Windows XP RAM: 512 MB Disk Space: 7 GB available Internet: 56kbps Modem
Optical Drive: 2x DVD-ROM

Recommended system requirements:

Processor: Intel Pentium 4 2.8 GHz or equivalent Video: 128 MB NVIDIA GeForce FX 6800 or ATI Radeon X850 DirectX: DirectX 9.0c OS: Windows XP / Vista RAM: 1 GB Disk Space: 10 GB available Internet: Broadband DSL/Cable Optical Drive: 2x DVD-ROM 

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