E3 2011: Lord of the Rings: War in the North
It has been a while since we’ve got a decent Lord of the Rings title, and so I was just a little excited to dive into a cooperative based role-playing title from the creators of Champions of Norrath. Hit the break to view our initial impression of LOTR: War in the North.
It’s very apparent SnowBlind Studios are going off a formula that originally made them successful. At its heart, LOTR: War in the North is a shameless hack and slash; at least that’s what we can gauge from our brief demo. My hope is that SnowBlind doesn’t settle of having a few basic attacks mixed with a few skills mapped to the face buttons; however, that’s what the demo mostly consisted of. It’s very difficult to pack a cooperative RPG into a short bite-sized demo, so I don’t want to prematurely judge my first hands-on with this title ever.
It’s also unclear whether War in the North will miss its intended release later this year. Like the titles before it, War in the North is based on a simple formula with a light and heavy attack. Special abilities are mapped to the triggers, and it will be interesting to see how the skills evolve later in the game. There was only 1 animation cycle for each basic attack and I certainly hope that’s not the case in the full-game, though I sincerely believe that’s just for demoing purposes.
I like how Snowblind created the weapons to react realistically with the enemies. During the demo I could feel every slash of the sword, and even the magic I fired towards groups of enemies. It’s still relatively early and I ran into several glitches, which included enemies dying in erratic ways, bad hit detection, broken animations and framerate drops. These issues should of course be ironed out before launch; however I did want to mention them as a part of my experience. Overall I’m excited to get more time with this title over the next few months.