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Home >
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> Results: Battle for Middle Earth II
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by Andrew Bub
June 15, 2006
Once more unto the Lord of the Rings breach dear friends...
Reviewed for PC.
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Scroll down for our Kid Factor.
EA tackles Middle-Earth and marries it with strategy-action gameplay. The first game in the series challenged players to fight the major battles from the books and films, but was lacking in certain key areas. The sequel fixes most of the problems but is held back by a far less interesting campaign (instead of fighting at Helm's Deep, we're stuck with the Rivendell elves and their reluctant Dwarf neighbors defending homelands only the hardest core Tolkien-freak will care much about) and the artificial intelligence and otherwise terrific graphics amount to stunning battles that feel strangely automatic, and boring.
Most "real-time" action games hide the player's lack of control better than this one and this makes for a Battle for Middle-Earth that amounts to an oddly mediocre experience.
Despite the fact that this is a wargame featuring monsters, demons, and worse based on a movie that, because of the graphic violence, was controversially rated PG-13, Battle for Middle-Earth II feels pretty tame. There's a touch of digitized blood and corpses mark the fallen, but even at the closest zoom there's nothing really offensive considering that this is a game where death is dealt by sword, axe, bow, tooth, flung boulders, and fireballs. The game teaches tactics, requires complex memorization (units, abilities, and what works best against what), and challenges children to think and act quickly οΎ– and also to deal with the consequences of their decisions, and learn from them. Controlling the game isn't easy however, so we're recommending this game for ages 14+.
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> Results: Battle for Middle Earth II
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