The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II (Xbox 360) Demo Impressions

Being the end of the month I connected my Xbox 360 console to my DSL connection and updated some games as well as decided to download a bunch of demos and trailers. The first demo I downloaded was The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II.

I already own the PC version of this game, and most of my opinions can be found in its review, so I'll keep these impressions brief.

The Xbox 360 demo contains two Single Player missions, the first mission of the tutorial and the first Evil Campaign mission. The tutorial mission allows you to control the Men of the West as they defend a pass in the White Mountains from the Goblins. The main reason I downloaded this demo was to see how well EA ported over an RTS to a console controller, and given the extreme limitations of the task, they did a decent job.

For the most part you select units with "A," deselect and cancel with "B," jump to map events with "Y," and centre on your selected battalions or horde with "X." The Left Trigger allows for further selection options, while the Right Trigger opens the Palantir and allows for building, attack, and spell options. I honestly forget what the left and right bumpers do.

Anyway, one of my main criticisms of the PC version was the old-style and ultimately cumbersome control scheme, and this fact is made worse with the controller, however again, given the limitations of the input device, I must say that EA has done a very passable job. Once I did move on to the Evil Campaign mission, in which you control the Goblins and lay siege to the Elves in Lorien, I found the controls to be more cumbersome than I liked.

Graphically, the Xbox 360 version doesn't look so hot. While it was nice to see everything in wide screen, the game just looks grainy, even at 720p. I'm really not impressed with the game's graphics, and woe be to those who have a standard definition television. My guess is there the game would be very unplayable.

In short, if you're looking for a good Lord of the Rings RTS, The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II is the best one out there, however I'd strongly recommend the PC version over its Xbox 360 port.

If you do want this for the Xbox 360, I'd recommend a rent first, even if you've downloaded the Demo.