War in the North provides fun couch co-op so long as you look over some random glitches and that bit of repetition.
War in the North tells a story paralleled with the original trilogy, taking most of it's ques from the recent Hollywood films by incorporating similar visual appeal and even actor likeliness of various characters that make cameos throughout the game. If you're a casual fan of the franchise then you might enjoy running into characters such as Aragorn, Frodo, or Gandalf, although if you're a hard core purist the entire game might turn you off. The story is simply that of their being another dangerous army of Orcs lead by a mysterious, ring-wraith like creature that serves directly beneath Sauron. This antagonist is briefly intercepted by a group of three warriors who then form their own fellowship to go after him.
The story is commendable for attempting to add another chapter to the Lord of the Rings saga but it falls short. It never really takes that much advantage of the franchise to where it matters, and the three protagonists you get to choose from aren't exactly fleshed out or interesting. Although the story is consistent and you meet plenty of new characters along the way, it ends up feeling like simple fan fiction more than a full blown product. This isn't really a criticism all things considered: one can't just write Tolkien on a whim. When all is said and done, the story exists to push the action forward.
There are a number of things War in the North does well, and there are also it's disappointments. Firstly, the game is tiresome alone. There isn't a lot of reason to experience it by yourself as friendly AI rarely does anything impressive. All they do is slash and activate a power every once in a while, and sometimes they might fall and need reviving but they're mostly there as a distraction so all enemy forces aren't on you. This ends up giving the single player most of the kills, and the game suffers from repetition as is.
There are a number of different enemies throughout the game, but they're dispatched of almost entirely the same way. You can simply hack your way through the entire game, minus a few enemies you have to use ranged attacks on. It is fun to fight orcs, then uruk hai, then trolls, goblins and everything else the game throws at you but it never plays out any differently. Near the end of the game battles become so predictable you're already activating abilities and readying your tactics long before it happens. You can easily go into cruise control mode here, and since the plot isn't all that thrilling there isn't a whole lot of reason to power through by yourself.
However, the game was designed for cooperative play. Dividing the enemies in half, or thirds, makes the game a bit more fun and less repetitious as it all lies on your shoulders. Plus this way, you can mix and match abilities with your friends depending on which character they play as. For example, Andriel is an Elven magic caster who can cast a protective orb around her allies that shields them from ranged attacks. Farin is a Dwarven warrior that can activate a war cry, which grants attack bonuses to his party members. Both characters will activate these as the artificial intelligence, but it's rarely useful. Seeing a protective barrier go up across the battlefield as you're riddled with arrows can be humorous, though it's more fun when you have a live friend that can make use of the situation.
There are also some attacks that simply don't happen, such as co-op strikes. When an enemy is dazed or running low on health, you can attack him at the same time and this activates a co-op strike that deals extra damage and adds new animations to the blood shed.
The game is moved forward by the combat, which is complimented nicely by varying environments and a great loot system. These two components are War in the North's strong points. The game isn't an impressive, technical accomplishment, but the art style can be great at times. You'll move from rainy towns to snowy mountains, to dark forests and underground cities, to a massive graveyard and Rivendell to everything else in between. There's a lot to see, and exploring the secrets of the world and finding all the loot can be a fun reason to venture forward. There are chests hidden around the world and you can outfit your character anyway you see fit and give them the aesthetic appeal you want or just boost their stats to make them unstoppable on the battlefield. As more proof this game is designed with co-op in mind, there are hidden areas that can only be accessed by select characters. For example, there are hidden tracks leading to item stashes that only Eradan, a human ranger, can see. The AI won't notice this, and those items will be completely missed unless someone is playing as him.
If you do venture into co-op, it's worth mentioning that the game has various glitches. There's nothing game breaking such as corrupt save data or anything like that, but there are some annoyances for more irritable players. Once, during a long play session the phrase "Eradan: Waiting on Players" never left the screen. Even after restarting the system and uploading the save, the message remained. It can be intrusive, and this lock of text happens from time to time. Even out of combat, there was a congratulatory "Hit Streak!" display up for quite some time. There is also the occasional skip in animations, varying slow down, and the humorous teleporting enemy from time to time. Again, nothing game breaking but there are a number of bugs that could have been ironed out. It can all be easily fixed with a patch, but it's just a shame that the game could have gotten more polish time and released as a more complete product.
Lord of the Rings: War in the North can provide hours of fun, humorous cooperative play but isn't that inviting the single players only. That is, unless you just love slaughtering thousands upon thousands of orcs. Then have at it. If Snowblind can take the loot formula and build on it, they can definitely create an addictive game with their next product.