The Lord of the Rings, The Battle for Middle-earth II First Look
EA aims to rule them all on the Xbox 360 with its upcoming adaptation of the PC RTS.
Battle for Middle Earth II is the upcoming Xbox 360 conversion of EALA's solid real-time strategy game set in J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings universe. The game marks the second entry in the series, which has previously been a PC exclusive, and is the first of EA's games to take advantage of the company's unified rights of the license, which lets the game feature elements from both the popular books and the films. The title is the first RTS for the Xbox 360 and carries a lot of expectations and doubts, given its PC pedigree and mouse and keyboard control scheme. We recently had the chance to get an exclusive look at the upcoming game to see how it's shaping up.
For anyone unfamiliar with Battle for Middle-earth II, the game is this year's sequel to 2004's Battle for Middle-earth, which married the rich Lord of the Rings lore with RTS gameplay. You're placed in command of the good and evil armies of Middle-earth and are tasked with either restoring peace to the land or mowing down Sauron's opposition to ensure a dark future. Though the series has received a favorable response on the PC, its popularity wasn't the main onus for its adaptation to the 360. The idea to do an RTS on a console began close to two years ago at EA, when internal discussions veered toward creating a control scheme that would allow console players a strong RTS experience and that didn't feel like it was ported. After a good deal of research and development, an original team wound up crafting a scheme that worked to everyone's satisfaction. Once the control scheme was finalized, the decision was made to apply it to bringing Battle for Middle-earth II to the 360.
For the conversion, the team has brought over all the content from the PC game and made some expected additions--namely to the interface and control scheme--along with some extras, such as new multiplayer modes. If you're unfamiliar with what the PC game offered, here's what to expect from the Battle for Middle-earth II experience: good and evil single-player campaigns, a strong multiplayer mode, and an impressive collection of cinematics to tell the game's unique story. To flesh out that solid lump of content, the 360 version will contain four new multiplayer modes, including king of the hill, capture and hold, hero versus hero, and resource race. King of the hill requires you to gather resources, build an army to capture a strategic position, and possess it for the majority of the time limit. Capture and hold has you gather resources and build an army to capture and hold the majority of multiple strategic positions for the longest amount of time within a set time limit. Hero versus hero requires you to use only faction heroes and those you have unlocked through achievements to conquer lands, protect your fortress, and defeat your opponents. Finally, resource race tasks you with gathering the most resources within a time limit while building an army to defend against your opponents or destroy their resource-gathering capacity.
Of course, all of the above wouldn't mean much if you couldn't control the game. To that end, Battle for Middle-earth II features a smart control scheme that makes good use of the Xbox 360 controller. The entire scheme revolves around a context-sensitive reticule that rests in the center of the screen. You'll use the two analog sticks to move around the maps--the left stick moves you around the field of battle while the right stick zooms you in and out. The reticule will change function depending on where it is and let you move, attack, or build with units. The main action button in the game will be the A button, which will let you select single units or structures by pressing it when your reticule is in position. Holding down the button will let you "paint" over units and add them to a group on the fly. When you've got a unit or structure selected, you'll use the right trigger to call up action or build menus depending on what you've selected. Once you have those fundamentals down, the game features an intuitive array of modifiers you can access that give you more functionality. The right bumper will let you sort units by type, while the left bumper will let you add and subtract individual units. The left trigger will let you select all units onscreen with the exception of builders. The X button will let you return to a selected unit if you've moved to another part of the map with that unit still selected. The Y button is a very smart hotkey that lets you jump to events, such as attacks on your camps, instantly. If you find that the situation is in hand when you get there, you can simply tap it again to go back to where you were on the map.
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