First Impression : Guardians of Middle-Earth for Xbox 360
- Pros: Awesome gameplay and design
- Cons: a MOBA on console just doesn’t seem right.
- Overall Rating: 4/5
- Design: 5/5
- Features: 4/5
- Performance: 4/5
- Usability: 3/5
- Value: 4/5
Let’s start of by telling people that this isn’t a game for everyone. I was rather shocked when I came across this (Thanks, boss!) the MOBA genre or the Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (Think: Dota) has been always been a genre played on PC’s. WHY? Because you need the mouse to be precise, because there are so many controls, that a joystick doesn’t feel enough. Because MOBA’s is not for the “casual gamer” MOBA’s go beyond that. They’re a real time strategy game with one wrong move wrecking up days of your time. You need to access the mini-map, you need hotkeys, and you do not want to use the Xbox controller for such game with it’s undeceive triggers. (Even though, it is the best console controller out there, IMHO)
So the studio decided to create a MOBA from the ground-up and not just taking some parts of the genre, but trying to build the whole darn’ thing, which impressed me. The second thing, if you’re a LOTR fan you’re probably jumping as you read this, Monolith the studio behind this uses the LOTR license, so yes, Gandalf has arrived. This excites me equally (because I’m a closet LOTR fan and cannot wait for the new Hobbit film)
The game, which lets you play with 10 people in a 5 versus 5 online multiplayer battle, is set in some awesome arena’s in middle earth, along with 20 guardians such as, Gandalf, Gollum and Sauron among many others. The game is competent enough and stands pretty well in my review because I really had low expectations; the game also comes with in-game communication system built in, online statistics and a leaderboard.
For me, the studio succeeds in bringing a genre I love and pretty much bought a PC for (Yes. I’m a Mac User, and I just play games on Windows) to a console, the big screen and not exactly falling like a house of cards. The game has some really good design elements, e.g.the Player Versus Player mode is pretty darn’ amazing, and the graphics do not disappoint. However, this isn’t a port (Thank God) so tweaks have been made in the gameplay to see how far they can push a console with this genre.
The first difference you’ll feel is the controller, it just doesn’t feel right. It isn’t precise ,a d like I said before this isn’t a casual gamer genre, this is beyond that. Most attacks you do are off-target with a controller, so they tweaked it, just aiming in the direction of the Guardian you want to kill and well, pretty much does the job. There is a lack of item store (thank controllers) ,but it’s replaced by a belt, they call “The Guardian Belt”
But most of the people reading this don’t care about whatever I wrote. They haven’t even probably ever played a MOBA genre game and they’re wondering if they’ll enjoy this one. I honestly wish, I had a simple answer to that. The studio has pretty nice looking and explanatory tutorials in-game. But I guess the answer is 50/50. You may hate it, you may love it. But if you haven’t picked up a MOBA game ever, pick this up (try the trial version first!)
There are some things which would never change in such games, characters are not all locked even if you purchase the full game, you have to earn in-game points to unlock them. Keep that in mind.
At the end of it, it’s an experimental game but the LOTR connection didn’t make sense, it just didn’t ever make sense for me personally, at least. It seemed a bit too unnatural and experimental on an already experimental game. But that didn’t stop me from buying it because I’m too lazy to get up from the couch as I type this and start playing on the PC. The game isn’t perfect, don’t expect it to be. It’s the first time something like this has happened, calm down. But it’s pretty darn’ good. So go ahead and try it, and if you like it. Go buy it for just 1200 Microsoft Points.
