Built on EA's Command Conquer: Generals engine, The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle Earth (BME) is a real-time strategy game set in the world of the Peter Jackson trilogy, based on the novels by J.R.R. Tolkien. The story for Battle for Middle Earth covers the three films and includes all the familiar characters who are available as hero units. You decide where to send the Fellowship of the Ring, how and when to fight, and how to deploy your forces when battle is joined. You decide whether to use the ring or not...The fate of the world lies in your hands!

There're two single player campaigns, skirmish, and multiplayer. If you choose jump right in to the single-player campaign, you can opt for good or evil with the good side focusing on Rohan and Gondor. On the evil side, there's Saruman, Gollum, various Nazgul, and assorted others. Similar in ways to Rise of Nations, there's a global map from where you select provinces (~30 provinces) to conquer or defend. You make no real strategic decisions from this view, instead, you are really only choosing the location of your next battle - and often, not choosing much of anything, since there may be only one location available. Controlling provinces gives you powerpoints which can help you in your goal by adding resources, experience and command points. The power points are used to gain certain powers like the ability to summon battalions of Elves or creating lush terrain to give your troops defensive bonuses and eventually even the Army Of The Dead or Balrog. These powers must be used sparingly, but they can easily turn the tide of battle if timed right. Command points basically equate to a unit cap. The more points you have, the more units you can build up to a preset maximum.

Heroes are very powerful and gains experience and new special abilities as they fight, as do most other units (these advances persist between missions). For instance, Gandalf summons a handy lightning attack that can fell many units at one time, Aragorn can sound the Horn of Gondor, which forces nearby units to flee, Trolls and Ents can pick up and throw rocks and boulders that lie scattered throughout the world, etc. These abilities have to be recharged after each use. Unfortunately managing many of them at once is a chore, since they often get lost in the battles. Unlike the heroes, soldiers and orcs can be found in large numbers and are commanded in formations. They fight hand-to-hand with swords, clubs, axes, and other melee weapons - although some are equipped as archers. Siege weapons like catapults and Trebuchets fire balls of burning pitch or rocks - but they are large and slow.

There are three types of bases, all with predetermined layouts and building plots: outposts, camps, and castles. They can then be placed on these plots by left clicking on them and selecting the correct building from the graphical radial menu on screen or hotkey. The gathering of resources is weak and there's only one kind of resource - gold, which can be collected from destroyed neutral structures or by using farms lumber mills and slaughterhouses. If you have enough gold to cover the cost, you simply click the desired structure and it is built. As you discover other foundations and destroy enemy buildings, you can then use them as well, although you must have a unit close by to begin construction.

The game plays as a solid real-time strategy with all the flair that the EALA team put into Generals. The action is fast-paced, squad-based and streamlined. Battles are fun to watch with horseman literally running over orcs and warriors. Not too much strategy involved though, just crank out the units, upgrade, swamp the enemy, etc. However, this kind of gameplay works surprisingly well. The game has some annoying things like unit control could be a little better and sometimes they don't respond well, but overall it's a solid.

Multiplayer offers a choice between the game's four sides: Gondor, Rohan, Isengard, and Mordor. There are over 37 multiplayer maps (maps are drawn from the campaign) to choose from, which can support anywhere from 2 to 8 players. If you were familiar with the Generals multiplayer, you will notice some similarities. I was able to test the LAN portion of the game and found it to be a pretty intense slugfest that can last for hours, depending on the quality of the participants. I can see people playing the multiplayer for a long time, the human aspect really makes the game unpredictable.

Is it worth your money? Depends on whether you like Lord Of The Rings stuff or not. If you hate it in the first place, don't even bother. I played it loads, and enjoyed it a lot. The battles are great and abilities and power-ups add to the fun. Sure, some players may be somewhat annoyed by the limited AI and rudimentary base building, but those drawbacks won't stand in the way of a surprisingly compelling game.

System requirements: 1.3 GHz Intel Pentium IV or AMD Athlon processor, 256 MB RAM (512MB recommended), Nvidia GeForce2* or equivalent video card with 32 MB RAM, DirectX 9.0b compatible sound card, 4 GB available hard disk space
*Nvidia GeForce2 MX is not supported