The EA Coliseum
Electronic Arts' massive booth at E3 caused sensory overload when I walked through the gate on Wednesday morning. Imagine the Roman coliseum with video projectors lining the inside. It's crazy.
I fought through the crowds playing Madden NFL 07 and NCAA® Football 07 to try my hand at EA's upcoming epic for Xbox 360™—TheLord of the Rings™, The Battle for Middle-earth™ II.
"This is the first real-time strategy game for Xbox 360," said game engineer Kip Hendricks. "Breaking it down to a controller format has been a challenge."
Instead of the fluctuating cursor used to select and control units, as any standard RTS game for Windows uses, Battle for Middle Earth II relies on a static cursor in the middle of the screen as the game's main controller. "It's kind of like a first-person shooter in that aspect," Hendricks noted.
Moving the left stick doesn't move the cursor, but rather the entire screen. Selecting units and attacking enemies is incredibly easy, too—nearly everything consists of pointing the cursor and pressing the A button.
EA noticed that the game's simplification for Xbox 360 actually speed up the gameplay. "There's lots of selection ability to make up for the inability to make a rectangle with a mouse—it actually has made it quicker," Hendricks said.
The game takes place during the same time as the books and movies, but follows the wars that occurred to the north of Frodo and his posse. "This is about what the movie didn't really show you," said Hendricks.
Throughout the single-player campaign, successes are rewarded with unlockable heroes, which are immediately used online. "It's an important part of the game—to level up heroes, because you can then use them for online play," Hendricks said. Similar to Warcraft III, heroes carry special abilities and can level up during combat.
All of the major characters from the books (and even some of the more obscure ones) will be in the game, Hendricks assured me.
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