Will Tolkien fans finally get a decent Lord of the Rings game?

Lord of the Rings fans are a perpetual market for video games. But they haven’t been served well by video game publishers over the past decade, even during the years when Peter Jackson’s films were winning Oscars. I’m a sucker for these types of games, since I re-read J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy books every five years or so. But I can’t say I’ve been wowed by a Tolkien game yet.

To correct that, Snowblind Studios has been working for quite a while on Lord of the Rings: War in the North. The action-role-playing game will be published this year by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment on the heavy-duty consoles and the PC. The game is being billed as an updated fantasy tale for a new generation of fans.

Retooling this franchise at a time when there aren’t new films coming out (Jackson’s The Hobbit films won’t be out for a while) is a challenge. But the game studio’s plan is to revive the Lord of the Rings with an excellent game that has been hand-crafted for years.

If this game and others like it resonate with fans, Warner Bros. may continue to shake the curse of the gaming-Hollywood divide and become a film company that finally succeeds with video games. That’s an important mission, since games are often an important point of entry into a fictional transmedia universe that spans books, movies, games and other media. Warner’s approach is a smart one, as it has teamed with Seattle-based Snowblind Studios, which has specialized in making such fantasy role-playing games as Bladur’s Gate: Dark Alliance.

I had a chance to try the War in the North game hands-on on the PlayStation 3 at Warner’s recent pre-E3 press event. So far, the title is looking pretty cool for players who like fantasy role-playing games. Like other titles in the fantasy genre, the emphasis here is on murderous combat. This game is going to have a mature rating (ages 17 and up) and some very nice “finishing moves” — the final stroke when you’re beheading an enemy or driving a sword through the top of a cave troll’s skull.

While past Tolkien games have been rated for teens, the mature rating allows the developers to have more creative freedom. They can have terrifying action scenes and hand-to-hand combat that resembles the brutal action that people who’ve seen the films know well.

The game has moved pretty far since I saw a demo of the title a year ago. This time, I had a chance to play the game cooperatively with two other players, as the game is ideally meant to be played. The game is more polished and looks like it’s getting a lot closer to being done as it approaches its Aug. 24 publication date. It emphasizes “fellowship” because you have to keep your companions alive as you proceed through the game.

In the cooperative fellowship, you can play an elf (named Andriel), a dwarf (Farin), or a human (Eradin the Ranger). Each has different skills as a warrior, an archer or a wizard. If you fight together properly, you are more likely to survive throngs of attacking orcs, trolls, and other vile beings of Middle-Earth. In that way, the game isn’t so different from Hunted: The Demon’s Forge, developed by inXile Entertainment for Bethesda Softworks, which launched this week.

You can play the game on a split-screen with multiple players or fight alongside friends playing via the internet on a connected console. The experience and loot that you collect while playing online is something you can bring back to the single-player game.

But the Lord of the Rings brand name could bring a bigger audience for Warner, which went through great pains to reassemble the rights to make both movies and games based on Tolkien’s universe.

The setting of the game is based on the Tolkien canon. But it doesn’t use characters from the trilogy. Instead, it explores a parallel “War in the North” that occurred at the same time that the Fellowship of the Ring was fighting it out in the southern territories of Rohan, Gondor and Mordor during the War of the Ring. Tolkien vaguely described the battles that took place in the north of Middle-Earth in places such as Angmar and Mirkwood Forest. Some games, such as the Lord of the Rings Online game, have touched on this subject matter, but gamers are probably not as sick of this story material as they are of the main story.

The graphic details of the environment have been meticulously created. I played a level where there was a lot of action fighting orcs in the dungeon-like environments of Angmar. When you play as one of the characters, you can hack-and-slash enemies in melee fashion by mashing the buttons as hard  as possible. But you can also quickly dispatch enemies from a distance with ranged attacks and can launch special high-powered attacks as well. You can also defend yourself or smash enemies with your shield. The elf is good at healing, while the ranger is good with both melee combat and with a bow, and the dwarf is a tank-like character, good with an ax and tossed hatchets.

As with any role-playing game, you can level up your characters and upgrade your combat powers or gather equipment that will heal you or help you in combat. The more you fight, the more you can improve your stats on strength, dexterity, stamina, willpower, and combat skills.

One of the big helpers for the fellowship is Beleram, one of the great eagles that is many times bigger than a person. First you have to set the eagle free in one of the missions, and then you can call upon it to rescue you during a difficult brawl. I managed to survive a cooperative battle playing the dwarf, swinging an ax with two hands. Every time you take out an enemy, you get the satisfaction of collecting some loot. In fact, there are thousands of items of loot you can collect.

Overall, the name of the game is survival. There’s a ton of competition out there in terms of hack-and-slash fantasy role-playing games. But Warner Bros and Snowblind have the advantage with the Lord of the Rings name. Let’s hope this game revives this franchise in gaming.