Battle for middle earth is an RTS title based on the movie license of the Lord of the Rings, the well known trilogy that kept audiences mesmerised for 3 years running and longer with the adventures of Humans, Elves, Dwarves and some Hobbits in the lands of Middle Earth.

The first thing you notice is the large campaign map, it shows us the entire continent of Middle earth in lush 3D, marking places of great importance and large battles. You move your troops on the field and seem to work up to the large battles we all so enjoyed in the movies. These will not be the only engagements; you will have to fight many more battles to get to “main events”. You will not have to fight every battle exactly as you remember them of course.

As this is an RTS you have control over what units you deploy and even more importantly what heroes or special forces you will commit in the battles. The Balrog, the army of the dead, or just big hulking trolls are all at your disposal.

As you might have guessed you are able to play for either the side of light or for the side of darkness, aiding Sauron in his evil plot to destroy or dominate middle earth completely or siding with the new last alliance of Elves and Men to thwart Sauron in his evil plans.

Formations are a key component in the game, these formations like block, wedge etc will bestow bonuses on your units. It is even possible to combine formations and different kind of units to create unique and potentially devastating combinations of units.

Much effort has been put into the reactions of troops in the field to circumstances. For instance, your warriors of Gondor will gladly attack and taunt Orcs or regular enemies and cheer when they die but the presence of the Balrog or some armoured trolls will make them react afraid and cowardly. Especially if one of the two last mentioned nasties starts throwing people about or using whole trees ripped straight out of the ground as weapons. This works both ways off course, since both sides have fear inducing enemies. Nazgul, Ents, Eagles and other units will all have special attacks.

Buildings have an equal amount of detail. Slaughterhouses, one of the resource centres for Orcs for instance, have lively animation of an orc moving about slaughtering animals. Troll pens have large gates that open and close to let through a troll you created. The goal of all this live and animation is to create a breathing, living world.

The little of the interface we see seems to be based on a radial menu and is context based, the idea being that you will have choices appear by your mouse button as you move over possible build area’s and production centres. This context-based approach eliminates the need for sidebars and such giving more “screen time” for the game itself.

The demo that was shown to us made one thing clear, Battle for middle earth is a stunning game; it is very nice to look at and has all of the units and charm of the LOTR movies in game form. The look and feel of Peter Jackson’s epic trilogy has been captured and translated to your PC.