Adapting a movie into a game, particularly a multiplayer game, is never an easy task. Because we are already familiar with the story, and because the story usually involves extraordinary heroism, people tend to have very high expectations when they sit down to play. Battle for Middle-earth is an attempt to merge the classic Lord of the Rings world with a real-time strategy game. Although it falls a little short of the epic conflicts of the books and movies, it does a pretty good job of bringing these disparate elements together.
BFME is built around the C&C Generals graphics engine, so you will notice many similarities between the two games. Both have excellent visuals, and BFME has taken it a step further with great animation which is triggered by game events. When an enemy army approaches, for example, your army will jeer at it, and when they win a battle they will cheer. It doesn't affect gameplay much, but it does add a lot of life and atmosphere to the game world, which is a nice touch. The sound is also very impressive, featuring the voices of the actors in the movies.
While the single-player portion of the game consists of a linear campaign tied closely to the plot of Lord of the Rings, multiplayer allows you to skirmish as one of four factions: Gondor, Rohan, Mordor, or Isengard. There are a good selection of multiplayer maps to choose from and an active player-matching system for setting up games online. Like most RTS games, one player with a poor connection will slow the whole match down. 2 or 4 player games are subsequently more practical than attempting to skirmish with the 8 player maximum.
Although there is an official ladder, at the moment people can disconnect from a match without having it count as a loss, which is an annoying oversight in this day and age. Obviously a disconnect must count as a loss, or you will have players dropping the game before their last few buildings can be destroyed. We've been through this before with other multiplayer RTS titles, so hopefully it will be addressed in a patch.
BFME is a little different from the standard RTS fare in certain ways. You can only build in fixed locations, and there are firm limits on which buildings those locations will accommodate. While it's definitely quicker than the sort of freeform sprawl most RTS fans are used to, it robs you of the ability to defend a point of your choice with fixed fortifications. Another notable difference is that gathering resources has been reduced in some cases to simply building the necessary structure, as most of them don't need laborers to produce income. Naturally, the benefit of this is that it gives you time to concentrate on combat that you otherwise spend tweaking your economy.
Then there is the use of Command Points to limit the number of units you can have at any one time. Far be it from the massive battles of the films; even if the game could render it, the default settings keep things on much smaller scale. Limits may be changed by altering certain .ini files, but any significant increase would likely make online play unacceptably choppy. Don't expect engagements on the magnitude of those in Rome: Total War.
Unit veterancy and upgrades play a large role in combat. Many of the Heroes and troops gain experience on the battlefield, and certain buildings allow you to purchase better weapons and armor for your warriors. You'll find yourself using advanced units more carefully than new recruits. Curiously, heros don't lose any rank when they die. After their revival they carry on at the same level they were at before their demise.
I was a little disappointed to see that, unlike C&C Generals, you are not able to make much use of buildings that pre-exist on the map. Being able to order your men into a nearby structure for defensive purposes is cool, but in BFME, although there is the odd abandoned tower to send archers into, you can't get them back out again.
