There haven?t been a whole lot of attempts at bringing a MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena) style experience to consoles, outside of the really well done Awesomenauts from earlier this year. But even that title was a pretty big deviation from the big PC heavies in the field, namely League of Legends and DOTA 2. Developer Monolith and publisher Warner Bros. Interactive are looking to change that up a bit with the release of Guardians of Middle-Earth, and all in all, I?d say it?s a pretty fun experience on consoles.
As the name implies, the hero characters, or Guardians as the game refers to them, are taken from Lord of the Rings lore. You?ll get a host of characters, both good and bad, to pick from here. Notable, recognizable standouts abound, like Sauron, Legolas, and Gollum. But there are a lot of less recognizable names bandied about too, like hobbit Hildifons, Aragorn?s father Arathorn, Orc warrior Mozgog and more. Each character falls into a specific class, giving you a rough idea of what exactly they?re good for even if you?re not familiar with playing them. But each character possesses four unique skills, which tend to not overlap from one Guardian to the next, making each one feel pretty unique.
Gameplay has you and your team fighting to take down the opposing sides structures, composed of towers and army generating nodes that send out A.I. controlled generic soldiers down one of three paths (or a single path if you?re playing with one lane). Taking down towers is rarely an easy feat, as the towers themselves have the defensive ability to fire shots at you or the soldiers marching down the lane when close enough. You?ll also need to contend with enemy Guardians trying to do the same, so each match tends to be a back and forth battle of attrition.
From the week or so I?ve spent playing the game prior to review; I?d say that Guardians of Middle-Earth has a really satisfying sense of balance to it. I find balanced characters are pretty much key to any enjoyable MOBA, and despite not giving you full access to the roster right away by locking characters behind purchases with in-game currency, even the unlockable characters seem pretty much on par with the initial set you get access to. But they still feel unique, aided both by appearance and by skill sets. Certain characters seem easier to learn for novices, like Mozgog, a fairly straight forward warrior archetype, while others will take a bit of learning to utilize correctly. Monolith has also implemented a smart tactic of temporarily unlocking ?feature? characters on what appears to be a weekly basis, letting you test the waters a bit before spending your hard-earned gold on a character unlock.
The only real, significant downside to the game at this point is that the online play needs some real work. I?ve had the game installed since last week, prior to launch, and wasn?t able to play much outside of rounds with bots, which ran fine enough. But I wanted to wait until the game went live to finish out this review, and I?m pretty glad I did. My experience online, as of Thursday night, has been really hit or miss. I?ve run into problems with matchmaking, which can take upwards of 8 or 9 minutes to find a match when the average time displayed is a minute and a half. I?ve been randomly disconnected from games, and have experienced show-stopping lag in matches. I?ve also had a handful of smooth online matches too, so it?s not completely busted. But my overall experience online has been poor, which is certainly a shame considering the focus of the game is on online play. I imagine launch week quirks will get worked out, but keep in mind that if you pick this up, the online side is a little sketchy at the moment.
Provided Monolith irons out the kinks, I think this is the stand-out MOBA experience on consoles thus far. Granted, there?s not a lot of competition there, but it?s nice for console only gamers to be able to get a taste of what the PC crowd has been obsessed with for quite a while. Structuring the controls around an actual controller and not a keyboard/mouse combo doesn?t feel ham-fisted either, which is certainly a plus. I definitely think the game is worth checking out, provided the online issues get fixed quickly enough.
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