We just finished The Lord of the Rings: War in the North! Fantastic game — truly fantastic.  We plan to go back through a second time, at least, on a higher difficulty. We’re also interested in knowing how the other choices play out. Throughout the game there are a couple of dialog options that seem like they would lead to a different ending. We already know one does since Graev accidentally pressed the wrong button — a bad enough mistake that we both shut out Xbox’s off immediately to ensure it did not get saved.
A few times while playing we started talking about how the environments were really well done. One particular moment was in the Barrow Downs. The atmosphere was so much better than in Lord of the Rings Online. I had to take a picture with my phone to capture the moment.
Attention to detail was present throughout the game. When it rained, characters looked wet. Armor accumulated water and beards were soggy. When it snowed, frost and powder accumulated on armor. After going inside, the weather effects on the armor would dissipate.  Little things like that, in addition to the the environmental details, made us both wish for this type of detail in MMOs.
We highly recommend War in the North, especially if you can co-op with others online or with a friend.
I also enjoyed war in the north though I had two quibbles. One was the ending where it seems like many months passes for the fellowship yet it seems like only weeks have passed for your own party. The other was that coming off Arkham City the combat felt really really stiff, and given that the game is 80% combat 20% jacksonian tolkien pretty it feels like more work could have been done there to smooth the combat out.
We had the exact same “Huh?” moment when we realized the ring was destroyed at the ending. Thinking about it, though, there were times when we had to travel on foot to locations that are just as far as Frodo and the Fellowship had to travel. The pacing is off, regardless.
Argh! Too many great games this year. Please guys, hold off on anymore until January. I’m too broke to get any other games!
Its too bad this game was released so close to Skyrim/BF3/MW3. I think people were saving their fantasy fix, even though these two are such different games. Also, it being full priced, obviously people are going to go for the sure thing with there $50.
@Coppertopper: Graev and I were just talking about this. War in the North released at the worst possible time. It’s a great game but will be skipped over by so many.
Hopefully enough people spoke highly of it for people to try it later.
IGN said it was crap. I think i’ll skip it, cant find the time with BF3, Skyrim and SWTOR.
And old post but finally got mine (very late release in the UK) and the CE Snow Troll model is wonderful and the game is damn good though I could use a better inventory system: I seem to spend a lot of time faffing about in there.