Well rather than keep you guessing it is in our mind the former although in the development of the campaign portion of the game there was some effort to pay homage to the story. The game itself looks very much like Warcraft 3 (even down to similar menus) and because of this the units (especially the evil ones) have the noddy in toy land feel about them. Evil units rather than evoking a sense of dread are a colorful bunch of cute little munchkins.

There are only two sides in the conflict (good and evil) and this is one of our major gripes about the game. There is hardly enough differing types of units to shake a magic sword at. Playing the good guys you have two types of human units, three elven units, two dwarf units and some miscelleanous types such as a huorn (Ent) and Beorning (shape changer). There is nothing really ground breaking in the units and the glaring omission of siege engines and eagles makes you wonder if they have read the books (there is no air or sea units in this game - hello! One dimensional game play went out of vogue when Gollum was still a happy naïve hobbit!). In the campaign you do get to capture and repair a huge catapult however much to our disappointment this is not a freely available unit in the rest of the game.

The Evil hordes are really no better. There is the standard fare of orcs and gobbo's, some missile bad boys, a wraith, and a wolf rider. There are a couple of trolls (cute unfortunately) one a sword wielding tank and the other a rock lobber. The dark rider makes a showing but sadly not on a fell beast. What about the Oliphants? Time to cry into your buckland beer folks. Ok, the spiders make an appearance but you wonder what happened to the ravens, the dragons and the evil men?

This lack of units points to half a job to cash in on the bow wave of publicity of the upcoming movie. It is a shame that they have not taken the time to research the wonderful array of possible units that they could have populated their world with. What they have offered quickly causes players to lose interest. The game - whether in the campaign or in skirmish mode - is restricted in how big your armies can be. Rather than playing the wide sweeping battles that are characterized in the book you feel that you are playing the 'Skirmish of the Ring'.

There are some good points however. In addition to the units that your buildings can produce you can also gain heroes from the story. As you prevail in combat you gain fate points that you can expend to recruit such heroes as Frodo, Aragon and Gandalf. Depending on fate points you can also cast an array of special abilities. None are particularly game breaking in their effect however they do have some interesting graphic effects. Evil has it's anti heroes as well with Saruman making a showing (well not much as he is a bit of a wimp).

You can also upgrade units with better armor and more effective attacks however again there is nothing ground breaking or new in these upgrades. Some result in little appreciable effect as well and leave you wondering whether you should have expended the resources. There are two resources to mine (food and iron) and this scarcity of any realistic economic model points to it being a rushed job as well.

The one real bright spot of all of this is the campaign. It is not half bad, with players being taken on a rollicking journey through some of the high points in the book. You get to chase Gollum through the Elven forest, defend the dwarven mines and defend the bridge against the evil hordes (well not a horde rather a mob sized bunch of cute goblins). Each mission feels different from the last and it is a credit to the story telling of Tolkien how well his masterpiece has translated into an RTS game setting. We had a lot of fun playing the campaign game however when we started playing the skirmish option and the game came out from under the Lord of the Rings story, the game shortfalls became evident.

The game graphics as we have said are a bit too cutesy for our liking. There are some interesting effects though with grass swaying in the fields and seeming to flow out behind your units as they pass through the area. There are some cool water effects and the evil swamp is a neat little variation on the theme as well. The chocolate box feel of the game however seems incongruous with the LOTR world.

There is no game editor which is another stunning omission but there is support for multiplayer. The restricted amount of units and sides also makes this aspect of the game pale quite quickly.

Ultimately War of the Ring is a poor cousin of Warcraft 3, with too few units and little replayability after the completion of the campaign. We are left with the feeling that this is yet another feeder at the money trough of the Lord of the Rings phenomenon. Buy it if you are mad keen on LOTR and Warcraft but don't expect too much.