LoTR: War in The North

Got Lord of the Rings: War in the North yesterday, and played for a couple hours.  It's a mixed bag, not great at this point, but playable, and a decent challenge.  It comes off like a poor man's Dragon Age on the surface - but that's not a bad thing, in and of itself.  I've only been playing single player.  I have a feeling that the game is better when there are three people playing, but oh well, I wanted to try it out and didn't want to play with some random person who would ninja loot while I'm getting my ass kicked by a troll.

I went a little out of my comfort zone and rolled a caster (loremaster in LOTR terms) for the game.  You can also choose a ranger, or a dwarven warrior.  I usually go for sword and board types, but I've been trying to expand my horizon a bit more in the past year or so and going for other archetypes.  Inevitably, every battle will turn to melee.  Not the best for a caster.  Perhaps the in game AI isn't very good, and my tank isn't tanking, or perhaps I'm not using the party commands properly.  Anyway, I like (and hate) that most battles have a lot of enemies.  If I start to spaz out and spam my attacks, I'll get beat down quickly.  However, when I actually take a moment to survey the battlefield, identify where I want to engage, what structures I can take out, or other means to clear out some of the baddies without engaging directly, I am able to have a much, much easier go of it.  Makes sense.  So, I get frustrated when I get my ass kicked, then regroup and try to play more logically, use my blocks and rolls, and have that satisfying feeling of accomplishment.  

The game seems rather long.  I had been playing the first quest for a couple hours, and then when I finally quit for the evening, I came to learn that I am on chapter 1, part 17.  There have been a couple small side quests along the way, but the main quest had my party venturing through some ruins.  I have no idea how far into I am, but it does lend a feeling of scale to the adventure, which may serve it well.  

Aside from that, I've been messing around with Lego Pirates.  I used to like the lego games, fun little distractions.  However, I really didn't like Lego Batman or Lego Harry Potter, and as a result, couldn't get into Lego Star Wars 3.  Pirates seems to be more of the Indiana Jones variety, so I've been digging it okay so far, but usually just do one level or so when coming home from work and wanting just a few minutes of decompression time.  

I saw that Warhammer 40k: Space Marine has a new free coop dlc available.  I may have to rip the shrink wrap off of this one.