Fantasy Beat-'Em-Ups

I love me some beat-'em-ups. 

BEU's sure are an old genre of games, when you think about it.  I’m betting they were a  pretty natural evolution of the standard sidescrolling platformer (think Mario, Sonic, etc). Some of the BEU’s that come to mind are the Streets of Rage series, a slew of really fun TMNT games (I played Turtles in Time for the SNES to death), various X-Men arcade games, one of the only decent Simpsons games, and a whole bunch more.

BEU’s made the switch to 3d and next-gen consoles pretty smoothly, I’d say. Games just feel different sometimes when they make the switch. Mario being one of the exceptions, platformers like Sonic and others ended up either losing their soul or becoming completely kinds of games. Beat-‘em-ups never really had that problem, the same sort of mash the buttons, kill the enemies gameplay remained mostly the same.

Making a BEU out of the Lord of the Rings film series is a pretty obvious choice, when you think about it. 

The frenetic action scenes of the movies quite resemble a BEU once you’re looking for it. And boy, have they made Lord of the Rings BEU’s. Probably upwards of 90% of the LOTR games released thus far have been BEU’s of one variety of another. There are a few notable exceptions: the Battle for Middle-Earth series, which is an RTS, and Lord of the Rings: Conquest, a disappointing Star Wars: Battlefront type (which I’d argue is a sort of species of BEU).

The Lord of the Rings juggernaut shows little sign of slowing down. Hollywood, in a move of brazen mercantism, pulled a “Deathly Hallows” (or a “Breaking Dawn”, if you prefer) and divided the book into two movies. You can bet there will be a fresh onslaught of Lord of the Rings video games accompanying its release, capitalizing on the eager hordes of new and old fans alike. No doubt there’ll be a BEU in there somewhere. Choose your dwarf! Play with 3 friends online! Level up and learn new combos and collect new armor!

Detecting some bitterness? That might be because I recently picked up Lord of the Rings: War in the North for the 360. 

I wouldn’t say I was disappointed. Rather, my expectations for an $18 bargain bin game were neatly fulfilled. Anyone remember the hype for this game? It came and went like a pang of spring fever. Promising footage and developer promises just couldn’t change the fact that the game ended up being a run of the mill beat-‘em-up, without a single ounce of creativity invested in the project. You pick one of three appropriately bland Tolkien-esque characters (an elf, a man and a dwarf, a warrior, a ranger and a caster, of course) and you stroll through featureless amusement parks devoid of any interest, discovery, or fun.

Does the game deserve this torrent of criticism? Not fully. There’s a far worse offender amid the sub-genre of fantasy BEU’s, which would be Conan, a game notable only for its frequent display of female breasts and the most irritating platforming this side of Assassin’s Creed. 

The one saving feature of Conan is that it only costs 5$ (I pity the poor fools who spent 60$ for it back in the day).

No doubt there’s a few more fantasy BEU’s coming down the pipe. Some acquaintances recently expressed excitement for a new LOTR game displayed at E3 (which looks suspiciously like a BEU).  At this point, I'm not sure LOTR needs another beat-'em-up, really. At least if they do make another, I hope they're able to blow the dust off the genre and take something in a new direction.

It's sort of strange that LOTR has never been made into an Oblivion/Skyrim type game. There's something more appealing about exploring Moria or the Lonely Mountain than some random locale in an unfamiliar realm. Wouldn't it be nice to choose to play as an orc, or a dwarf, or an Easterling, or whatever, and then quest in the world to choose your path?

 Jeez, even a traditional turn based RPG set in the LOTR universe sounds fun. They seldom make those any more. But then, at this point, even a LOTR kart racer sounds better than yet another BEU.


K