Today we were in for a real treat. The MVPs were given a private session with the EA team and we got to play some Battle for Middle-earth II for the XBox 360. Louis Castle (VP of Creative Development for the 360 version of the game) came to talk to us about everything that went into creating it.

I think I was the only RTS virgin in the group so I was really interested to see if this game could bring me into the genre. We split up into two small groups and had face time with the marketing guys, community leaders and the developer of the game.

I went to the back of the bus with the COOLEST group and I got an RTS primer. Of course I'm familiar with the storyline and for some reason, decided to show my age by admitting that I played the text based "The Hobbit" way back in the day.

Now given, I am always seeing complaints about EA's servers and bad online play but I have to say, at least the single player portion of this game was really amazing.

I'm one of those who searches for the tiniest details in games. Little things really show you how much the developers and art directors appreciate their product. They also allow for a more submersive experience. There's nothing worse than seeing a beautiful game ruined by repetitive actions or speech. This game made great use of these small things. When you get a game that gives you the ability to send Trolls to pick up trees but they start fighting because they go for the same one, you know it's going to be good. I was told about but didn't see a troll scratch his butt and reel in digust when his hand gets close to his face. I'll be sure to look for it in the full release. (I hope they leave that in.)

The lighting and texture maps really were beautiful. There are maps in the game ranging from snow covered mountains to lush, green, rolling hills.

I really don't expect much detail from a game such as this because there's just so much going on. I would have thought the action would make the graphics suffer. Not the case - you have the ability to zoom in on your armies and see tiny details such as arrows in legs and folds in clothing. One of my favorite features was having a troll pick up an elf and watch him struggle to get free.

I watched first as the "experts" played and finally got the guts to show my newb skills with the game. Luckily, the guy who played before me had left a nice army for me to fight with but I still managed to get them all killed in about 30 seconds. My trolls were throwing rocks, bashing things with tree trunks, and elves but they still couldn't defeat the stupid elven guys. BAH... I did, however, learn how to poison my arrows so that any hit I got would release a continuous poison.

The basic controls were easy to pick up, move with the left stick, spin and zoom in and out with the right, A is the action button, B is cancel action, Y is find your way to the last waypoint, clicking on the left thumbstick will take you back to your fortress. Easy enough for me to pick up fairly quickly. You also have a creature menu where you can make your "soldiers" perform several actions. As I pointed out before, you can make trolls either throw rocks at the enemy, pull a tree out of the ground for use as a weapon or pick up a troll for the same purpose.

Like other RTS games, you will need to build up your resources and structures before going into battle. Of course you can keep building your army as you fight. You can also instruct your builders to contruct tunnels from point to point.

Another nice feature is that you can resurrect your heroes in your fortress.

The game is taken and designed completely from the books and movies so I'm sure fans of the series will feel right at home. It got me interested enough to pick it up.

This is how E3 should be...

A big thanks goes out to the EA guys: Aaron, Louis, Amritz and Scott for giving us the opportunity to check out the game.