Pack your bags, because we’re heading back to Middle-earth. On Tuesday a new (old) The Lord of the Rings game was surprise released. Re-released by Aspyr, The Lord of the Rings: War in the North is now available for modern consoles.
Originally released in 2011, War in the North is an action RPG that’s based on both J. R. R. Tolkien’s novels and Peter Jackson’s early 2000s film adaptations while also bringing in new ideas and characters to the mix. “You’re meeting characters that you’re familiar with as well as brand new characters and some characters from the books that you might know of that weren’t in the films, so we really get the best of all possible worlds,” producer Ruth Tomandl told GameSpot way back when.
While Frodo and Sam are off trying to toss the One Ring into the fires of Mount Doom, you’ll control a trio of heroes waging war against Sauron’s forces in the North. You can freely swap between them in the new version, dubbed the Legacy Edition, and also play War in the North in three-player online co-op or two-player splitscreen co-op modes. War in the North — Legacy Edition also boasts 60 frames per second support, UI/UX optimizations, additional save slots, autosave, and gyro and motion support on PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch consoles.
The Lord of the Rings: War in the North received a tepid response in 2011 with a 61 Metacritic score based on 48 Xbox 360 reviews. (It fared a bit better on Windows PC with a 66 score.) It’s been unavailable to buy digitally since 2019, so the Legacy Edition marks an exciting return for the game, even if it is a little rough around the edges.
What’s more exciting, however, is the tease of even more The Lord of the Rings video game re-releases. “Fans can look forward to even more classic releases by Aspyr from the beloved franchise in the future!” a press release states. Aspyr has steadily remastered plenty of Star Wars games over the years, and the idea of replaying old The Lord of the Rings games on modern hardware is an exciting prospect for millennials in their 30s. (Though, hopefully future remasters turn out better than some of those Star Wars ones.) Jackson’s trilogy actually had pretty decent movie tie-in games, and I wouldn’t say no to replaying them on a Switch 2.
Until then, you can check out The Lord of the Rings: War in the North — Legacy Edition. It’s available for Nintendo Switch, Switch 2, PS5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X.
