For a brief, shining moment, with the apparent death of The White Council, I dreamed to hope that we had seen an end to the endless stream of LOTR inspired games. True to form, EA has killed that fleeting hope and has announced they plan to release yet another LOTR title.

Find out all the details on EA’s latest attempt to bleed the LOTR franchise for all it’s worth after the jump!

Details on this latest installment are still to be announced, but Pandemic is confirmed as the developer and it appears unlikely that this will be a rebirth for the suspended title The White Council. The game should arrive some time before March 31, 2009 (the end of the fiscal year).

I loved Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings novels as a kid and I even enjoyed the movies (minus the last half hour of The Return of the King). It made sense to me that video games based on the universe would appear after the film’s massive success. Six years and ten titles later, I’ve had about all I can stomach of hobbits, elves and dwarves.

Only time will tell whether gamers are still under the sway of the One Ring and if this latest title will be any good. The previous LOTR titles are about a 60/40 split between decent and terrible. We could have a great title like Battle for Middle-Earth II, (which RTS gamers, myself included, enjoyed) or it may be another Hobbit, Fellowship of the Ring, War of the Ring, and that Tactics piece of utter garbage. Oh and we can’t forget Lord of the Rings Online which, despite decent ratings, failed to make even the smallest dent in the MMO world, or generate any real interest from the basement dwelling, uber geeks that still fawn over the films.

Unless this game somehow pulls a 90+ on MetaCritic, I doubt I will be buying this game, let alone counting down the days until its release.

Source: GameSpot & IGN

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