Chinese developer NetEase has signed a deal with Warner Bros. to make a new mobile game based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings books, per Hypebeast. We don’t know a ton about it yet, just that it’s a strategy game called The Lord of the Rings: Rise to War. “This adaptation will unlock new opportunities for players to explore the iconic settings and characters of Middle Earth while utilizing their strategic skills in battle,” said a Warner Bros. spokesperson.
The “strategy game” element makes me think of Game of Thrones: Beyond the Wall, which puts you in charge of the Night’s Watch and has you fighting humans and monsters alike in grid-based battles:
I can think of worse paths for a Lord of the Rings video game to take.
Speaking of video games based on big-time franchises, The Walking Dead star Norman Reedus (Daryl Dixon) just announced that he’d finished recording voiceover for The Walking Dead Onslaught, a VR game coming to Oculus Rift, Steam VR, and Playstation VR.
“They built this little box in my basement, this little computer here and, yeah, I screamed my head off,” he said. “I hope you guys like it.” It’s a little odd to hear Daryl to speak in something other than pained grunts. Anyway, we still don’t know exactly what kind of experience we’re in for with Onslaught, but expect more gameplay footage later this summer.
And purely because I have video games on the brain now, ’90s kids everywhere were hit with a pang of nostalgia when Nintendo announced it was making a new Pokémon Snap game over 20 years after the original came out on the Nintendo 64. Newer Pokémon fans presumably said, “So it’s Pokémon but you take pictures of them instead of capturing them and pitting them against each other in fights? Okay.”
This has nothing to little to do with sci-fi or fantasy. I just have a lot of feelings.
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