The wars of Middle-earth seem like they'd make for a great strategy game, and perhaps someday they will, but "The Lord of the Rings: War of the Ring" is not it.

It's not bad -- in many ways, it's quite good -- but it's extremely derivative of Blizzard's "WarCraft" and "StarCraft" games (possibly because Sierra Entertainment's owner, Vivendi Universal, also owns Blizzard).

The game is based on J.R.R. Tolkien's books, not director Peter Jackson's film trilogy. Electronic Arts owns the rights to games based on the films.

Anyway, the game play is a hodgepodge of ideas and features pulled from other strategy games. (To be fair, the "WarCraft" titles themselves owe much to Tolkien's works.) There are two sides, good and evil. The good side consists of the Free Peoples of Middle-earth: The various races of Men, Dwarves, Elves and Hobbits are represented here.

The evil side is made up of legions of Orcs, Goblins, Trolls, Haradrim and the Nazgul. Both sides can construct a number of buildings that produce units and upgrades, and must collect the game's two resources, ore and food, to do so. The good campaign, the easier of the two, follows the manner in which some of the members of the fellowship came to Rivendell. These and other main characters act as Hero units, serving much the same function of the Hero units in "WarCraft III." They are the core of an army, armed with increased strength and unique abilities, specialized for a certain role.

The forces of good count among their number various Dwarven and Elvish units; the Riders of Rohan, the northern Rangers and the Men of Gondor; the ancient Huorns; and the Beorning bearmen. Hero units for the good side include Frodo Baggins, who can use the One Ring to become invisible; the Dwarf Gimli; the Elf Legolas; the ranger Aragorn; and the wizard Gandalf.

The armies of Sauron are a bit more unusual. The Goblin Slavemaster governs the evil army's size and can place War Posts, which corrupt ground to be built upon. Aside from rank-and-file Orc soldiers, the dark armies employ Uruk-Hai, Warg Riders, Giant Spiders, Haradrim warriors, ghostly Wraiths and hulking Trolls.

Their Hero units are the sneaky Gollum, the Orc warrior Grishnakh, a Haradrim assassin named Saleme, the traitorous wizard Saruman and the fearsome Lord of the Nazgul, who can summon the rest of the Black Riders by binding their spirits to normal Wraiths.

Each side also earns Fate Points through battle, which can be used to field Heroes, cast special spells, grant Heroes more-advanced abilities and to summon powerful creatures, such as Ents and Balrogs.

Finally, the battlefields are littered with Places of Power, special structures that grant the entire army a bonus, such as increased health regeneration. The unit and ability spread is impressive, though it doesn't make much sense in many cases. Dwarves never fought alongside Elves in numbers in the War of the Ring, nor Elves alongside Men, and the Beornings never fought at all. Gollum, though evil, was never allied with Sauron, so he seems out of place as an evil Hero unit. Likewise, some Fate powers are inconsistent with the story; if Sauron's forces could have summoned Balrogs to their aid at will, the Free Peoples wouldn't have had a chance.

Visually, the game's a bit blocky and rough, though the water is pretty and there are some neat fields of tall grass that part as units pass through. The sound is OK, though unit voices are repetitive and the voice acting is not enthralling. The game can also be taken online for matches against human foes, with a good variety of game types.

For all its derivation and inconsistency, "War of the Ring" is still a pretty good game, because it cribs from the best and changes and adds to events in the books to better fit a gamemodel, just as Jackson changed them to better fit his films.

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The Lord of the Rings: War of the Ring

2 1/2 stars

SYSTEM: PC
PUBLISHER: Sierra Entertainment
HOW MUCH: $29.99
AGE RATING: Teen