Everyone knows the story of the Fellowship of the Ring, however, not many have heard the story of the other fellowship that helped save Middle Earth. Thankfully, SnowBlind Studios have done a stellar job at telling us that story in The Lord of the Rings: War in the North. We're teaming up with Xbox Live to bring you a co-op night to relive that story on Thursday, January 26th at 8-11PM Eastern.

We've got a great contest kicking off today to celebrate one of our favorite games this fall - The Lord of the Rings: War in the North.  We're giving away five copies of the collector's edition of the game for the PlayStation 3 courtesy of WB Games!  That's right...a fellowship of five for a game we gave a 5 out of 5.

Snowblind Studios was behind the much-celebrated co-op titles Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance and Champions of Norrath. As far as a lot of us are concerned, these are the console dungeon crawlers to beat. Those are pretty big boots of striding to fill, though, especially after such a long time. The question tha's on the tip of everyone's tongue is: is LOTR: War in the North up to filling those boots - and our expectations?

Every time I write off The Lord of the Rings: War in the North, another awesome trailer pulls me back into the Tolkien hype machine.  This latest video has got it all: maps, rings, fire, eyes, eyes on fire, and undead horseys, all in the first thirteen seconds!  Choose your ranger, elf, or dwarf and get to troll stabbin'.  You had better bring some friends.  It looks like Agandaur has been eating his electrified Wheaties, because his force lightning looks bad-ass.  Strength, courage, fellowship!  

Unless you have featured in film or television I don't care about your opinion on Lord of the Rings.  Go home Professor of English Literature at Oxford University; see you Grandpa who actually knew Tolkien - neither of you have the kudos of some bloke off Big Bang Theory or one of the Hobbits from the films.  Snowblind Studios understand my needs with their new promotional video for The Lord of the Rings: War in the North.  Talk to us all famous people.

Publisher Warner Bros Interactive has appeased lore-hungry fans with some main character information and Belgian gaming site 9lives.be has gotten its hands on a boss battle trailer for The Lord of the Rings: War in the North, the Snowblind Studios co-op action RPG coming November 1st.

This trailer for The Lord of the Rings: War in the North is, as they say, "doing it right."  This is an accompaniment to the Power of Three trailer we brought you earlier this week.  The developers discuss some of the benefits of co-op, including some of the character abilities as well as a challenge mode.  Looks like Snowblind built some extra replay-ability into their latest action RPG.  

The Lord of the Rings: War in the North has new trailer out.  It concentrates on the new fellowship of the three, and the whole "sum is greater than the parts" thing.  Basically, when you get a dude, a dwarf, and a female elf together, things get awesome.  Like we didn't already know that.  Still, the trailer is pretty cool.  It uses opera singers, spinning camera angles, and buckets of blood to great effect. 

If there's one thing that people always associate with Middle Earth, it has to be giant birds.  What?  You think of hobbits first?  Long-bearded wizards spring to mind, do they?  Maybe you first associate flaming, disembodied eyes with the world of the Lord of the Rings?  Hmm.

In "Didn't we see this a month ago?" news, The Lord of the Rings: War in the North has officially been dated for a November 1st release.  The game was originally scheduled to release this month.  Hopefully the added time will allow for a little extra polish.  I like my games shiny.  In a recent interview with Eurogamer Snowblind Producer Ruth Tomandl made comparisons to Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance.  Let's hope the co-op experience is comparable to that classic.  The game will focus on a human, dwarf and elf who  weren't important enough to be in the original Fellowship of the Ring.  That's okay, there seems to be plenty of evil to go around.

The latest trailer for the Lord of the Rings: War in the North focuses on the three heroes.  It's actually just a cool slo-mo battle with an overlay of Gandalf talking about how righteous and important the three unnamed warriors are.  Still, it looks good.  You can ooh and ahh at all the bloody violence, or tremble at the sight of the "cruel master of dark sorceries," Agandaur.  There's also a giant electrified castle in the background, which is always a plus. 

The latest trailer for The Lord of the Rings: War in the North seeks to explain exactly why we should care about these unnamed characters who were not deemed worthy enough to be in the actual Fellowship.  The video has bits of the films spliced with gameplay footage, and the results are actually pretty cool.  The trailer gives some much needed weight to the Northern adventure.  After a lukewarm gameplay experience at E3, the whole thing was starting to feel like an unnecessary spin-off.  The in-game footage is all in slow motion, which is exactly how it felt hands-on.  Here's hoping that the elf I played as had the flu or something.  Snowblind has a great opportunity to build on events merely touched on in the novels.  I'd hope they do the legacy justice.

We've seen some zany collector's editions in our day, but I think this one might take the cake.  The Lord of the Rings: War in the North collector's edition comes with a leather quiver case for the game.  It's a quiver for arrows, it's a case for the game, and you can wear it on your back while you play and shout "FOR FRODO" as you charge into the battles against Sauron.

We've gone hands-on a couple different times with Snowblind's upcoming War in the North. Opinions are mixed and excitement levels are varied amongst the Co-optimus staff and community, but one thing's quite clear: this is a game that a huge amount of people have their eyes on. We showed you guys a trailer at the beginning of the month devoted to Beleram, a recently announced NPC (non-player character) who will be eating some orc faces by your side in the game. Today, a new trailer was released that revealed more NPCs who you'll meet and fight along side of in the game. The wizard Radagast the Brown and Elrond's sons Elladan and Elrohir will be joining the fight in the north as well as Elrond and Gandalf, of course.

At E3 I got my hands on yet another dungeon crawler that I've been looking forward to playing.  The Lord of the Rings: War in the North features one of our favorite co-op modes: split-screen with online play.  The demo I played didn't have any split screen, but I was able to confirm with the rep that two couch co-op players could join a cross town (or cross country) buddy for some LOTR goodness.  And if there's only two of you?  Then the AI will  take the controls of one of the three classes.