We recently played a couple of great cooperative games set in the world of Lord of the Rings. One was Lego Lord of the Rings, and it was pretty excellent. Their use of the movie voice acting was great. I do kind of miss the days when the Lego games had to tell us a story without words, however. There is a level of cleverness that this requires that they pulled off quite nicely.
The other game we played recently was Lord of the Rings: War in the North. While by no means the best game ever, it pulled off doing something different from the normal plot. I played Lord of the Rings: The Third Age, and you basically just follow right behind the Fellowship and fight the same things. Not so in War in the North: its own story, characters, and system. Allow me to regale you with a tale.
Comparative Geeks 