Earlier this year there was a brief news explosion on Lord of the Rings: Conquest, the Pandemic developed game that was being specifically handled by the team that created the Star Wars: Battlefront games. However, the game went dark not long after, and we’ve been waiting for word on the title for quite some time now. Today, the silence has been broken.

Today Pandemic announced that Conquest will be available on January 13 in North America, and the game is coming to Xbox 360, PS3, Nintendo DS, PC and Jaguar. Sorry Wii and Mac owners, no Hobbit love for you this time. The game seeks to recreate many of the major battles from Peter Jackson’s interpretation of the Tolkien universe, and players will be able to experience campaigns from both the good and evil sides of the coin.

So now that the game has a release date I have to ask, do you care? Are you excited for this trip back to Middle Earth, or has the Lord of the Rings phenom run its course? I guess we’ll get a true measure of its current popularity once the game launches, but for now you may want to brush up on your Elvish incantations and battle axe skills.