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92 of 96 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Major Disappointment, December 26, 2002
I'll try to be nice and start with the good:There are parts of this game, visually, that are beautiful. I played it to the end just for that aspect alone. The graphics in all modes, whether you're playing as FP, 3rdP or watching a cut scene, are very nice...really beautiful. Moria was my favorite; the Balrog and Gandalf's fall into Shadow was cool. In many ways, it's true to LOTR books and a nice way to learn the basic story if you can't/won't read the books. Also, there are parts of the books that you don't get in the movies. Tom Bombadil (as annoying as he may be) and Narzil reforged being the biggest points. One quirky thing...in the cut scenes, the characters look much different than the characters when you're playing them...which is odd. I found it funny that in the cutscenes, the Hobbits have curly hair (as Hobbits do), but in the game, they all have staight hair...in fact, everyone who has hair has straight hair. Here are the major downfalls...some of which are maddening: The gameplay is shamefully bad! Did no one test this game? Shame on them! First, you can't fight in FP mode, other than to use your alternative weapon (rock, bow, magick). So, you're forced to fight in 3rdP mode and suddenly the 'camera' angle goes haywire! You can't see who or what you're fighting or suddenly there's a tree or a wall in your way. This is inexcusable IMHO. Also, you can't choose which character you can play and there's no changing the difficulty. You can't venture very far and just look around either = no replay value! Add on that the characters all move like they're Cave Trolls on smack, and you've got a recipe for disaster. No skill really required...you keep pounding away at your mouse. Not so much fun or good for the hardware. If that's not enough, I found the game to be rather buggy. Once in Moria Gandalf was stuck in a wall...I couldn't move and had to start over. It crashed my system many times and I have a 'stout-hearted' system that even Samwise the Brave would admire. Also, there are times when you really don't have to fight anyone at all to pass the level. This is especially 'helpful' when you're Frodo since he can't do much of anything. If you just run to the end, picking up Mushrooms, Cram and Lembas as you go, you can pass to the next phase. I did this several times with Frodo with the ghosts (Paths of the Dead?), the Orcs in Moria and the Urku-Hai just before the end. Why bother playing at all? And what about the Ring, which I think I used once just to put the darn thing on a see what happens! Who cares about gaining purity when you don't have to use the Ring?? The 'puzzles' were laughably easy and the game was so short, I was angry that I'd actually paid for this bundle of [junk]. It's a total ripoff that completely takes advantage of the new generation of Tolkien fans that the movies have created. Obviously, Peter Jackson had nothing to do with the game. I've played more engaging games on a Commodore 64! Bottom line: Save your money...Tolkien Enterprises doesn't need it.
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80 of 84 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Poorly Designed and Too Short, November 10, 2002
By A Customer
The good parts of the game:The graphics in this game aren't bad, the equal of other games of this type. They're nothing special, though, considering the system requirements on the game. The best part, however, is that you get to "step into middle earth", and that's wonderful for a die-hard LOTR fan like myself. You get to walk about the Shire, Barrow Downs, Bree, and Moria. You get the chance to play parts of the game as Frodo, Aragorn and Gandalf. The bad parts: The game is very short. It took me about 4 hours to complete the whole thing, and much of that was re-playing the hard parts until I could get past them. The areas, aside from the Shire and Moria are not very extensive. There are, for example, only two rooms in all of Lothlorien. Only one in Rivendell. This is sad because exploring the world of middle earth was the most compelling part of the game. This game is a strange cross between the movie, the book, and a script written specifically for the game. For example, do you remember the four hobbits beating up spiders with sticks? Me either, but it's in the game. How about when Sam was snatched by a flying Nazgul? Frodo never has a conflict with Boromir, and Boromir never dies. Galadriel, acting as the narrator, simply says that "The fellowship was successful, it brought the ring bearer to the edge of Mordor." The dialog between the characters, especially in the cut scenes, is not very well written. I got the impression that it was written for children. Of course, all of the plot points of the story are done in cut scenes. After all, you couldn't allow Frodo to escape getting hit by the morgul-blade, or allow Gandalf to continue past Moria, that would change the story completely. This unfortunately, will leave you playing parts of the story that aren't that interesting. The game engine has some serious problems. The angle of the "virtual camera" frequently leaves you in positions where you can't see what's going on. In combat, that can be a real problem. You can switch to "First Person Perspective" but that only allows you to shoot missile weapons and move, nothing else is allowed in that mode. When trying to escape the Shire, you have to sneak past all of the Nazgul. The problem is, if they see you, a cut-scene plays, then you get a screen saying you've lost. Then you go back to the main menu, where you have to choose "Load Game" to start again. Since it's so easy to be spotted, you end up going through that whole sequence over and over and over again until you get things exactly right. I found this to be frustrating. When you are travelling with the Fellowship, certain members will only be there for the cut-scenes. For example, in Moria, only Gandalf and Gimli are there for most of the game play. But, when the cut-scenes play the entire fellowship is there. Or, when fighting the Nazgul at the end (a game-only thing) you play the part of Aragorn, and when you hit it with the last arrow, suddenly the cut-scene begins and Legolas brings it down. You do all the work, and Legolas (who wasn't even there to help you) gets the credit. I'd only recommend this game to die-hard Tolkien fans. It's not very well designed, and it's very short. It's only worth paying for if you REALLY like the story.
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40 of 41 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting puzzles and good graphics, too short!, October 25, 2002
A new Lord of the Rings RPG is out for the PS2, XBox and other platforms. How well does the first book in the trilogy translate to a role playing game?To start with, you're doing a role-playing game and start out as Frodo. There's no fighting, just wandering around in a very nicely rendered Morrowind-style graphic house and town. You have a purity meter, so don't go stealing things from others' houses! You have simple quests to achieve - get a mill working, find the pigs. You gather up some firecrackers and mushrooms (yum!) and deal with your annoying relatives. In hardly any time at all you've met up with Sam, Merry and Pippin and have left the Shire. The game progresses like that - Frodo just creeps along, solves random quests and tries to stay pure. You can use the ring to find secret areas, but using the ring makes you more corrupt. You have to do good deeds (i.e. these little quests) to keep yourself balanced. Eventually you can also play Aragorn and Gandalf, and stop into other locations such as Bree, Weathertop, Rivendell, and up through the end of the book at the river's edge. I was disappointed because the back of the game made it sound as if you could *be* any of the three characters (Frodo, Aragorn, Gandalf). Instead you're stuck as Frodo in the beginning, trudging around from house to house. Most houses don't even have anyone in them and the few that do are often empty. The puzzles are solved in about 2 minutes each with little thought. I do enjoy the graphics, and the way each character is a 'type' is fun. Frodo's purity and thieving skills, Aragorn's fighting, Gandalf's magic. The cut scenes are good and help to move the story along, and flow in with what you are doing. Still, I really would have enjoyed something a bit more involved, with quests that involved more actual thought, with real thieving being necessary instead of just 'pick lock - ok got deed' and 'sneak along road -ok got past riders'. The quests are very obvious - you get 2 or 3 explicit clues for each one that push you into the right direction. The voice actors sometimes seem bored with what is a world-rescuing epic. Gandalf's recitation of the 'one ring to rule them all' at the beginning sounds like he's reading through a shopping list! In any case, it's fun to wander around the various locations and interact with the characters from the book. The graphics are nice, and they include many characters that the movie didn't have time to include. A must have for Lord of the Rings fans, if only to participate in sort of a 'moving story book' that lets them, for a time, return to that fantastically detailed world created by J.R.R. Tolkein. As a HUGE fan of the series, that includes me!
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