The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

The Lord of the Rings movie series has spawned a TON of spinoffs, games, books, DVDs, action figures... you name it. Specifically, though, the new LOTR movies have spawned one hell of a gaming fiasco. To abbreviate a long story, two groups simultaneously own the LOTR rights, and thus there are two brands of LOTR games. In this case, for those of you who haven't figured it out yet, this is the EA brand, directly hired by the people who made the movies, as opposed to the other company (Black Label)'s version, which only got one release.

Now, the first and most obvious question is "Okay, what the hell? Why didn't they start with the first movie?". To answer this, I think this was a dumbass move by EA, but a smart idea nonetheless. See, when this game came out, the Fellowship movie had already been out, and the Two Towers was just coming out. Thus, to keep up with the movies (And lower the requirement of production from three games to two), they split it up as follows:

Two Towers game: Fellowship + 1/2 Two Towers
Return of the King game: 1/2 Two Towers + ROTK

Get it? Me either.

Anyway, time to review the game itself. Personally, I'm not a big LOTR fan, mainly because we've seen so many spinoffs of it by now that I'm sick of the whole Human/Elf/Dwarf/Orc thing. Sick to DEATH of it. However, this game brings it all back to the beginnings, and shows one of the oldest-school RPG style stories ever- The Lord of the Rings.

In the game, which is level based, you can choose which character you can be, be it Aragorn, Legolas, or Gimli. Unsuprisingly, the game also features "Bonus" characters and different paths, just like any basic adventure game you'll play. Just like Devil May Cry, these characters can be levelled up also, so basically this game is your tried-and-true standard adventure game.

However, there's one BIG problem with this game (In my humble opinion, at least). The level system SUCKS. First of all, the level system naturally forces you to play the game as an arcade game, lessening the flow of the story to the point where you're more concerned about getting to the next level than anything else.



The second problem with this is that it limits the level up system severely. While the RPG-Adventure level up system like Devil May Cry is nice, you have actually very little control over how much experience you get. Unlike DMC, you cannot go back and kill some enemies for experience- once you defeat a level, that's it. Meaning? Perfection in the LOTR games is somewhat hard because of this, and the inner RPG player in me writhes in pain because of this.

The game itself plays nicely, but I personally didn't like the control scheme. The game felt a lot like a typical Gauntlet game where you went around and hit stuff, and it even felt as linear as the go-here-then-go-here Gauntlet games. In fact, the only thing that really differs this from being a Gauntlet-with-LOTR-characters is the fact that the LOTR characters are pretty limited to close-range attacks, and the bow + arrow combination rarely, if ever, provides a good attack scheme.

As for the good things about this game: For one, it's a pretty decent looking game. While linear games are pretty easy to make graphically, this excels in it, meaning you're not exactly going to be bored of the graphics. Naturally the players look a little odd from their real-life counterparts, but it's forgivable considering the test system I played it on was a PS2, famous for such ugly human translations.



Another nice thing about this game is the little bonuses in it, namely the interviews. While I've stated before I'm not a LOTR fan, anyone with any interest in it will find these interviews engrossing, and I sometimes thought it was a lot funner than playing the game. As well, the game features a nice bonus area for when you complete the game, which is a very nice addition. (As well, the game features the over-used "Beat the game and get the codes" system. Lame, because the codes are your basic infinite crap, nothing fun.).

Overall, the Lord of the Rings game was a dissapointment for me. I would have loved to see this game in an RPG format. The LOTR franchise now has an RPG, but it should have been made in this game rather than in an seperate realm. This game feels like Gauntlet with a movie tie-in, and never really impressed me or depressed me in any way. It's a generic game, which is why I give it a generic 3 stars. Maybe if you're a fan of the Lord of the Rings it'll entertain you. But just not me.

3 star(s) out of 5

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