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Impressions...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 27 / 31
Date: November 16, 2003
Author: Amazon User

As I've not yet completed "The Hobbit," I won't consider this a full-fledged review, but rather I'll note my initial impressions of the game (in which I've already invested three to four hours) in two distinct ways - first as a stand alone game and second as an avid J.R.R. Tolkien zealot (and hardcore gamer).

When you take the game itself, ignoring its namesake and the source material upon which it is based, it is a 3D action platformer with some very colorful, cartoon-like graphics. The art direction is regrettable, but it will surely appeal to younger gamers (and so will the "E" rating). Even so, children could become frustrated with some of the game's levels, which are challenging. I found sneaking past the trolls in "Roast Mutton" frustrating myself, mainly because of the game's less-than-stellar stealth-based gameplay (when the situation calls for it). Combat in the game is extremely basic and not overly exciting, but the platformming elements of the game work well enough. What's more, the levels are sometimes interspersed with charming animated sequences that further the storyline (but ususally are just bookended by cheesy artist's sketches that depict the happenings of the book). The game's soundtrack is quite good, and inspires images of rural Britain long ago. Voice-acting is not bad either. What you ultimately have is a game that is uninspired despite its source material (more on that in a moment), but should still provide some entertainment to gamers with a taste for the kinds of things it offers.

Now, as an avid Tolkien fan who grew up on "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings," I must regretfully report that this video game adaptation takes unnecessary liberties that spoil the Middle Earth lisence. Aside from the childish graphics, which fail to accurately depict our beloved world, the game invents its own ridiculous bestiary and occasionally thrusts Bilbo Baggins and company into situations that are not found in the book. Purists beware, for you will be annoyed. Even so, the game does try to follow the overall storyline of "The Hobbit," and the rendered cut-scenes in particular do adhere to the novel. And yes, I know a game is about gameplay, and adapting a beloved book into a game requires some artistic license, but I can't shake my irritation at some of the game designers' decisions. Nowhere in "The Hobbit" should Bilbo have to face fish-men or things that appear to be giant mutant squirels.

If you're a Tolkien fanatic and an adult gamer, you would do well to either pass on this game completely (assuming you can't stomach the kiddish graphics or, worse, the game's departure from the source material) or wait a while for the price to drop. There's some fun to be had here if you're more open-minded than most Ringers, but I certainly don't recommend it heartily at this point.

Rent first, buy only if you still enjoy it

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 15 / 18
Date: December 05, 2003
Author: Amazon User

The Lord of the Rings trilogy has been getting quite popular in the past few years. It was inevitable that the original story - of Bilbo Baggins finding the ring - would become a new computer game.

Bilbo Baggins is enlisted by Gandalf to go along with a group of dwarves to explore and steal back a treasure from the dragon Smaug. As you go you gain skill with your sword and courage for your hobbit brain.

The game is on the cutesy side and bears no resemblance to the movie hobbits. It's more based on the infamous cartoon version of the Hobbit by Arthur Rankin Jr, with round-bellied short creatures that refuse to talk of adventure. The game involves a lot of jumping from pillar to pillar and going on eternal quests fetching needles and hammers and nails. Yes, there's bashing involved too, mostly of the jump-and-slash, jump-and-slash, jump-and-slash kind.

Don't get me wrong - I *love* Lord of the Rings and will eagerly buy any game based on the series. But I also love great gameplay. I would play Zelda for months and months, and the games based on the movies in the Lord of the Rings trilogy were superb. This one is on the cute side and is more about running through bushes and shrubs gathering up "courage gems" than any actual real thought. You could easily win this game in a few hours. Sure, you can then go back and find "every last gem" ... but really, running around every square inch of ground hoping mysterious gems pop out of the ground isn't my idea of fun.

I'd recommend renting this one and playing it for a weekend. You'll easily win the game several times in that period. If you still find the game fun, buy yourself a copy and enjoy! But if you've tired of the incessant repetitive music, jumping platform areas and tediously long speeches by then, you'll be quite happy to trade the game back in and get something else. I recommend Return of the King - now there's a game I love playing over and over!

Surprisingly good

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 8
Date: December 30, 2003
Author: Amazon User

When I first saw the graphics of The Hobbit I thought : "pf, just another kiddie game" - but then I played it myself and got hooked. Despite the colorful graphics it is more challenging than it looks like. Being a tough gamer myself and loving playing games like Hitman I must say The Hobbit was surprisingly good and for a change "not bloody". It is not as brutal and there is no blood or shooting; Bilbo has to fight spiders and ugly goblins thus making The Hobbit a relaxing game.But be aware: The Hobbit is not as easy as it might give you the impression! At times it is quite challenging and can be even frustrating. And there is a lot to do: exploring, solving riddles (you always find hints), fighting with a stick or the blue lighted Sting sword and throwing stones - (you get advanced tactics during gameplay making your hits stronger). What really makes it special is that you can use The Ring (I mean this is what the story is about, isn't it?) which you gain in a later level. The Ring makes you "invisible" to some creatures helping you to sneak past them. What is nice too is that there is no time limit to it (well of course there sometimes is e.g. opening those chests) so you can explore your surroundings. This to me was an extremely nice feature since Bilbo is small (he is a hobbit after all!) making some sceneries mostly impressive like the Dwarves'halls!
You have to cope with your tinyness here since some obstacles are huge! But there is always a way out and you will enjoy the victory of having made it. In fact some scenes kept me behind my PC for hours - I just couldn't stop until I finished them! I wouldn't exactly recommend it to younger kids under 10 since they might get frustrated when not being able to make their way but it is a hit for the older ones.
Get it and play it! Enjoy it! It is a nice challenging game that is good for your nerves as it is as I said not bloody - it is a great fantasy game!

A Tolkien addict reviews "The Hobbit"

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: December 15, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Let me begin this game review by stating that I am a J.R.R. Tolkien fanatic, and "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings" are my all-time favorite works of fiction. I am also an avid computer and console gamer. Though "The Lord of the Rings" definitely doesn't lend itself very well to most types of interactive adaptation (even if it's made a few decent forays), "The Hobbit" is quite another story entirely. It's surprising how rich the source material could prove in the right developers' hands. Unfortunately, the right developers weren't the ones behind Vivendi Universal's cross-platform effort. That's not to say that "The Hobbit" is a bad game, but it certainly doesn't live up to even a fraction of its potential.

So, as a Tolkien zealot, how true is "The Hobbit" to its source material? In strict terms of the overall story, it's fairly faithful to the novel. However, I regret to inform the purists out there that many annoying liberties were taken. Yeah, I know, I know, it's a video game, not a book (or a film), but that doesn't excuse the inclusion of the completely made-up characters that appear rather frequently throughout the game. I'm referring to enemies as well. At one point, Bilbo (the hobbit protagonist) actually squares off against what appears to be an armor-plated badger. Other times he'll face leaping fish-men, wicked pixies, and gigantic worms. Given the depth and detail in Tolkien's world of Middle-earth, it's highly unnecessary to INVENT new characters and creatures. Purists will find this rightly offensive.

Graphically, "The Hobbit" is closer in tone to the Rankin Bass animated production from the 1970s than it is to Peter Jackson's appropriately gritty take on the ensuing "Lord of the Rings" saga. I suspect this was done to appeal to children - but the game could have appealed to the younger set regardless, and the cartoonish style of the game is really a cop-out, and is not representative of the material. I think the developers were probably inspired by the more recent "Legend of Zelda" games, and it's a shame.

In a perfect world, a video game adaptation of "The Hobbit" would play less like "The Legend of Zelda" and more like "Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell" - and no, I don't suggest transforming Bilbo Baggins into Sam Fisher, but I think the game should emphasize stealth above all things. The Bilbo from the novels only rarely gets into a scrape, and he certainly doesn't have an easy time of things when trouble comes calling. He isn't a warrior, he's a so-called `burglar' - and a small one at that. In this take on the beloved classic, though, he IS a warrior. He can battle several goblins at once and come out of the fray unscathed. More unfortunate still, he's apparently a hairy-footed cousin of Mario and Luigi. "The Hobbit" is essentially a platformer that has our halfling friend leaping, climbing, and collecting things from the beginning of a given level all the way to the end. Memorable locations from the book seem more like footpaths for Sonic the Hedgehog than actual Middle-earth real estate.

Other gripes are ripped from a gamer's standpoint. Take the combat, for instance. It's clunky and simplistic, and therefore quite unexciting. As with most 3rd person behind-the-back games, camera control can certainly be a problem every now and again. Some levels are completely indistinguishable from one another - how many same-looking caves do I have to wander through?! Yes, to be sure, I definitely have my share of issues with "The Hobbit."

On the other hand, I must admit that I did eventually warm to the game's style of play, ill-suited to the license though it may be. If you like platformers, then you could do plenty worse than "The Hobbit." The game controls quite well and offers a decent challenge, and it's strangely addicting. Naturally the game's stealth-based missions proved to be my favorite (particularly the game's fairly faithful take on the novel's "Barrels Out of Bond" segment), and though they are basic and disappointingly few, they are still rather exciting.

In the end, I fear that this adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's literary classic is much like the One Ring itself. It can be strangely compelling, but if you wear the Ring for too long, you will definitely get a feeling that something just ain't right. As a Tolkien fan I lament the game we'll probably never get to play. As a gamer, I say you could do much better than "The Hobbit," but you could also do considerably worse, and it certainly has its charms. If you want a poor man's "Legend of Zelda" with a touch (and I mean a TOUCH) of Middle-earth magic, this is for you.

Final Score: C

Excellent!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 9
Date: November 17, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This video game is awsome! It has solid graphics and great gameplay. 'The Hobbit' is a prelude to 'The Lord of the Rings' which, I guess, is one of the reasons it is so cool. There is a lot of fighting, puzzle-solving, and adventuring to do in this game. 'The Hobbit' is not an easy game because it is very strategic and gets pretty hard at some points. Fans of Zelda, such as myself, will really enjoy playing 'The Hobbit' video game for the Sony PlayStation2.

Be Warned

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 9 / 11
Date: November 25, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Vivendi Universal released the Fellowship of the Ring a year ago. The game was one of the most frustrating things I've ever played. Incredibly short, yet annoyingly stupid, the choices they made to change the story seemed to make no sense. The graphics, though decent for a computer game, were pathetic for Playstation 2.

The fact is, Vivendi is treading a fine line here. They have to compete with the hugely popular EA Lord of the Rings games whose many advantages include scenes from the blockbuster movies, amazing gameplay, and incredible graphics (almost always a given with EA). "Fellowship" simply did not make the cut.

The point I'm trying to make is RENT IT first. I'm a LotR freak too. All this impulse buying is dangerous. Rent it, then buy. The other thing to remember is that Vivendi's games tend to be incredibly short once you get the hang of them. When I finally got out of the Shire in "Fellowship" (stupid Ringwraiths), it took me about 2 and a half hours to beat it. When playing "Hobbit", I got through almost 3/4 of the game in an hour. If Vivendi keeps going the way they have been, this game is will not be worth $50. Go play "The Return of the King" instead.

Very Underrated Game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: May 29, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This game has been overlooked, or criticized, by a lot of people who (1) expect it to be the same type of game as EA's LOTR games; or (2) expect it to be a faithful "re-enactment" of Tolkien's book. Well, (1) while it is much more "cartoony" and childish than the LOTR games --so is the book much more written for children than the LOTR books were. And (2) would you REALLY want a literal re-playing of the book in a video game? Think about it. What do Bilbo and the dwarves actually DO in the book? Mostly walk, and grumble, and look for something to eat. Then when they finally get to the Lonely Mountain, they spend several more days just sitting around grumbling. Obviously the book is so much more than that, but it does not, let's face it, translate well into video game format. So of course Vivendi & co. had to make up a bunch of random, not-by-the-book "sidequests" just to give Bilbo something interesting to do while helping the dwarves get from one place to another. And it's clear that at least some of the game-makers are Tolkien fans, as evidenced by some of the peripheral things like, for example, the architecture, the runes, names of NPCs (for example, Sam Gamgee's eventual parents make an appearance as hobbit-children in the first chapter) and the fact that they made sure that Gollum has only six teeth!

As for the gameplay, I was glad to read in some of these reviews that some other adults, and even their children, found this game to be a little more difficult than they expected. This was my first ever game of the "platform-jumper" variety but even so I was distressed at times to find myself stuck at certain points, helpless to figure out a puzzle or secret or sequence of moves, or the proper camera angle at which to view a room (which can make a huge difference at times), and just dying over and over and over. I did finish it eventually, but it was a harder slog than some Teen-rated games I have played.

Which brings me to my one major problem. The ending is pretty anticlimactic. Of course, if you've read the book you know that there is a huge battle at the end, but that Bilbo has pretty much nothing to do with it. The video game creators could not, obviously, suddenly turn Bilbo Baggins into a great warrior, so for the climax of this game they basically assign Bilbo an extended timed obstacle course, which is fairly easy to finish. Actually once you get Bilbo past the giant spiders in Mirkwood, it's pretty much guaranteed that you will not be killed in battle for the rest of the game. Your major threats are drowning (Bilbo, naturally for a hobbit, cannot swim), falling from high places, getting stuck trying to figure out a puzzle and not being able to proceed further, or being spotted by Smaug (instant death). The game is still quite a challenge, and well worth finishing, but there is definitely an adrenaline letdown after the Flies and Spiders chapter which is a NIGHTMARE of giant spiders, deadly plants and wraith warriors as well as puzzles, obstacle courses and poisoned booby traps. That's pretty much the peak of the action, and after that there are 5 more chapters to go. . .

Awsome!!!!!!!!!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 10
Date: November 18, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This is an awsome game and any person who knows a good viedo game knows they will love this. The graphics are tight and the music is catchy. The gameplay is really fun with lots of action and strategy involved.

Bilbo's the best!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: October 29, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This was the first PS2 game I've played so I can't compare it with many others, but I thought this game was wonderful! Originally bought for my 6 1/2 year old, I found some of the puzzles a bit too difficult in places for him to manage. This caused caused some frustration, but he loved it just the same.
I thought there was quite a lot of fighting for a game designed for kids, however, it wasn't at all gory or distressing. The graphics are marvellous and the strategy quite interesting.
Overall, a terrific game.

Everlasting and Entertaining, but no LOTR

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: April 16, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Although a little childish, a good game. Easy enough that you can always pick it up and advance a little further, and it seems to just go on forever. Each level is dramatically different, and there are plently of puzzles even for the experienced gamer. I would definitely try it out if you are a Tolkien fan. Granted, theres not alot of sword play, but its The Hobbit, what do you expect.

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