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Disappointment in Middle Earth

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 6 / 8
Date: December 31, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Notice all the 5-star reviews from 10-, 11-, and 12-year-old gamers? Not a coincidence. This 28-year-old gamer found this title SERIOUSLY wanting.

Like others, I was excited about this game. Also like others, I'd seen ads for The Two Towers game, and assumed this was the prequel. MAN was I disappointed.

This game is a poor attempt to shoehorn an adventure game onto Tolkien's narrative. Playing it is like being on rails--no freedom in where you go, what you do. Most of the time, you walk along a path that you can't leave, both narratively and in some cases literally.

The combat is sluggish and repetitive, and the tasks are annoying and boring. It's almost like the developers said, "The player already knows where we're going to end up, so let's give them lots of stupid, trivial things to do in order to get there." In fact, I found myself thinking in terms of game design a LOT. "Ok, it looks like I ought to be able to jump over that, but I can't. They must be telling me this is the end of the road in this direction..." Good games don't make you think this way.

Enemy AI is BONE STUPID. You can lob stones at the spiders from a point far enough away that you don't trigger them. Enemies get stuck on corners or things protruding from the walls, and you can pummel them with impunity. I guess to a 10-, 11-, or 12-year old gamer, this can easily be confused with "fun".

Voice acting is uneven at best. Graphics are ok, but not what you'd call X-Box showcase quality. The game looks like a literal port from one of the "lesser" platforms, with one exception: the X-Box's pixel-shaded water. Which, sad to say, looks strangely out of place next to the graphics quality of the rest of the game.

The only bright spot of this game is the soundtrack. The music is very well done, and blends the dispair, fear, and triumph of Tolkien's world very nicely with the action in the game.

One friggen expensive coaster

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: October 29, 2002
Author: Amazon User

If RPG's are your bag, go for it. Tolkien fans - Don't expect too much because it doesn't deliver. Unfortunatley, I did have expectations and was failed. Graphics are very good, as is sound. However, the start of the game, dialogue and loading are about the worst I've witnessed. Rent it first... I did have the forsight to atleast do that much and until its due back...its collecting dust, as I play Halo.

RPG? Must stand for "Really Pathetic Game"

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 6
Date: October 22, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This is the biggest waste of time. You'd have to be a HUGE RPG fan to appreciate this game. You traipse around aimlessly with blocky Frodo, looking for mushrooms and a bunch of other crap. The graphics that everyone raves about are not that great. I mean, who cares if a bunch of leaves move when you walk through them? I certainly don't. Maybe I am really missing something but this game is just a disappointment and not even worth the rental fee.

How can you crew up The Lord of the Rings?

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 10
Date: October 21, 2002
Author: Amazon User

This game is all jacked up. First off the tedious side quests are nothing but annoying. Goofy little run and go get this, then thats not good enough so now you have to go get some other stupid little trinket, ruining the whole feal of playing a grand epic such as this. The conversations are lame, trying to follow verbatim the movie, but cutting important character responses/comments, which leaves an odd sort of hole where you feal something should/needs to be. I couldn't play more than an hour into the game. Maybe it gets better...but I couldn't stand it any longer.

This game gets one star because I have to

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 8
Date: November 14, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I admit that I haven't gotten very far in this game. The reason is that I don't like to play this game. When I turned it on during the day, It was fun when I was helping the hobbitt village people with the little tasks they needed, but then night fall came and I couldn't see jack. So I thought I would put the game away and play it later that night. My place was black as pitch except for the light coming from the television and I still couldn't see a thing. I'm supposed to be avoiding those black riders, but I couldn't see anything. Somehow I got past that part. Then more helping villagers. That's the best part of this game. I don't remember exactly where I'm at with this game, but I doubt I'll go back.
There are far better games to buy for the XBox than this one. OddWorld, Blood Omen, and Enclave just to name a few. Don't waste your hard earned money on this...

Sad

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 5
Date: December 09, 2002
Author: Amazon User

First, if you are thinking about buying this, DON'T! I kno people on here have been saying it is really fun and all, but it isn't. I am a teenager, so maybe these others are younger then me. I was so excited to see this game, I mean it was LOTR how could it not be good? Well after about 5 minutes of playing it I saw how it could be. The graphics, number one, aren't that great. What makes it even worse, though, is how it has no action at all! I played for about an hour, got to Tom Bombadil, and was bored out of my mind. There just isn't anything to keep your intrest in the game, you just wander around trying to find pipes for the mill owner or a bell ringer to warn the people. I advise you to not buy this unless you enjoying falling asleep while playing a game. In my opinion it shouldn't even be allowed to be called LOTR because LOTR is awsome and this is no where near that.

Lord of the... what? Oh, I'm sorry I wasn't paying attention

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: March 12, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Let me start by identifying myself as a Tolkien freak. I read and re-read the Silmarillion, followed by the Hobbit and the LOTR. I know all the characters, I watch and re-watch the extended version of the movie, I.... *sigh* have no life.

That said, I feel that there is a little weight behind my decidedly low opinion of this game. The plot loosely follows the book, rather than the movie, and although thatýs not necessarily a good thing it is nonetheless the only good thing I can think of to say about this game. (I suppose I could say ýIýd rather be playing this game than walking barefoot in a barrel of cockroaches,ý but when you really get down to it thatýs not glowing praise.)

The animation is clunky: even in the animated cut scenes the characters are boxy and move unnaturally. The voice work is bad: I could pick any four men, accented or not, and have them COMPLETELY redo the voice work (in falsetto for the very few times a woman's voice is needed) and the result would be better than what was published. Perhaps if the people supplying the voices sounded the slightest bit interested in what they were doing...

For some reason, the designers make up stupid little side quests that 1) don't advance the game at all and 2) just aren't interesting. They seem to be designed to lengthen the game, and they don't succeed. The extended version of the movie is just over 3 hours long... it didn't take me that long to beat the game.

The battles rendering is terrible: each character has his own style of fighting... no not really. Just keep hitting the button until everything is dead (unless youýre a hobbit, then itýs best to just let someone else deal with the enemies). Trying to sneak past the Nazgul at the beginning is harder than fighting them in the final battle (I don't remember that in the book...). Fighting the Balrog is mechanical and boring - and it glitches, making it more frustrating. TOM BOMBADIL IS IN IT, and he kicks about as much [butt] as any other character by, of course, singing at enemies (no, you don't control him).

You find little pick me ups (cram, lembas, etc.) lying around for your health, but you never learn any new skills, never improve. The bosses, it seems, get progressively easier, rather than what I feel would be normal. .....

Tremendously Disappointing

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: April 12, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I found this game to be very disappointing. It is more in the nature of a "traditional" game-box type game, which will disappoint anyone looking for a game modeled on the RPG experience. The characters played in the game never advance and never change (aside from acquiring slightly upgraded weapons, e.g., Aragorn exchanges a basic sword for Narsil). However, the game fails miserably as a traditional game as well--I would much prefer to spend a few hours on SMB or LOZ on my old NES. The game offers virtually no real challenges. The puzzles, such as they are, seem simplistic, and the combat sequences have virtually no tactical elements. The non-cynical view of the game-designers' mentality would be that they set out to design a game that would be playable by children for an age range of 8-25--which is impossible. The cynical view would be that they set out to "cash in" on the movie hype by offering a game that under any other title wouldn't make it on to the shelves.

Some further specific criticisms of the game:
1. Game play only lasts 10 hours, start to finish. 10 hours!
2. The game controls do not work as described in the manual. For instance, although missile weapons supposedly have a targeting feature allowing you to cycle through multiple enemies and then lock on them, this feature never manifested for me despite several efforts. Instead, your character just locks on the closest enemy, even if it's not the one you want to shoot at. Of course, the whole problem of "multiple enemies" doesn't come up much -- see the "boredom" criticism, above.
3. The camera perspective is maddening. The camera focuses so closely on the character that it tends to hide even enemies standing quite close to (and probably advancing on) your character. I frequently had to turn tail and run just to "see" enough of the field to aim my attacks (melee and ranged).

Needless to say, I won't be buying either of the subsequent games ("Towers" or "King").

Don't waste your money!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 4
Date: October 01, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Seriously. Do yourself a huge favor, rent the game first, and then realize that it must be made by the same people who made the "Noah and the Ark" Nintendo game that my father gave me for Cristmas one sad, sad year.

Boring

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 5
Date: January 13, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This game is very boring. There are loading screens that come up all the time that get your attention away from what you are doing. Overall, This game is obviously a mistake that has a name people will want to buy. My advice, get The Two Towers instead.

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