|
News
Game Reviews
Hardware Reviews
Cheats
Features
Editor's Choice
Beyond the Box
Forums
Newsletter
Contests
Links
True Crime Hardcore
MySpace Bear
LOL Center
The Animation Blog
|
 |
News: Tom Morello stars in Guitar Hero III
Activision has announced that Tom Morello, from Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave, will guest star as a boss character in Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock. Click here to read the article.
|
 |
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
The first next-gen Lord of the Rings game has hit stores, and it isn’t based on the movie. Instead, Black Label Games has crafted an interesting adventure based directly on the first book in the trilogy. Almost every major detail that was left out in the movie has made it into this game, and that alone should have hardcore LOTR fans cheering.
The graphics aren’t the greatest ever, but get the job done. The character models are pretty accurate, although sometimes they aren’t too detailed. One of the most noticeable flaws is that the voices of the character don’t always match up with the character model. When the character is speaking, it looks like it is really happening, but at points where the characters break into a song it looks very fake. Although this isn’t always that noticeable, it just looks a little silly. The environments are well done, and usually are very large. Most of the time there is no fog, though in some areas a little bit is noticeable. The one big flaw with the environments though, is that there are invisible walls. Sure the areas are huge, but try going off the main path and an invisible wall will push you back onto the path. This makes the various places a lot smaller than they appear.
The voice acting is excellent, with characters sounding as you would expect them too. Although some of the voices are not too pleasant, they happen to be for a character that is supposed to sound that way. These are generally minor characters that aren’t a major part of the adventure, so you won’t have to put up with them for long. There is a little bit of background music, but for the most part is it very subdued so that you may not even notice it. One thing you may notice if you really listen though is that a good amount of the background music is the same track being repeated. But because it is subdued, you likely won’t mind.
The gameplay is where the game suffers the most. Although there are some interesting ideas, the beginning of the game is fairly boring. When playing as Frodo in the Shire, you will encounter many fetch quests. Although many of these are optional, some of them are worth doing just so you can get some extra items. Luckily you can skip through the majority of these quests, but some of them you still have to put up with. One of the things you have to do when playing as Frodo is to sneak past some enemies you can’t beat (such as Black Riders). Sneaking is accomplished by lightly moving the left analog stick, but you will rarely need it. Even when the game tells you to sneak past an enemy so they don’t see you; just running past the enemy will be sufficient. See the enemies are stupid enough that you won’t get hurt until they catch up with you and outrunning them is quite easy. So although this is an interesting idea, it isn’t quite executed right.
The controls to the game are fairly solid. The left analog stick moves your character, and the right one rotates the camera. Since the camera doesn’t rotate on its own, you will have to do this a lot. This can get annoying, but it’s better than having a camera that is insufficient. At the top left of the screen, there is a health bar and two inventory slots. The left slot is for weapons and the right slot is for items. You can change what is in either slot by using the corresponding trigger button. This works well for cycling through items. After choosing an item in the inventory slot, you can use it by pressing the white button. And when you have chosen the weapon you want to use, you can attack with it by pressing A. If you hold A, you can charge up and do a special attack that does a bit more damage. You will have to learn to block with B, as this will be an essential skill in the game. Pressing X will let you talk with characters in the game world, and th! is is how you get many quests. One of the good things about conversations and cinemas is that they can be skipped entirely with the press of a button. One of the other things you can do is jump by pressing Y, although this skill won’t be used too much.
Frodo can use a variety of weapons. The main weapon you will end up using is a sharp stick, which will work for many of the enemies you fight with him. You can also use apples and fireworks, along with rocks. These target the nearest enemy, but are weaker than a stick because they are being used from farther back. However, if you wish to target an enemy yourself you can click the right analog stick and go into a 1st person targeting mode. The same thing applies to the weapons used by the other two playable characters. Aragorn is similar to Frodo, only he has more powerful weapons. You can choose to use his sword, or several types of arrows. These range from steel arrows to fire arrows. The real change in attacks comes when you get Gandalf. Gandalf has a staff, but can also use magic. He has an extra bar above the health bar, which shows the amount of power he has left for magic. Magic strength can be recovered using a special item, and that item can be found by defeating certain enemies.
The combat is very repetitive. The enemies in a certain area are usually all the same; they just tend to come in swarms. And since they all use the same general tactics against you. The major way to win most combat situations is to either attack them or run away for a bit or rotate between attacking and blocking. Although this isn’t that great, sometimes they will throw things at you from far away, so you will have to contend with that as well. Boss battles change things a little bit, as they are the only battles where you really have to think. But learn their patterns and they will go down fairly quickly.
One thing that hardcore fans may be disappointed about is that some of the scenes from the book still aren’t in the game. The one main scene that is missing is Bilbo Baggins birthday, which many fans may have enjoyed seeing. This isn’t a big loss, but it still would have been nice to see it in there. The game is also fairly short too, as many gamers should be able to get almost a quarter of the way through or so in the first day or so. The one thing that is awful is the load times. Whenever you enter a new area or even a new building, the game goes to a loading screen. The result is a relatively long wait to get to the next area. At first it doesn’t seem so bad, but after you see it every time a new scene starts, it gets very annoying.
Ultimately LOTR is a good game. While it could have been better in some areas (better load times, more interesting combat scenarios), for the most part it is well done. You should rent it first and decide if it's worth $50. If you are a hardcore LOTR fan, be sure to check it out.
Report Card:
Gameplay = 7
Graphics = 8
Audio = 8
Replay Value = 7
Overall: 7.5/10
Click here for the LOTR screenshots gallery!
|
|
|
|
