Lord of The Rings: The Fellow Ship of The Ring

Kay. First off, I'll give you a bit of an Idea as to why I bought the game without looking for a review; I can name all the horses mentioned in every one of the middle earth chronicles, I can tell you the color of Bombadil's jacket and the color of his boots. I can read the poem of the one ring in language of mordor. I can speak Elvish. I know that J.R.R tolkien created Middle Earth so that he could have a reason to talk about the Elvish language.

Having said that, I'll go on a bit about the game.
Storyline
I should start off with a good thing about the game. It stays very true to the book. It adds in the whole scene with the withywindle and the old forest, something the movie neglected. It forgets the meets with Elves in the shire though, but th regains itself by adding in Farmer Maggot and the good details from the book itself. For one, it got the Arwen thing correct, my main grudge with the movie. As far as storyline goes, it all depends on whether you liked the book or not. Since it's lord of the trings, te plot itself is not original, but enjoyable. The problem is, well, that the format of the game makes the story move too fast, and the feel of the game is rushed. If they had started the game three years ago and made it an RPG format, this part of game could have had wondrous things to offer. I'm a little disappointed though, because their was sooo much potential.

Gameplay
This here is either a big failure or a big sucess area. Arguably, the format should have been an RPG. There's a slew of characters, and lots of rich story to add in, as well as differences in "Classes" (I.E Gandalf uses magic, the Hobbits stealth, Sam could lend himself to odd uses, Gimli and Boromir good fighters, Legolas a long range combatant, and Aragorn an all around), But the game goes with a different format. It an action/adventure game. You start at one end of the level. You follow a designated path to the other, much like a 3-d side scroller. The controls are easy. You have either longe ranged attack or hand to hand combat. B to block, A to attack, bla blah. not overly exciting. The combat isn't breath taking, but it is quick, and is not unlike Zelda. It's a bit addictive, though. Their a slew of orcs and such to fight. But the bosses are weak, and are anti climatic in many cases.

The worst part of the game is the map; there are none. The village of bree and tlooks exactly the same on every turn, and you're not sure whether you went down the same road or not. Moria can be so dark that you try and retry places again. It's the WORST THING.
All in all, a disappointment in some ways, but very enjoyable in others.

Graphics and Such
The graphics are very, very good. The scene's are rich and colorful. This isn't the cinematics of a FF game, though. The Cutscenes are good, but if you've seen the movie you're not totally in awe. The music us good as well. But lightning was not taken into account. Moria is very, very damned dark. Very Dark. So is Bree. So dark that the screen is sometimes black. It usually helps to SEE the game. But most of the time, it's good.

I have to say, after having sat down for a full 8 hours in one sitting, that the game is good. But if you have 50 bucks to spend, I'd reccomend dead to Rights or even Blinx the time sweeper. If you're a die hard Lotr fan, you won't be disappointed.

Now, I'd like to rant abou how this SHOULD have been an RPG. I mean, it would be sooooo verrrryy cool to walk around stretches of land in middle earth. Something like a cross between the Aidyn Chronicles game for n64, Morrowind, and FF. The biggest disappointment in the game is that there are two screens of Rivendell, when you should be able to walk around in it, and do loads of sidequests in it. It would be very cool, as well, to do far more sidequests in the Shire. Their are, as I know of, around 5 or 6. it ends there. Middle Earth was meant to be rich and vast. Not a side scroller.

The battle system. Ugh. I mean, the battle system lends itself to something like zelda or blade where there's only one character. My friend and I laughed and grumped about how you play as either gandalf, aragorn, or frodo, but no one else. The others are sometimes seen, but not always around. They don't even help you fight! My god, Gimli's got a bloody axe, but all HE does is sit there. With an RPG, you can use all characters at ONE time, and when the break up in the end, they each get their own time to level up and develop. Besides which, it's based on a book. Having alot of Dialogue could help the story. Doesn't seem to here at all!

My review'll be up in a few days. It's pretty similar to this one.

Well, the commercial looks awesome :-X

All comes back to how big a fan you are of the books.

i Think this game is awesome. Great deep gameplay, good controls and it is based on the books what more could you ask for?

a little less rushed, different format of control, better environments, more text from the book itself...