Lord of the Rings: Return of the King

So you've just came out of the theatre after watching Return of the King. Your ass may be numb, you're probably very thirsty and have to take a dump very badly, but that doesn't matter because you just beared witness to the greatest movie ever made. And now you're so psyched about it that you're probably itching to play the new EA game. After all, this one lets you play as Galdalf!



Well if you thought that EA's Two Towers game was well worth your money then by all means, get Return of the King. It's just as good, if not better than TTT. ROTK is a good game based on a great movie. The thing is, the movie is longer. Be warned that the game really makes no major improvements and suffers the same flaws as Two Towers.

If you don't have any saves on the Hard Drive, then right after the game boots, you're thrust into the battle for Helm's Deep as Gandalf coming to the rescue. No title screen. This is a great way to kickstart a game. After that, you get to choose from three different paths. Path of the King lets you choose to play as either Aragorn, Gimli or Legolas. Path of the Wizard lets you play as Gandalf, and Path of the Hobbits let you play as Samwise. The game starts near the end of Two Towers storywise and then takes us through ROTK. All the characters handle the exact same with a few differences. (Even Sam can kick orc ass)



The gameplay is the exact same as Two Towers. You hack away at hundreds of orcs and uru-kai. You have various attacks to do so, including projectiles, shield-breaking strikes and a finishing blow (stab an enemy that's laying on the floor) You can use experience points to buy new abilities that come in handy. New to ROTK is the ability to spend more experience on "Fellowship abilities," abilities every character in the game can use, saving you exp points by doing this instead of buying the individual attacks for each character.

Like the Two Towers, the cutscenes make the smooth transistion from movie footage to in-game engine cutscenes seemlessly. The enviroments, and some effects (such as armies running towards your location) are impressive but you'll wish EA spent a lot more time on character models. The game does feature voice-acting from the actual movie stars, including narration from Gandalf. The game also has a few bonus features such as cast interviews and concect art. But nothing that's on scale as to what you'd expect from an actual DVD. None of the hidden characters will truly surprise you.

It's safe to say that Return of the King is a more challenging game than Two Towers. However that's mostly because of camera problems. The earlier Path of the King missions are a pain because the areas are so dark it's hard to distinguish between the three protagonists. Often, you won't be able to see what lies ahead of you, which is a pain in the Hobbit levels since Sam is weaker than the other characters. Also, while effects such as burning debris or catapulted rocks may look impressive, they do more to obscure your view and are annoying. The game is very frustrating and repetitive at times because of the beat-em-up nature.



And most importantly, the game is very short. There's only a small handful of missions that can be finished quickly. If you so desire, you could go through the game using the other characters or unlocked ones, but the experience doesn't change dramatically. The game now has a 2 player Co-op mode, but because all it takes is for your partner or you to lose two lives to fail the mission, this can get frustrating.

If you thought Two Towers was a good purchase then I don't need to tell you that you'll enjoy this as well, for it's practically the same game. But everyone else should either rent it or wait for a price drop, or wait for the proposed "Lord of the Rings Trilogy" game that you learn about at the end of ROTK.