LEGO Lord of the Rings

DEVELOPER: Traveller's Tales

Played on: PS3

Initial impression: Brickening.

Liked:

- Story

- Visuals

Disliked:

- Some Quirky Controls

- Length/Forced replay

On The Fence:

- Nothing

What? Two LORD OF THE RINGS posts in one day? WTF? Yeah - these things happen.

LEGO Lord of the Rings is a single/dual player game that loosely follows the story of the Lord of the Rings films in a world half comprised of LEGO building pieces. All the characters are LEGO minifigs. All the puzzles include LEGO pieces. From what I understand, this is the first LEGO game where they decided to use real dialog in place of the usual grunts and other noises LEGO people were known for.

I think that this release (Came out in November) was specifically tailored to coincide with the Hobbit fervor. I'm expecting a LEGO Hobbit game in about 5 years (or as the last film comes out).

I love Lord of the Rings, so of course I loved the story on this one - but that's not all there is to say about it. It's the presentation that was endearing. Given that this game is targeted toward children, they scaled back the gory violence to just brick-on-brick slapstick. Say that three times fast. About the only thing that had me rolling my eyes was a particular segment when you meet the riders of Rohan (it was corny). Everything else had me eager to see how they presented the tale I know so well.

The 3D rendered environments are just plain awesome. The LEGO brick pieces are rather seamless into the environment they have created. It's been a while since I've played a LEGO game. The last one was the Star Wars one that was the Prequels. Played it on the Nintendo GameCube and I only ever completed Episode 1. I was pleased to see this was familiar but better.

Bree is still a miserable place.

I will give them props on the bonus level. That was hilarious, albeit a bit tedious. I will also applaud them on including a lot of oddball characters like Tom Bombadil and Radagast the Brown. Characters like those are unlockable at key locations but don't really provide any real bonus. A lot of what they offer is a direct mirror of already available skills - Radagast is like Gandalf, for example.

 Tricksey! False!

Controls seem to be something I complain about often, but only on the games where the crappy controls forced me to screw up. This is one of those games. I had, on several occasions, thrown myself off a cliff or into some lava thanks to the crap controls. Combine this with the sketchy at times camera and it was downright frustrating. Gollum has a tendency to be a bit harder to control than others... was that intentional?

The only other negative to add is something I was well aware of when going into the LEGO game: They force you into going through the game numerous times in order to unlock the characters you need to use to access all the hidden crap. I know all about it - it doesn't make it better. SO far I've managed to completely unlock everything in the Prologue (in the film, the first war against Sauron). It only took me a few days, at a couple hours a day, to get there. The game is ridiculously short, and all the bonus junk in all the levels is NEVER attainable when you go through the level the first time. Ever. Some of these items dangle JUST out of reach, as if to taunt you. They know you'll have to come back through with a different character to get that. They just like to rub it in your face a bit by making the item twinkle and spin just out of reach. Bastards.

In Conclusion

I'd recommend this game to people who like LOTR and can have fun with it. Lore Snobs need to stay away, because if I was annoyed at one silly moment, a lore snob will hate about 95% of the game.