The Fellowship of the Ring game makes a valiant effort to live up to the epic adventure standards of its namesake, but unfortunately it falls short in several areas.
The game is your typical action-adventure game. You start out in the Shire as Frodo, then get to alternate between Frodo, Aragorn (Strider) and Gandalf later on. Each character follows the typical setup of one melee weapon and one projectile weapon and can upgrade weapons as they progress through the different levels. Throughout the course of the game, you travel through eight main levels: the Shire, the Old Forest, Bree, Weathertop, Rivendell, Moria, Lothlorien, and the River Anduin, in that order. I tested the game on Xbox, but it's also available for Playstation 2, PCs and GameBoy Advance.
Overall, the game does a good job of following the novel's storyline -- but the cinematic scenes are lackluster and missing a sense of grandness that one associates with the movie and book. All the complexity and scope of the story have been removed from the game, reducing it down to glossed-over movie clips and the most basic dialog.
Gandalf looks like your cookie-cutter wizard, the hobbits lack individuality and the voice acting is too cutesy. In game play, the AI are predictable, the scenery is monotonous and the characters are generic looking. In addition, there are many poorly or strangely placed load screens that are boring, slow-to-load and disrupt the flow of the game.
The game also gets a huge thumbs-down for not having some sort of tracking feature. A compass or map would have been nice, folks! A lot of the areas in the game look the same -- in particular, the Shire, Old Forest and Moria are difficult to navigate because the areas offer few distinguishing objects that can be used as route markers. I was a little peeved at how much running around I had to do with no clue as to where I was supposed to go.
Don't get me wrong -- the game isn't all bad. It is enjoyable to play for the most part and gets a tip of the hat for good, realistic sound effects. And you can credit the general excellence of the Xbox for the game graphics looking pretty cool overall, if not as sophisticated as they should be.
If you haven't seen the movie or read the book, The Fellowship of the Ring game may satisfy as a basic action-adventure game. But for Lord of the Rings fans and hard-core gamers, this game won't likely meet your high expectations.
