The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

"A real treat for fans of the movies and the books, or simply of the genre"

I love the movies, I cherish the books, I enjoyed the games. LOTR is a wonderful name in fantasy. I saw Two Towers being played(for the PS2), and thought it looked fun, but I didn't have a next-gen. But fortunately, this game game out for the PC, to my surprise. I downloaded a demo, and thought it was darn fun, so I went out and bought this game fairly quickly.

It was, at first, okay. But only okay. After losing to a boss about 10 times, I gave up on it for a short time. But afterwards, I went on and played some more, eventually beating the game. And it was a blast.

Graphics- 9.3/10

Awesome. But this game does demand above-average specs, so you better have that high-powered GeForce or Radeon card handy. But even with my computer did I see how great the visuals are. It just looks...astounding. The sfx is nice too, if your computer can handle it. The characters all look like their movie counterparts, so no problem there. My main complaint is how there is no lip movement during speech. My main praise is on how there could be so many characters on screen at the same without noticeable lag.

Sound/Music- 9.6/10

Sweeeeet. The music is directly from the movies, and are constantly playing in the game. Swords clanging, orcs grunting, characters yelling over the noise, trolls snarling, it is nearly all there. All the characters sound like their movie counterparts.

Gameplay- 9.2/10

Plain awesome. It's a beat-em-up game, so there is almost no question about what you are supposed to do in a level. Just kill orcs, trolls, uruk-hai, etc. It's not as repetitive as it sounds though. You can come up with creative ideas to kill large groups of enemies(a notable example being a gigantic(vase???) being toppled down the stairs to crush pursuing enemies. Your characters have many attacks to deal out. You can also purchase new abilities at the end of each mission, in an RPG-esque style. You can also unlock secret characters, such as Faramir. Unfortunately, if you choose to play as them, they sport the voices of whoever is normally played. For an instance, if you choose Faramir in a level in which you normally play as Sam, you will have Faramir still talking like Sam.

The game puts you right in the middle of all the ROTK battles. Very cool. It is fairly faithful to the movies, but there are some twists(you will notice them if you saw the movie).

Extras- 9.5/10

Niiice. You get commentaries from the actors as you progress through the game. Unfortunately, the actors that play Aragorn or Legolas do not show up. However, all the hobbits' actors are featured, and they are quite funny, and it is interesting to see how the characters felt about the game.

Difficulty- Normal

Fairly hard the first time, even on the easiest difficulty. But once you get used to it, it's cake.

Replayability-9/10

Not bad, because the fighting is great and doesn't leave that much to be desired, so each level should get its fair share of being play over and over.

You can play co-op, so grab a friend and a PC controller and start gaming. It's very, very fun to play co-op. Seriously.

Overall 9.4/10(not an average)

Don't pass this one up.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 04/18/04