The Hobbit

"Hullo, what's this? A ring!"

Ah, The Hobbit. J.R. Tolkien's famous prelude to the ever-popular Lord of the Rings. In fact, that's exactly what it says on the box. So, is this game good enough to stand on its own, or is Sierra trying to simply ride off the success of LotR?

Gameplay 6/10

It's an action-adventure game with some RPG elements. There, I said it. The RPG elements consist of going to a 'Vendor' in-between levels and Sierra made absolutely no effort to put this into the game's storyline. It's just kind of, oh, you finished a level, here, buy stuff. Although it is useful, it doesn't seem to fit. The game itself, as previously mentioned, is divided into levels, most of them are fairly linear. They are based on the book, and you control Bilbo (naturally). There is no overworld, once you progress to the next level you can't return to the previous one. Gameplay consists mostly of platforming, fighting, and collecting (one level in particular has at least 4 rounds of collecting virtually the same items, and is quite tedious) -- and a few puzzles (which aren't hard, but sometimes aren't explained well at all). The platforming would have helped the score, if not for the very shoddy collision detection. Bilbo will ocassionally slip down ledges, float down ladders, even miss jumps and slide down the cliff to his doom. The enemies Bilbo faces have this same problem, and can get stuck in walls once in a while. The platforming is fairly simple -- 'courage points' scattered throughout the level will show you a general path you need to take, in most cases.

The fighting is unpolished. Sierra tried to put in a lock-on system a'la Zelda, but it doesn't work as well at all, for some reason. Without the lock-on, you're still in trouble if you get surrounded by a group of spiders, who will likely bite you from behind right after you have attacked and missed. The collision detection is off here, too, so it's hard to really evade enemy attacks successfully. You have different weapons, including rocks, your sword (once you find it) and your trusty walking-stick, but I found it difficult to switch between them on the fly. The 'first-person' rock-throwing is very awkward.

I do think some of the more innovative touches to the gameplay are welcome, including ropes that when you jump on, will lower down so if you fall to a lower level you can just climb the rope back to where you were. Bilbo also reaches out his hand if he's on a rope and he's facing another rope, to show he can jump to it, which works well, when it works -- ocasionally it'll be a rope that's much too far away, and instead Bilbo will plunge to his doom. And you certainly take a lot of damage even if you don't jump that far down, so be wary of that. There's some stealth parts to the game, being that Bilbo is a burglar and all, and they are actually quite well done. Once Bilbo finds his ring, you'll wonder why he never really puts it to much use, though, except for maybe a couple of times. I basically forgot I had it in a lot of levels. And Save points are very plentiful throughout the level, which is a bonus, although sometimes I wonder if there are TOO many of them.

But it seems like Sierra tried to make this Zelda with more platforming, and while sometimes it's fun, it just feels unpolished as a whole in the Gameplay department. Thus, the 6/10 score.

Controls 7/10

Zelda-ish. Again, the first-person rock throwing, I thought was just completely robotic. Basic manouvering works well. The camera is a real pain, however, and I haven't quite figured out why. Objects blocking Bilbo from the camera will turn transparent, but this doesn't work as well as it should. I do appreciate the fact you can drink a Health Potion with down on the Control pad, instead of having to traverse through the menus. And the targeting, as mentioned before, is not as good as its Zelda counterpart. You press the target button to switch between targets, which makes it tough to turn off targeting if you are fighting a group of enemies. Plus, when locked-on, you move much more slowly backwards and sideways, which makes you more easy to hit. Interacting with objects is strange -- you need to use the Control Pad to select items and can't use the Control Stick (took me a while to figure that one out). There are a LOT of times Bilbo dies in the game, which would be fine if it was because of the genuine difficulty -- but it's because of the Controls and Gameplay, instead.

Story 8/10

It's based on a very well-written novel, so it should be good, right? Well, if it wasn't for the fact some things are summarized TOO much, Story would have gotten a higher score. In one part of the game, Bilbo is searching through Troll-Caves. You get to the end of the level, press a button to interact, and all of a sudden, Bilbo has his sword! Wow, now where did he get that from? No matter, he's going to call it Sting! Small unexplainable things take down the story score. But overall it is well done, with lots of in-game cinematics and a couple of pre-rendered cinematics (which seem out of place, as they are only used part of the time). Pretty good, though.

Graphics 8/10

Good. Instead of the dark LotR style, Sierra chose a more whimsical style, and everything is fairly consistent in this way. Bilbo himself is very animated and has tons of expressions to show his feelings in the cutscenes. Some of his animations in the game need a little more work to bring them together, but overall, he's animated very well. Lighting and the actual levels are a mixed bag -- it seems like Bilbo has the same light shining on him no matter where he is. The levels range from small to very large (i.e. the Dwarf-Mines), and would be even more impressive if not for the terrible loading. Expect to wait about 10 seconds before each level, and even more dissapointing, many levels have loading right in the MIDDLE of them, for another 5 seconds, as you are traversing from one major part of the level to another. This really disrupts the Gameplay, but I think it's more a graphical issue than anything, so I've put it here. There's no pop-in, except for smaller objects like flowers and rocks. Some levels are done extremely well -- Bilbo's hometown is full of vibrant colors and trees shaking in the wind with shadows reflecting this. Laketown has some nice reflective water and sharp textures. The framerate is a pretty solid 30, but will drop at the strangest times, like when you have the Ring on and everything has a neat fog effect (wouldn't that take LESS processing power?). Bilbo has a cool effect about him with the Ring on, too. Oh, and enemies are pretty polygonal, especially in some closeups, and suffer from pixellated textures. Other characters are done decently.

Sound 8/10

This would be so much better if it was ironed out a little! Beautiful, fully orchestrated soundtrack. That's right. Okay, so you can hear the songs loop a bit, and they aren't that long. That's okay. Okay, so sometimes the music doesn't play when it's supposed to. Now, that's a problem. I've had many sound issues with this game's music, the battle song not playing when facing enemies, the music completely cutting out for half a level, the music starting when you hit a Save (when there is strangely, supposed to be no music). The voices are good and it's pretty high-quality voicework with some big name voice actors. If there's something to be said, a character will say it. The sound effects are kind of all over the place, but they aren't overly annoying.

Summary

Not as bad as some of the big review sites gave it, and yet, I don't think it's as good as some other people have said. It's not fundamentally flawed, but it's very unpolished. Add a thick layer of polish to this game and you'd have something pretty special, but as it is, it's enjoyable and yet a little lacking. Zelda: Wind Waker does pretty much everything better, but this game isn't bad by all means. Try it, you might like it.

Total: 7/10

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 12/10/04