The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

"The worst Lord of the Rings game I have ever played."

I've played nearly every Lord of the Rings based game that exists today. I even played the old SNES Fellowship of the Ring game, and the weird PC-Warcraft-esque tactics LotR game. Some of the games based on this series are good. Third Age was well done, and Return of the King was at least not impossible.

This "game" is easily the worst out of the entire lot. I couldn't even finish it. At the end of each skin-tearing mission, your skill (That is to say luck) affects your results score, which gives you more points so you can buy more useless skills. This all climaxes at a brilliant battle in Helm's Deep in which you try in vain to prevent semi-invincible orcs from tearing down a door which apparently contains the "End of the World" button, because as soon as it's down you lose the mission. Well done, EA!

Graphics - 6/10 - The highest score you'll see. Graphics aren't too bad, although everyone looks kind of blocky. Gimli basically looks like a big potato with an axe, which means him the most accurately-drawn character in this game. Animations are awkward and spastic. At least the scenery was kind of nice.

Sound - 5/10 - They got the original voice actors, which is commendable. Everything else sounds adequately annoying though. Goblins sound nerdy, orcs sound like... orcs. It's all pretty much true to Peter Jackson's rendition of the trilogy. And yeah, you still want to punch Elijah Wood for sounding so annoyingly high pitched when a cave troll is raping him with a club.

Gameplay - 1/10 - This game is only marginally playable. All of the "moves" that the three dimwitted heroes get are comprised of the X, O, Square, Triangle, and occasionally R2 buttons just to piss you off. Assuming you can remember all of the button combinations and enter them in the correct magical order (Good luck, by the way), the characters will execute these moves about 40% of the time. The other 60% is spent either getting knocked on your ass by an orc, flailing your sword uselessly, or attempting to perform a finishing stab on the ground.

Replay Value - 4/10 - Well, you can play through each stage as Aragorn, Legolas, or Gimli, but really you only need to use one throughout the course of the game to finish it. They try to give you extras like bonus interviews by the actors and scenery artwork, but really what's the point? Apparently Ian McKellan isn't good at video games. Wow, that was TOTALLY worth getting Gimli to level 10 to find out! And if I wanted to stare at badly drawn trees, I'd go play EverQuest.

Yeah, I know this game came out years ago. No, I don't think that's an excuse. Electronic Arts, try actually playing your games before releasing them.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 09/15/08

Game Release: The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (US, 10/21/02)