The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

"Could Have Been More"

The Two towers is one of the funnest hack n' slash games I have ever played. It had a bunch of good stuff going for it. Now a year later we have Return of the King. This game is not as good as the Two Towers for one reason. That is the difficulty. This is one of the most frustrating games that I have played all year. The Two Towers didn't have this problem. I got through that fairly easily, but this game is harder than it should be.

STORY:10
The Lord of the Rings trilogy has one of the best stories of all time. Everybody should know the story to LOTR unless you have been hiding under a rock. Well, if you don't know it goes like this...There was a war a long time ago. It was between the dark lord, Sauron, and Men & Elves. The Dark lord had a ring that gave him a lot of power. When Sauron was killed the prince Isildor had a chance to destroy it, but he didn't. After generations the ring was never seen again. But Sauron came back looking for it and a hobbit had the ring. So it is up to this hobbit to destroy this ring so that Sauron never gets it again. Return of the King is the last part of the story.

GRAPHICS:7
A lot of people say that this game has really good graphics. I just don't see how people can say that. This game does have good graphics, but they aren't all that great. There is always so much stuff going on and the framerate never drops at all. That is cool. The character models look bad. They are blocky. The worst part about them is the fact that that all of the detail on them are bad textures. When a character talks, their mouth doesn't move. That kind of crap happened on the Playstation 1 and N64. On the positive side, the environments look really good. There is a good amount of detail. This game does something really cool when there is a movie cutscene, it fades into the game. The problem with this is that it happens very quickly which makes the graphics look bad because it changes so quickly. In the Two Towers it was slow which was better. Nonetheless, the graphics are good.

SOUND:9
The sound isn't as good as the Two Tower's either. All of the voice actors don't sound like themselves in the game. They all sound close, but they just didn't sound like themselves. The voice acting was done good though. The music is really awesome. They use everything from the movie. That is definitely a good thing because the music in the movies was awesome. All of the sound effects have been taken right from the movies and put into the game. Overall, the audio is very well done, but it could have been a little better. The music was done right. The sound effects were done right. Even though the developers did get all of the actors from the movies to do the voice overs, they didn't sound quite like themselves.

GAMEPLAY:7
I really did have high hopes for this game, but because of the difficulty I have to lower the score. This game is just so hard. I had drained a boss enemy's health about one tenth of the way when he killed me. That says a lot. I am really good at video games and when I lose really badly that says that the game is pretty hard. Despite the difficulty, this game is great. There are about ten characters to play as total. Some are unlockable. There are the hobbits, Gandalf the wizard, and the warriors. They each have their own levels. So it isn't just the same levels with different characters. There is a Co-Op mode which is a welcome feature. In Co-Op mode the game goes from being near-impossible to hard. There are also some RPG elements like leveling up your character and getting new moves. This is a very solid game, but it is just too damn hard. If it wasn't as hard as it is I would have given this game a nine.

CONTROL:9
The controls are also really good. There is something that I didn't like though and that is the static camera angles. I found myself getting killed by enemies that I couldn't even see on the screen. That isn't fun. The actual controls are good. All of the buttons respond quickly. Combos were easy to pull off. It was easy to navigate through the menu screens. The buttons are put into a good layout. They are the same controls in the Two Towers. So if you have played that game the controls should be familiar to you. Despite some camera issues, the controls are really good.

OVERALL:7
Return of the King may not live up to the hype, but it sure is a good game. It has one of the best stories ever told. It has some solid graphics. The audio is amazing. The controls are really good. There are tons of new features added. This game is just really hard. That is the only real problem that is in this game. If you don't mind playing through the same scenario 234 times I would buy Return of the King. Otherwise, rent it first.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 12/18/03