The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

"A Bad Bad Bad Game"

I went to the store and while I bought a copy of Tekken 4 (a very flawed game) . I had a extra thirty bucks in my pocket and there I saw Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Rings for Gameboy Advance on the shelf. I am no huge Tolkien fan but I read the book and saw the movie and both of them I enjoyed so I decided to get it. SECOND WORST THIRTY BUCKS EVER SPENT (First goes to the Lord of the Rings game I got on the Snes). At the beginning the lame music began and I thought to myself well I guess it could get worse and It did.
This game is so horribly flawed , the graphics look just terrible, and it is extremely glitchy. My biggest problem with this game is that is has so many glitches one time I traded some pipe weed for a Sword and then he ended up taking my pipe weed and not giving me my sword. The same thing happened when I tried trading pipe weed for Cabbage and he just stole my pipe weed.
Back to the Graphics even for a Gameboy the Graphics are awful, everything is all jagged and Frodo looks like a blob with a yellow dot for hair. The background is so bland I find looking at a brick wall much more interesting. The scenes are also so unexciting when Bilbo jumps up and says “No its my precious,” It looks like he’s constipated. Also every house looks exactly the same all the furniture is in the exact same place in every house. Did I mention the lighting effects, it’s so dark my eyes nearly popped out of their sockets trying to see what was going on.
The item management is just awful, it’s just to bad to explain. Using healing mushrooms is like doing brain surgery, not to mention if you want a specific character to pick up an item it’s a nightmare. The Characters move about as fast as a snail on stilts, I could press down and watch t.v. and in about and hour the character will have moved on the next house over.
But that’s not nearly as bad as the battles. You encounter battles like in Chrono Trigger and that’s about the only good thing that isn’t horribly flawed. The battles are just so darn boring and tedious there is just no hurry in them. When I try to make the character attack it takes nearly two minutes for Frodo and the others to walk two feet and attack the monster and come back. And it gets worse, eight times out of ten he misses and I have to wait another ten minutes for him to attack again.
As far as sound this game is just sad. I’d rather listen to the Backstreet boys belt out one of their awful heartfelt songs which they paid some composer to write for them than listen to another minute a this games happy, mellow tunes. When the so called emotional music comes on it sounds like the kind of music you’d see pink poke-dotted fairies dancing in the moonlight to. It’s just make you feel sorry for the company who made this game when they try bring emotion to you, it’s just plain sad.
The game starts of as Frodo inherits the ring from his uncle Bilbo and now must destroy it. The spirit that was in the movie and the books is definitely not in this one. The story which once was a wonderful tale of goblins and hobbits has now been soiled by this games cheap effects and just plain boringness.
Replayability? Is that even a question, I tried to replay this game a second time and it was like I just reentered my own private hell. I tried to finish it again but it was just to much to bear. How long is it you ask well it seemed to be a endless pool of frustration and puzzles that made you want to rip the hair off you skull.
For those of you who think I didn’t give the game a chance let me tell you I did, and if you don’t call wasting around 28 hours of your life on some game that’s not worth playing 1 hour on your crazy.
Here’s what I would give the different area’s of the game (might I add I tried to be nice to this game but it’s impossible).
Gamplay-1/10-just bad
Story-6/10-If some of the famous lines from the book weren’t in this games I would give it a 1
Graphics-2/10-way too dark and everything has no detail
Sound-1/10-so bad it is painful to listen to
Replayability-1/10-no replay value a all
Overall-1/10- this is what the game deserves
I guess this shows you what happens when you put such a good franchise in the hands of an unknown company. Shame on Christopher Tolkien for ever letting Universal soil the Lord of the Rings name. I definitely do not recommend this game to buy or rent even for the Tolkien fanatics. The most satisfying thing about this game was when I threw it into the Garbage Can Of Doom.
-THIS GAME IS NOT WORTHY OF ANY AMOUNT OF MONEY-

Reviewer's Score: 1/10, Originally Posted: 11/30/02, Updated 11/30/02