The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

"Good movies do not make good games"

While working my shift at Wal-Mart last holiday season, I saw this title placed on the shelf. Having heard mediocre reviews on the previous one (not to mention playing the under-rated SNES one), I picked up a copy without even waiting for reviews. Was I pleased? Would I profit despite braking one of the sacred laws of video games - Never buy a movie game? Read on...

Graphics - 8.5/10 - (FMV! Can you believe it? From a real movie! Too bad the rest is junk...)

If there's one thing we know about the GBA, it is that it can churn out impressive graphics. And this game is no exception--to a point. The levels are absolutely gorgeous, with small specks of dirt and grass showing that someone paid attention to the details. Even small foot prints can be seen! But, not everything is as it seems... While the snow-covered mountains and dank caverns of the Dwarfs look extremely well, the character designs are simply horrible. Of course, I couldn't really tell whenever they moved, because all of their two thousand parts moved at once, causing the image to blur. For some reason, the enemies appeared to look better than the heroes, but then, you don't see them very long since you're trying to focus on hitting them...

Oh, and let's not forget the FMV!! After Dragon Ball Z, Legacy of Goku, this is the best example of the GBAs power with FMV. Sadly, Aaragorn's walk through the doors is a bit dark... However, this is crystal clear on the Game Boy Advance SP, and even better on the Game Boy Playe... Sadly, most do not own those...

Sound - 7.0/10 - {Good music, but the sound affects don't match their elements...)

Dang. The movies had one of the better soundtracks that I can remember, and most of them translate well into the small mono/sterio speakers. The Dwarven caves were haughntingly kin to the first movie's musical score, with the rest of the levels having more... blah tracks. Battle sounds, like lightning and clanking of swords, are perfect, until you realize that the sounds and character moves aren't in tune with each other. Otherwise, this would have gotten a 9.0.

Game Play - 1.0/10 - (Horrid collision detection and bad fighting system fail once again... (::cough:: Legacy of Goku...))

Holy Heiroglyphics, Bat Man! This is an example of how small ideas cobbled together cannot make a game. The highly praised stats system, which I found impressive, accounts for squat when you have to spend endless hours running in circles to find an enemy with the necessary two experiance points that you need.

Speaking of enemies, the combat system is mere button mashing, especially with any sword or axe character. Gandolf can simply cast magic, but you still have to go into mindless mashing to level up. Anyone who hated Legacy of Goku will want to avoid this game, for it is virtually the same system...

Winning armor and items from foes is nothing new, and while it makes the game seem more real, most items are worth two-cents, and rarer items are insanely hard to get because the levels have too many diverging paths that have to be backtracked to find the chest you missed. And the buying spells trick is useless, as my characters were swining away at air and hitting my foes...

The levels were rather large, and consisted of many screens per area. But when most of the area is made up of trees, rocks, water, and cliffs and little room to explore, then you know something is wrong. Also, why did they add the Tomb Raider-esque puzzles in the mines? That made no sense...

This game shares some traits with the Gauntlet games. But whereas those had a semi-complex fighting and magic system, this game is more Legacy of Goku. Don't expect any massive dragons that would be fun for four players...

Finally, I never found another person who owned a copy of this game to play multiplayers. In fact, everyone I talked to said that they didn't know anyone who had it... Does this tell you something?

Replay - 0.5/10 - (If games were rated by replay values, then this would already be six feet under...)

Unless you want to play this to get the hidden character, don't bother. After you beat it, there's practically nothing left to do. Even the good FMV doesn't save this game.

Overall - 2/10 - (Overal, pointless, mindless button smashing gameplay. If you dig that sort of thing, then go and get this. )

This game has many good ideas, but all of them are pointless in a button-pressing fiesta. If this had been in RPG format... But alas, the Isometric games are once again slandered by a rushed movie game.

Bonus point to EA Games for making the instruction booklet in both English and Spanish. More companies should incorperate this feature...

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 09/02/03