Here’s What I Think About - LEGO Lord of the Rings: The Video Game
Intro:
LEGO Lord of the Rings: The Video Game. First off, who came up with that mouthful of a name? It’s almost as bad as I am with my long drawn out names for things. (Here’s What I Think About, anyone?)
This is my first time truly playing through a LEGO game, and I must admit I found the overall experience to be fairly enjoyable. I’ve always loved the universe that is Lord of the Rings and I’m more than happy to explore it in a new and more all-ages friendly manner. That’s not to say the game is without its flaws. It, like all games, certainly has its fair share of little problems that many can overlook, enjoying the product as a whole. Sadly for me, I often found the experience to be more of a test in patience, than I had the patience for. Before I begin to ramble, let’s get into the details shall we? Without further ado, here’s what I think about LEGO Lord of the Rings: The Video Game.
Content and Replayability:
While the bulk of what I cared to play through was a fairly linear experience, ushering the player from point A to point B, that’s certainly not all there is to the game. While in the open world that connects all the locations leading from The Shire to Mordor, you will find plenty of NPCs with simple sidequests. Sadly these are mostly simple fetch and craft style affairs. The game doesn’t stop there though. You will also find metroidvania style obstacles to return too as you progress in the game, mithril bricks you can use to craft new items at blacksmiths, a boat combat mini-game that seems to only be in the game to help you grind for LEGO pieces, and yet more puzzles to make full use of this games cast.
And what a cast it is. You of course have access to all the characters you would expect and need for the game to make sense. Be it Frodo, Merry, Gandalf, Gimli, the list goes on. That is not all, the game also provides you control over many of the side characters that you can find on your travels, requiring a one time payment with the LEGO pieces that you collect as you explore. Totalling a cast of seventy four with another ten custom characters.
For one reason or another I found these more open parts of the game did little for my enjoyment. I appreciate it’s inclusion for those that really want to spend more than a dozen hours with this game, for me though playing through the story while only rarely stopping to explore was enough.
As for the more linear story levels littered throughout, nearly all of them follow a simple formula with little variation. Solve some puzzles using the items and characters you currently have available. Do some platforming. Make it to the end, and finally fight a boss. While following the same formula most of these levels were varied enough in characters, set dressing, and experience to make them worth the time. And thankfully they do add a bit of variety in these levels by the way of chase sequences or providing a large mount for the player to control.
Sadly the boss fights didn’t fare as well. While enjoyable at first, nearly all of them are just plain too long and slow. Many of them have different and interesting goals. Sometimes you’ll be building platforms to reach enemies higher than you while fighting off weaker mobs. Other times you may be waiting for the boss to make a specific attack, leaving them vulnerable for you to attack. In another you’ll be attacking weak points of larger enemies so you may climb them and take them down. but each and every one has you repeating the same couple of tasks over and over. Why can’t I attack a weak point, then wait for a specific attack to leave them vulnerable, and then knock down a wall to take them down for good? That would be much more engaging than just doing the same task three or more times.
Lastly, there is the multiplayer. I did not get the chance to try it out proper for myself. As far as I can tell it would have you playing through the game as normal, only with a friend controlling a second character in split screen. If you have a child, younger sibling, spouse, or friend that you regularly play games with then I feel this would be a wonderful way to experience the game. Many of my problems with this one have to do with small inconveniences switching characters or waiting around for things to happen. Having a second person there to help solve the puzzles and banter with while waiting would make this one much more enjoyable.
Graphics:
Almost the entire main cast is as true to the films as one could expect when turned into LEGO versions of themselves. They maintain some level of grittiness and detail that you’d find in the films while still managing a bright and colorful plastic brick feeling. It’s really quite something just how well they’ve merged the art direction of the films with the all ages friendly Lego aesthetic.
However there were some, interesting, choices made. The two examples coming instantly to mind are the design choices behind trolls and even more so, Smeagol. I understand it’s likely Traveler’s Tale, or perhaps LEGO, wanted these creatures to be a bit unnerving, but the strange shapes and textures just didn’t work for me personally.
This can certainly be forgiven. With colorful plastic bricks that make up the bulk of the world. Particle effects and bricks thrown about as you break apart the set pieces. Unique characters, and NPCs. Beautiful LEGO architecture. And surprisingly strong animations make for a relatively great presentation. A couple small, unfortunate, character design choices really don’t seem like much of a problem when the game is taken as a whole.
Finally, it accomplishes this while running fairly well, even on my aging GTX 980. With the details cranked to the max I hardly had any slowdown of real significance, and when I did it was short lived. Turn down the details, or run at a lower resolution and I don’t see many modern, or even semi-modern systems having issues with this one.
Sound and Music:
Borrowing many elements from the film franchise, this game hits you right in your nostalgia with many of the well known songs from the movies making their return. Dotted throughout the game you will find light and warm pieces like those in The Shire that fill you with a sense of safety and contentment. Travel then to Mordor or any of the other more frightening areas to hear pieces that will have you on edge with nervous excitement, reminding you of the hardships The Fellowship have faced in the films.
The voice acting, as far as I can tell, is all ripped straight from the films. While this gets the job done, it does lead to some inconsistencies. Moments where you can tell there should be more going on in the world than what's represented on the screen. Others where you can hear that the voice clips were recorded at different times within different circumstances, even though the two lines are voiced one after the other in the game. It wasn’t enough to seriously hurt my personal enjoyment of the game, but it certainly would have fared better if the developer had gotten the original cast back together to re-record at least some of the lines. Maybe they could have added a few more in while they were at it.
The rest of the games sound effects and atmosphere were spot on as far as I’m concerned. Nothing that stood out in particular, but honestly that’s usually a good thing. How many times have you noticed good sound design? It’s rare. Now if something is off, you’re almost sure to notice.
Controls:
The game controls well with few hiccups appearing here and there. Being a puzzle platformer I it definitely handles better with a controller. Even more so with this one. For whatever reason Traveler’s Tale decided to completely forgo any sort of mouse support. Instead relying on you to use both hands on the keyboard. I tried it, and it technically works, but you’ll have a much better time with a controller in hand. You can however rebind both the controller and keyboard keys as you see fit. Something I would love to see more games include.
The most annoying of the control issues I had, is the feeling of inconsistency when you are trying to quickly switch between multiple characters. Sure, you can hold the Y button and select a character you’d like to use from a wheel, but when you’re in the middle of a battle and you need to switch characters to solve a random puzzle element, having to stop and open a wheel is frustrating. Worse, it’s one I feel could’ve been fixed with more thought put into how you quickly switch between them. For example, the game will often just show you which character you need to be using to solve a puzzle along with a prompt to hit the Y button to switch between them. So, why not just switch directly to that suggested character when the player then presses the Y button?
The only other stand out problem was how aiming with bows works. When you have a bow equipped you hold the attack button to bring up a reticule. You then align this reticule with a predetermined point in the game to shoot at it. That all sounds fine enough, but limiting the player to firing at predetermined points is a bit much. Sometimes I just want to fire where I want to fire. Worse is that you’ll have points appear on the screen that you can’t actually shoot from where you are standing. And when this happens they don’t shoot and miss like you might expect. No, instead they just don’t do anything. For a good while I thought the game was broken, or maybe I was doing something wrong. At this point I just have to assume that’s how they designed the game. I’d much rather see that I'm missing.
These are small gripes in the grand scheme of things, nearly everything else works as it should. Running around, jumping from place to place, and attacking all felt fine in my time with the game. It’s the little things like that though, that take away from this game being a nearly perfect experience from a control standpoint.
Story:
The story is exactly what you would expect from a game retelling the events of The Lord of the Rings. It’s The Lord of the Rings. That’s the story. Sure, they’ve managed to add a bit more comedy, and they’ve hurried the story along a bit to both keep it more child friendly as well as fit the entire trilogy into one game. At the end of the day though, this is still the tale of how one Hobbit and his friends banded together with the realms of men, elves, a wizard, and oddly only a single dwarf, to save middle earth. The only thing that stops this from being a perfect storytelling experience in my eyes is the lack of originality. After all, It’s a story I’ve already experienced. Thankfully it’s a good one.
Personal Enjoyment:
Though this game has it’s fair share of problems, it wasn’t enough to stop me from wanting to come back time and time again to finish it. It was however enough to stop me from wanting to play more than roughly an hour in any one sitting. It’s all the small things that keep it from being a perfect game. Inconsistent controls, a few crashes and soft locks, unengaging overworld, and how damn slow nearly all of the game's boss battles are. However, It’s great design, and the plethora of activities, side quests, and secrets make it well worth at least finishing in my eyes. At the end of the day I’d say it’s an average game. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
TLDR:
LEGO Lord of the Rings is a nice experience that’s worth finishing for people of all ages. It misses the mark of excellence in basically every category, but it adds up to an above average experience. With a little more care put into the games world, controls, a few characters, and a bit more originality added to its musical score this one would be a must play for fans of Lord of The Rings, or LEGO.
As it stands, I still recommend it if you can find it on sale, or already have it sitting in your backlog. If you find you really enjoy the game there is plenty here to last you 30+ plus hours. If you’re like me though, I believe you’ll find it worth the 10 or so it takes to play through an enjoyable retelling of this classic fantasy franchise. If you have little ones, or others to play along with, I’d recommend trying out the games multiplayer for a decent time exploring Middle Earth.
As always, it’s important to remember that review scores are highly subjective. For me though, I’d give this game 3.58 out of 5 LEGO bricks.