12/27/2003

The story in this game is of course the devastating conclusion to the epic Lord of the Rings series. It follows the story of the movies perfectly with little deviation from the movie and it also expands on some of these areas. It starts you off at the end of the Two Towers (remember Towers' starts at the Last Alliance) in Helms Deep fighting as Gandalf. It again includes the beautiful switch from live action footage to CG animation. From then it proceeds somewhat like a tale from Gandalf's perspective with a nice introduction by Sir Ian before you start. In the ways of expansion it definitely broadens your experience, for example the Escape from Osgiliath, which is presented in the Two Towers extended, in the game you see much more of Osgiliath. Also as Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli venture to Gondor's aid, you play through more of what they do before getting there.

The graohics in the Return of the King were really excellent. Especially the character animations. The characters look exactly like the actors and show a huge improvement from the Two Towers animations which were good. Also they fixed the problem of Gimli's rather flat facial structure in the Two Towers. The enviroments were truly terrific in helping to bring out the mood because the environments in the Return of the King are significantly darker than the previous. For example in the Pelennor Fields you see the dead carcasses of Mumakil (or Oliphaunts as Sam elequently puts it).

The music is like the Two Towers, terrific with the music brought right from the movies. A nice touch i find is that if you happen to win a hard confrontation the music switches from the driving battle music to a hurried yet triumphant moving music like that of when the Fellowship run from the Balrog across the Dwarrowdelf city. It really seems to fit the situation you're in.

The gameplay is quite good except for the major drawback of bad camera views. You see it changes from the nice stable third person to a sort of fixed camera angle that can be obstructed at times if you are in the middle of a crowd of enemies. Although this helps to encourage you t put a little strategy in your work and not running gung-ho into a crowd of twenty or so orcs. If you do that you run the chance of being totally annihalated. They do add the nice touch of being able to use you combos against multiple foes. Say you use part of your combo on the guy in front of you and the other part on a guy behind you. it really gives you the feeling that you can take on large bunches but not too large. The gameplay is also much more difficult in levels than it was in the Two Towers. This game is harder and it gives you the feeling that every confrontation every battle that you win is important and that sense of urgency. it really feels like you are in the game, fighting against all odds