‘The Return Of The King’ The Video Game: A Retrospective

Image source: TheGamesDB

Movie video game tie ins have always been a bit of a mixed bag. Sometimes you get classics of the genre like the LEGOStar Wars games, The Godfather, and, possibly most famously, Goldeneye. Other times you get the… ah… Fight Club game. However, no list of great video game film adaptations would be complete without the early 2000s Lord of the Rings games.

Released at the same time as the movies on Xbox, Gamecube and Playstation, The Two Towers, covering the first two films, and Return of the King, covering… you know, allow you to play through the Peter Jackson movies, hacking and slashing your way through hordes of Sauron’s forces. The first game was fun, if a little short, but the ROTK was where it fully started to shine.

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The game opens in the last moments of the battle of Helms Deep. You as Gandalf arrive with the Rohirrim to break the siege and drive the Uruk-Hai back. It does what any good opening level should: it gets you invested in the action right away, and introduces all of the gaming mechanics you’ll need to know (speed attacks, strong attacks, blocking, ranged attacks, movement, etc.) in a quick, simple way. You could beat the previous game, put this one in, and pick right up where you left off if you wanted to. And I have. This and the previous game were two of the defining games of my childhood. I played the games enough that I could blow through every enemy, taking no damage as I went in record time if I wanted to, especially once I put the cheats in.

What was I saying?

Oh, right, from there you can play the story how you’d like. There’s the Path of the Wizard, where you play as Gandalf, the Path of the King, where you play as Aragorn, Legolas or Gimli, and the Path of the Hobbits, where you play as Sam. You can play each of the paths in whatever order you’d like, all culminating in the battle at the Black Gate, then finally the Crack of Doom, where you fight Gollum and the Ring is destroyed.

Image source: YouTube

The game is very easy to pick up and play, and each of the levels is a ton of fun. Combat isn’t anything special. You just hack and slash your way through every enemy you come across. If you want to you can use experience points to unlock more powerful moves, but I admit, I never really used them. The upgrades on your health, power and ranged attacks were always more useful to me, though some moves such as rising revenge, where you can attack as you’re getting up from being knocked down, are invaluable. It’s a carryover from the previous game that there are all of these elaborate moves that you don’t really use, but in a nice addition, you can buy certain upgrades in bulk for every character, so you don’t have to play as every character to get rising revenge, for example.

The level designs are much improved in this game. In the previous one, it was almost a rail hack and slash game. There was one way to go, you went that way, and killed the bad guys. Here there’s actually some variations. Yes there’s still one main path you’ll go down, but now there are other side paths that you can find that can help you on your way. Maybe you’ll find a path that leads to a boulder that you can push onto enemies that you’d otherwise fight. It rewards exploration of the map in a way that the previous game didn’t, and it’s immensely satisfying.

Image source: YouTube

The larger roster of fighters is a welcome addition as well. The first game had just Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli, with Isildur as an unlockable character. Here you have the first three, plus Gandalf and Sam, with Frodo, Faramir, Merry and Pippin as eventual characters as well. What’s also great is that once you beat the game, you can go back through and play any of the levels you’d like with whichever characters you’d like, which can admittedly make for some hilarious scenarios. The whole point of the battle of the Black Gate is that they’re sacrificing themselves to give Frodo time to destroy the Ring. It’s kind of pointless if you’re right next to them playing as Frodo. In any case, the updated roster is great. However, I do wish that Legolas still had 60 arrows to use like in the first game. Ah well. Nitpick.

The game isn’t terribly difficult once you get the hang of things, but it’s still not what I’d call easy. Some of the levels, such as the Black Gate and the Shelob fight, can be a real challenge, and when things start getting crazy, you have to be on top of your game, or else you’re going to get wiped out pretty quickly. That ties in with how well this game makes you feel like you’re playing through the movie. Sure some things are different, but for the most part, you truly feel like you’re fighting your way through Middle Earth.

The calls have been steadily rising for this game to get a modern remaster. Count me in with that. This game is every bit as fun now as it was when I got it for Christmas in 2003. If you haven’t checked it out and get the opportunity, then definitely check it out. The rumor mill is starting to swirl about a remaster, but if it’s true, that’ll likely be a long ways away.

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