Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring

Xbox review by Josh Kramer - Thursday 6th November 2003

The subject matter found within J.R.R. Tolkien's epic Lord of the Rings novels seems ideal for the creation of a fantastic videogame. Who wouldn't want to play a game that featured an immensely powerful dark lord, great heroes, massive battles, intense personal struggles and a vast world that simply begs to be explored? Just imagine being able to step into the Shire, with its beautiful rolling hills of green and unique architecture. Or, on the opposite end of the spectrum, envision walking up to the black gate of Mordor and seeing the shadow of imposing Mount Doom reaching out across the landscape towards you like a sinister, misshapen hand. If handled right, a Lord of the Rings game should allow you to experience these situations as vividly as if taken directly from the pages of Tolkien's masterpiece. But alas, WXP and Black Label's Middle Earth-inspired game, The Fellowship of the Ring, is much too linear, brief and replete with glitches to even come close to realizing the full potential of the Lord of the Rings license it carries.



Unlike the Lord of the Rings games developed by Electronic Arts, Black Label's game is based entirely on Tolkien's books, not the recent motion picture adaptations. This may seem like a good thing, as gamers will get to experience things not seen in the movies like good old Tom Bombadil and the Hobbit's trip through the Old Forest, but the game's flaws just about negate any positives resulting from the more faithful translation. It is easy to want to like the game more for following the book's events so accurately, but even the most diehard of Tolkien fans will simply not be able to overlook the game's many shortcomings.

Many of the problems with the game can be exposed by simply trying to classify The Fellowship of the Ring into a genre. Is it a hack 'n slash? Well, much of the game is slashing your way through enemy after enemy, but the fighting is so unresponsive and monotonous that the game certainly can't stand alone as a brawler like EA's Middle Earth-based titles do. When performing the basic three to four hit combos you are limited to, it never truly feels like you are in control of the on-screen character. Let's say, for example, you start a combo, but midway through decide to block instead. Unfortunately, the game will not stop the combo and block, but keep on hacking away and inevitably you will get worked over by the baddie because of the lack of responsiveness. All that is probably moot anyway, as there are far too many lulls in the action where you are forced to collect items and solve basic puzzles for the game to be accurately classified as hack 'n slash - or even more broadly as action for that matter.



So is Fellowship adventure or role-playing then? Well, the total lack of a character level progression system or ability to gain experience points, weapons (the mid-quest acquisition of Sting aside), armor or skills completely obliterates any chance the game might have had to be called an RPG. So that leaves us finally with the adventure genre. This seems to be a good fit when examining the first few areas of the game where you play as Frodo in the Shire and scamper around trying to sell Bag End and make general preparations to leave. You are given a decent amount of freedom to roam and explore, but as you leave the Shire and head out on your quest, gameplay becomes very linear and involves far too much mindless fighting. This brings us full circle to the hack 'n slash/action genre, but we've already discussed why that label don't quite fit. This lack of identity is problematic, as gamers will certainly find themselves wishing the development team had stuck to their guns by fine-tuning and expanding one aspect of Fellowship's gameplay instead of spreading themselves out far too thin.

Besides lack of identity, the afore-mentioned linearity found throughout most of the game is a significant problem. Take the Old Forest area for example. Your task is to search through the murky woods for your three companions, Merry, Pippin and Sam, who have been captured by enormous spiders. This would be fine in and of itself, but the entire forest is comprised of small winding pathways that look identical to each other. I understand that the devs wanted to make the forest, which is supposed to be a mysterious, conniving entity, confusing to navigate, but they didn't have to place cheesy invisible walls around every footpath. Many times the only thing separating one trail from another is a trivial bit of slightly raised ground, but a mystical invisible wall keeps you from cutting across. Lame. Very, lame. I could highlight plenty of other examples, as the game is chock full ridiculous invisible walls in the strangest of places, but I'll just leave it at this - Fellowship is far, far too linear in most areas and this severely takes away from the game's overall worth.



Despite what it may seem after reading the past few paragraphs, there actually are a few fleeting bright spots concerning Fellowship's gameplay. When playing as Frodo it is possible to wear the One Ring and become invisible in order to get around certain enemies and obstacles, as well as uncover hidden areas. However, if the ring is worn too frequently, Frodo will become corrupted and eventually fall to Sauron's will. There are various times during the quest when Frodo can perform valiant deeds to help bring back up his purity meter. This is an imaginative little gameplay element that definitely should have been worked more into the game - there just aren't enough opportunities to gain back purity and use the Ring constructively. On top of that, there are a few puzzles in the dwarven mines of Moria that are interactive and relatively challenging. It's just too bad these bright spots couldn't have been built upon and spread throughout the entire game.

The Fellowship of the Ring takes approximately five to six hours to beat. Yes, that's right - five or six hours. Now, that's not too terrible if there are reasons to come back and play again such as extra characters, levels or other unlockables. The problem is (yup, you guessed it) the game offers nothing to you after the quest is completed. Well, they do give you a few cheat codes like unlimited projectile ammo or health, but that's a pathetic attempt to get you to play again. I have no idea what WXP and Black Label where thinking when they failed to address this issue. Give us artwork, factoids, new levels, multiplayer modes...anything to keep us coming back. Needless to say, paying more than the price of a rental for this is just a waste of money.



Visually, Fellowship is surprisingly quite pretty. Environments are all modeled well and feature nifty atmospheric effects like fog (intentional - not to cover up draw distance), fluttering fireflies, falling leaves and rain. Water is also quite impressive, as it ripples and moves just like in Morrowind and Knights of the Old Republic, which is to say extremely realistically (though it doesn't react when you move in it). The lighting is also first rate, with flickering campfires and other light sources causing real-time and believable shadows to play across the environment. The texture quality never really manages to impress though and the framerate can get very jumpy when the camera is swinging around or multiple enemies are attacking at once. Another problem is loading glitches during the Moria areas. Quite a few times you will come to door, watch it open and see nothing but black on the other side. The trouble is the game hasn't loaded the next area yet, so you have to sit and wait (sometimes for up to seven or eight seconds) for the loading to finish. Annoying to the say the least.

The character models aren't quite as notable as the environments, but they get the job done well enough. For the most part animations are all smooth, with only a few instances of inconstancy or jerkiness. Overall, I was pleased with the fluidity of movement for the enemies in the game, be at an orc, cave troll, barrow wight or spider. It should be noted that there is absolutely zero lip-synching in the game, so during dialogue scenes the characters just randomly move their mouths while the words are spoken. This is especially evident during Tom Bombadil's many songs, because he just stands there, his eyes large and bulging while his mouth moves methodically to nothing in particular. This could definitely give children nightmares, because even I found it faintly disturbing.



It's a shame about the lip-synching too, because the voice acting in the game is actually very good. Frodo, Sam, Aragorn, Gandalf and the rest of the fellowship all sound like characters with past experiences, thought processes and ideas all their own. Kudos to all those involved getting these talented voice actors in on the project. Other general sound effects like weapon strikes, grunts and the like are above average in quality and worthy of game with much better overall value than this one. The classical score in Fellowship is also top-notch. The default audio settings have the music drowned out behind the overall sound effects and voice acting, but it is worth it to crank up the volume so not miss the excellent soundtrack.

All in all, The Fellowship of the Ring is a game that fails to do justice to Tolkien's epic novels. The linearity of the levels, poor replay value and slapdash gameplay successfully relegate this game to the "rent first, buy later" category. Big fans of Tolkien's work may find something to like underneath all the mediocrity, but not even the rosiest of rose-colored glasses can change Fellowship for what it is - a game that just isn't worth your time.

Thunderbolt score: five out of ten

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