It takes a while for the cool combo depth to kick in. On the same subject, the level interactivity is both welcome - because it helps to better round out the game -- and in some cases, not very useful. For instance, picking up spears is slow and often results in your injury. While the use of catapults and ballistas is quick and always effective. I quickly found that in the same time I could pick up a spear and target an enemy, I could just as easily strike them asunder.
Level Design and Cameras The multiple priority level design should be familiar, but the team's attention to extras and to many details show how each level breaks free, if just for a little bit, from its cookie cutter origin. There are defend levels, follow the path levels, and some curiously unique adventure levels Sam's Escape from Osgiliath comes to mind , but almost all are well done.
Each level is created to pull you in several directions at once so that you must constantly be aware of at least two or more enemy threats simultaneously. Whereas Gandalf's Minas Tirith Top of the Wall level reminds one of Helm's Deep: The Deeping Wall since players constantly must kick down ladders , newly added features find Gandalf fighting off four huge Siege Towers that pour orcs onto the wall. You can attack the Troll guarding the main gate or boil him with burning fluid later , or fight to build up points.
But the main goal is to get to four catapults surrounded by enemies to knock down a giant tower, which then creates a path onto the wall. A majority of the levels are still linear and path-driven in design, but in them there are usually more choices or individualistic gameplay elements at work. For instance, in Gandalf's Road to Isengard, he passes through a splitting trail which leads to a stomping ground of angry Tree-ents.
In this battle, the white wizard must stay clear of the circling Ents while tallying up a sum of enemies before a path opens up. Several levels are intelligently and creatively designed, and many are filled with scores of sub-bosses and bosses the King of the Dead, Gorbag, Shelob and more.
The first part of it is a totally enjoyable one-on-one fight to the death with Aragorn and Gorbag, Sauran's chief "publicist. Shelob's Lair is filled a tangle of paths and dark surprises. And even the final level is different than anything else in the game. Some levels, however, feel less balanced than others. For instance, I must have played the second level of The Path of the King King of the Dead plus times, screaming and kicking all the way.
Bit of a spoiler for newbies to the story here. In the first part, your character fights the King of the Dead, and the boss fight is relatively easy; beatable in one or maybe two tries.
The second section of the level is ridiculously hard, even on Medium difficulty. Your character must run into the camera while avoiding falling boulders and then fight a horde of enemies to open up a new section. All of this with a timer. If you succeed, another bigger set of enemies awaits you.
If you fail -- and you will, many, many times -- the curtain of falling rocks grinds you into the ground. Go too fast and you're hit by falling rocks. You move too slowly, and you're showered by death. If you pull it off just right, you have to contend with several sub-bosses and do so in quick order.
By the final set of enemies, you must pull off a perfect set of attacks as fast as possible to avoid being crushed. This level seems far more like a final level than a second level, if I've ever seen it. It's one level I really don't ever want to play again, which is not such a good feeling, considering how positive I feel about the rest of the game.
Similarly, the Shelob's boss level will take several attempts and some parts feel a little cheap. Just like in the first EA game, the "cinematic" camera does a good job of showing just exactly what is meant to be shown, but nothing more.
Oftentimes, it does so at the player's expense. There are countless examples, but in Gandalf's final level Courtyard , Aragorn's second level The King of the Dead , Sam's last level Citith Ungol or in even in Shelob's Lair, the camera is either too close, in front of the player, so he's walking into it, or it's too low.
EA has made many larger enemies transparent so that players can see through them, and some of the time this takes care of the problem of obstruction. But not all. Many times your character is surrounded by enemies and you cannot even see him -- which ways he is facing, fighting or swinging. In other cases, enemies attack you from off-screen. Or if you move off screen to attack them, you're hammered by an enemy you simply cannot possibly see. The camera is either to low, or it's too close. Most of the time it functions well and you're not aware of it, but in these other situations, I just wished I could see what was happening.
No doubt, EA has done an excellent job at filling the screen with more enemies than last year's version. It's certainly impressive. Of all three versions, however, the PS2 version takes the biggest hit, framerate wise, but it doesn't happen badly enough to ever make one wince.
On the PC you may find you'll have to tone the graphics down a bit to achieve a reasonable framerate. You'll probably finish a game with characters leveled up to say seven or level eight. But you'll definitely want to return to buy all of the weapons, and to max out each character at level The game is just addictive that way.
The Co-op play adds an immense value to the game's already good replay value. While the framerate gets rough in Co-op mode, and the characters loose detail and become quite small, the play is nonetheless superb it's not split screen.
It's what this game was designed to be. Cameras swing out wide in larger arenas so players can head in different directions, but for the most part the co-op play is well worth its weight in scooties.
Sadly, the PC version doesn't include any online support and you'll be stuck playing on the same PC. Graphics Visually, Return of the King is a major improvement on every level on all platforms except the PC, of course, which didn't have The Two Tower in the first place. While the ports on Xbox and Cube had some technical issues last year, this year's versions are clean and crisp, ornate in detail and by all accounts, beautiful. Beauty, I should stress, comes in various colors.
Getting better each year. One game to rule them all The perfectgame for those who love to kill! Welcome back to Middle Earth! Great action game, but with one of the worst fighting engines ever.
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Forgot your username or password? The levels are almost completely linear, and the camera perspective automatically tracks you to give an ideal vantage point for the relentless action. Sometimes you'll find yourself fighting from an awkward angle, like from too far into the background, but this is rarely an issue. Conveniently, characters standing between you and the camera angle like when the camera tilts closer to ground level will become semitransparent, ensuring that you pretty much never lose sight of where you stand.
If you don't already know what happens at the end of The Return of the King, you may want to hold off on playing it until you've seen the movie.
The levels are completely and meticulously scripted and play out in much the same way each time. That diminishes the game's replay value, but it also gives you the prescience of knowing what to expect as you inevitably retry some of the tougher sequences.
Some levels have one or more checkpoints, at which you may restart if you lose all your health or otherwise fail your mission, but other levels force you to start over from the beginning. At the normal difficulty setting, many of the levels in the game are surprisingly challenging, as you'll often find yourself racing against time or trying to defend other characters rather than just trying to defend yourself.
More-casual players, fortunately, have the option to switch to an easy difficulty setting, but there is a hard mode as well.
At any rate, the game isn't overly difficult, but, by all means, it's tough enough to help sustain the illusion that you're at the center of these incredible, against-all-odds conflicts. Many players wished that The Two Towers offered a cooperative multiplayer mode, especially since you'd often find yourself fighting alongside computer-controlled allies.
The Return of the King provides this option, and it works as well as can be expected. The challenge ramps up to make it worth two players' while, and, though there's not much in the way of new tactics to be found in the two-player version of the game, it's still inherently entertaining to go through these often incredible action sequences with a friend.
Meanwhile, the PlayStation 2 version of the game uniquely offers the ability to play the co-op mode online and also supports voice communication using a USB headset. The PC version, unfortunately, doesn't have online support, but The Return of the King's co-op mode is better when played with a friend than with a stranger over the Internet, anyway.
Also of note, the GameCube version supports Game Boy Advance connectivity with the GBA version of The Return of the King, which is simply used for the transferring of small amounts of experience points between characters.
The Return of the King looks quite impressive, and each version of the game looks comparably as good. The Xbox version, overall, looks best and boasts the sharpest visuals and the smoothest, most consistent frame rate. The GameCube version is similar, but its frame rate is more prone to fluctuation. The PlayStation 2 version is certainly no slouch, and, while its visuals don't look as sharp as those of the Xbox and GameCube versions, it runs pretty smoothly and boasts the same terrific special effects.
The PC version looks great, too, but a top-of-the-line machine is needed to make the game look its best. You may need to run the game at a lower resolution than you're used to in order to get the action to move at an acceptable frame rate.
Frame rate issues do affect each version of the game, to varying degrees, and none of the character models for the main characters look all that remarkable, either. They're more in line with their cinematic counterparts than those of the previous game, but they're still pretty flat-looking.
All other aspects of The Return of the King's graphics are outstanding. The scenery, colors, and special effects all perfectly mimic the look of the movies. The relative simplicity of the character models allows for tons of characters to be rendered onscreen at once, for dramatic effect. The full-motion video is also of very high quality. The Return of the King, the game, offers the same sort of epic, nail-biting action that's helped make Peter Jackson's movie trilogy such a phenomenal success.
The game's audio is even more effective than the graphics at conveying the intensity of the action. Ian McKellan, as Gandalf, provides original narration for the game and gives the proceedings a truly authentic touch.
Sound bites from the other actors are also used to good effect. The now-familiar Lord of the Rings theme blares triumphantly, oftentimes during the combat, but the ambient effects of battle, along with the sounds of your weapons cleaving orc and uruk-hai armor and flesh, are the best part of the audio.
As in the movies, there's no truly graphic violence in The Return of the King, but the sound, combined with some of the nastier-looking animations mostly for the killing moves , makes this combat far from subdued. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King features fast-paced, cinematic action with plenty of pick-up-and-play appeal.
It captures the sights and sounds of The Lord of the Rings movies and offers lots of DVD-style extras for fans of the movies. On its own merits, it's not a particularly lengthy or complex game, so you should be able to get through most of its content in a weekend.
However, it's a great experience while it lasts, and the Lord of the Rings fan will want to hold on to this one for posterity. It does justice to the movies that inspired it--and that's no small feat.
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