Like the movies, this game defies skeptical expectations of it being a shameless exploitation of Tolkien's brainchild.

User Rating: 7 | The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King PC

Tolkien had pioneered a rather adult and somewhat not-kid-friendly take on high-fantasy themes with his Lord of the Rings story, and one of this saga's attractions is a heck lot of battles and the deaths of many, many humans and not-so-humans. This aspect is the one that this Electronic Arts-published game would take advantage of, typically and conveniently enough.

This movie tie-in will not be wowing any fans of Tolkien who prefer to dwell more on its intrigues than on the epic battles described in the books. The game mainly focuses on the latter, and where it doesn't and tries to inject the more melodramatic scenes of the movies into the experience, it does a rather poor job. Furthermore, any scene (either in the movie or the books) that involves physical violence but not to the extent of actual battles gets drawn out into one.

One example that would seem most glaring to Tolkien purists is a certain climactic struggle between the main Halfling protagonists and the main no-longer-Halfling antagonist. Where in the story (or rather the movie) this struggle is perhaps little more than a spirited scuffle (albeit in a place with quite a lot of fiery hazards), the game draws it out into a vicious battle between the Halflings and an uncharacteristically fierce and determined version of the not-so-Halfling – even for a character that has a very strong motivation to regain the saga's iconic piece of cursed jewelry.

Very expedient and likely over-exaggerated treatment of the source material aside, this game does have surprisingly good combat and auxiliary mechanics.

In the story mode of the game, the player takes control of several player characters, including Samwise Gamgee, one of the two aforementioned main Halfling protagonists and the one who canonically has no issue with murdering enemies in his path. Then, there is of course the saga's trio of hard-bitten fighters, who are expectedly playable, and that one goodly and just-minded Wizard.

Perhaps to the relief of some purists, the story mode is split into three branches, one following the travails of the said Wizard, one for the Halfling and one for the trio, the most prominent member of which is a certain monarch in self-imposed exile.

Oddly enough, though, the game requires the player to switch paths in order to follow the chronology of the canonical story. Considering how much liberty that the game has taken with the source material, this restriction can seem rather out of place to a discerning player. Still, the three branches do have mostly unique levels of their own, which would be a pleasant surprise to those who had been looking forward to the game's rendition of the locales in the saga.

Anyway, each player character has different fighting styles that cater to the whims of a decently wide range of players who prefer to dispatch enemies in various ways.

The trio – Gimli, Legolas and Aragorn – would perhaps be the most familiar to players who are veterans of third-person high-fantasy action games. Their combat talents are very much what Tolkien fans would expect: Gimli is a melee powerhouse, with not much in the way of ranged combat other than being able to throw axes; Legolas is his exact opposite, who would certainly endear to players who like to turn enemies into pincushions; and Aragorn is somewhere in between the two.

In their path of the story mode, they accompany each other, which certainly adheres to the themes of comradeship. However, their AI scripts are just decent at fending off enemies. They will not be doing much in the way of combos, much less the special attacks available to their player characters; the player will have to do most of the bloody work in battles, which can result in a sense of tedium.

Gandalf may not be able to spam spells left and right (projectile attacks are subjected to ammunition-based limitations – even Gandalf's spells), but he handles mobs of enemies better than the other characters. On the other hand, despite having been promoted to a White Wizard, he doesn't appear to exhibit much of the abilities that has been portrayed in the films or books. In fact, he feels a lot more like a brawler than a wizardly person; when faced with incoming mobs, the player often has little choice but to wade into them and take them out with melee area-effect attacks. There are not many ranged solutions that can match Gandalf's melee prowess.

Perhaps the most amusing player character to play is Samwise Gamgee. In the events of Return of the King, he has been armed with a magical short sword that is particularly effective against the hordes under Saruman's control. Sam happens to be a rather fierce fighter too; although his animations do not appear to suggest any martial finesse on his part, he is still effective enough with the short sword. Watching him cut down the very tall Uruk-hai and even some huge monsters can be rather amusing.

To differentiate these different player characters further, they have separate upgrade trees, whose branches must be unlocked through playing the story mode, earning "experience points" and spending these on purchases that unlock branches throughout the tress. Such mechanics that instill a sense of progression in the game are nothing new at the time, but to call them RPG-inspired would be a misnomer.

Investing in these upgrades make them do what they do even better, such as increasing the limit on the strings of combos that they can perform, or unlock bonuses that impart additional properties to their attacks, such as dripping venom for Sam's blade (something that was not canonical). There are also upgrades that unlock super attacks or super modes, which are typically options that have to be sparingly triggered to get rid of large numbers of enemies in a short while.

Perhaps a very interesting difference that this game has from so many other titles that use skill/upgrade trees is the inclusion of an option for a player to purchase upgrades that are common to multiple player characters – especially those in the Path of the King – in one shot. This option is costly, but saves more experience points than individual purchases.

Making the characters more powerful is not enough for the player to get through the game successfully though. Perhaps to the surprise of skeptics who have had low expectations of this game, The Return of the King is far from being a simple button-masher. Many enemies, especially the late-game ones, have tricks up their sleeves to counter reckless assaults, in addition to having the advantage of numbers almost all the time.

For example, there are enemies that are equipped with shields and are quite skilled with it at deflecting a player character's clumsy attacks, and some can parry quite well and retaliate right after. Others hang back and fire arrows and other projectiles. While these can be rather rudimentary for third-person action games at the time, it would have been a relief to skeptical players who had been expecting Electronic Arts to use the excuse of Uruk-hai, Orcs and Goblins being brutish and undisciplined to apply single-minded AI scripts on them.

As had been mentioned earlier, the game is focused on combat, so considering the limitations of the source material, one could have expected that the game may just throw wave after wave of the same minions of darkness at the player. While that expectation would not be far from wrong, the developers have made use of the source material itself to implement some variation in these enemies. In addition to different models for enemies later in the game, e.g. Uruk-hai with much better armor to depict themselves as Saruman's elite, they also have different special attacks and choreographing for these, as well as the usual differences in statistics.

The game emphasizes the need for finesse to do well in this game. A ring-like icon (appropriately enough) depicts the momentum (of sorts) that the player has built up by attacking enemies and parrying their attacks without taking hits in return; getting hit results in sudden loss of momentum, and momentum also drains away as long as the player refrains from the offensive. With more momentum, the player earns more experience with each kill; if he/she can fill up the icon, his/her player character goes into "Perfect" mode, which maximizes experience points gained from killing enemies as long as it is still active.

More importantly, the player can purchase upgrades that increase the player character's power as the momentum meter fills, thus giving more incentive to maintain momentum, as well as making it easier to maintain. That slain enemies have a chance of dropping healing potions that immediately heal the player character when retrieved also helps keeping the action flowing.

On the other hand, this momentum mechanic and its associated upgrades can result in some balance issues. A particularly skilled player can purchase the upgrades and then mow through the opposition in the game without much of a problem.

The boss fights and mini-boss fights do somewhat allay this balance issue and thus break up the pace of mowing down enemies in Perfect mode (at least for a skilled player). The boss fights in this game are typically fought against very powerful creatures, like Trolls and Giant Spiders, who are not as easy to stagger as regular enemies.

As momentum is generally awarded through kills, building up momentum in boss fights is a bit more difficult. Of course, when plausible, the game does have regular enemies joining the fight for the player to slay and build momentum with, but not all bosses will have goons getting in the way (and this impression is strengthened by the fact that most bosses' attacks tend to kill goons as well). Regardless, the bosses do put up a lot of challenge and will annihilate reckless players, though ultimately, like all video game bosses, they have attack patterns that can be exploited.

Sometimes, a player character just cannot parry an incoming attack, such as those performed by bosses. Thus, dodging is the only way to avoid harm, and the game handily gives the player an option to have the player character rolling, hopping or cartwheeling backwards (whichever appropriate) or sideways to evade attacks.

This is, of course, pretty much a standard given in controls designs, but it would appear that the developers have overlooked an exploit regarding dodges. Some segments of the game deliberately slows down the player character with environmental hazards, such as cloying mists that somehow slow down the protagonists while not hindering Orcs and Goblins in any way, to ramp up the challenge. The player may notice that the hobbling does not apply to rolls and dodges, and can use these to breeze through such segments. However, these segments are far and few in between, so this flaw is not so glaring.

A feature in the game that fans of the source material would appreciate is the inclusion of environmental hazards that can be used against enemies, such as racks of spears that can be retrieved and thrown at regular enemies for virtually one-hit kills and cauldrons of boiling oil that can be tipped over to scald enemies that are too slow in getting out of the way. Most of the time, the use of these things is optional, though the game does sometimes shoe-horn the player into using them.

The graphics and artistry of the game are perhaps the most well-designed aspects of the game. For its time, Return of the King has satisfactorily detailed models with the appropriate textures. Gandalf's model in particular can be quite impressive, fittingly portraying the mystifying and fabulous aura of a Wizard of the White ranks. Well-implemented and mostly fluid motion-captured animations enhance these models further. Overall, a Tolkien fan (or a fan of the movies) would not be grumbling too much about their likenesses.

He/She would not be grumbling much about the portrayal of the locales in the game either. The game starts with the exciting battle at Helm's Deep, using the chaos of that event to craft a tutorial of sorts with the player in control of Gandalf. Helm's Deep can be breath-taking to look at, with lots and lots of soldiers running across its damaged ramparts (more on that bit of "lots and lots of soldiers" later). Most of the later levels are not as impressive, but there are some that pay great or otherwise satisfactory tribute to their source material, like Shelob's lair, which has plenty of webbing and foreboding lighting, appropriately enough for such a perilous place.

The most impressive graphical design, however, would be how the game populates the game world with models. Using graphical techniques of what appears to be early forms of tessellation, the game can generate and maintain a larger number of models on-screen in the foreground and background. Objects in both the background and foreground are appropriately shaded to prevent them from obscuring the action or distracting from it, though the camera is usually decent enough at preventing this from happening.

These models can join the actual battle between the player character(s) and enemies at any time when scripted, though the game isn't too subtle in suddenly changing their visual appearance to upgrade them from a prop to a full model. The sudden change in contrast is more than enough to inform the player of incoming enemy reinforcements; the player may even notice some graphical flaws like clipping between the full models and props.

Nevertheless, this graphical design is used to great effect, the culmination of which can be seen in the last level of the Path of the King, where the trio has to hold back an onslaught from the forces of Darkness, which seem to endlessly pour forth from the gates of Mordor.

The game does not have much in the way of high-end particle effects – even Gandalf's magic would not seem spectacular. This can also be said of the shadowing and lighting in the game; furthermore, it appears that toggling these on (in the PC version) slows down the frame rate significantly, which is a disappointment.

Perhaps the most disappointing part of the game is its insistence on using a few snippets from the films. In addition to being outright spoilers, they do little to allay the impression that this game is a shameless movie tie-in that is attempting to feed off the popularity of the films. There are few such moments in the game, of course, but one would still wonder why the developers bothered to include these full-motion video scenes if there are so few of them anyway.

The sound designs of the game benefited from Electronic Arts' high-profile collaboration with New Line Cinema and the production houses for the films. Not only does the game appear to have audio assets from the films for the more strident scenes, they also have several of the actors, including Sir Ian McKellen, contributing their voices to the game. As far as movie tie-ins go, this game copies the aural presentation of the films quite well.

This game features a cooperative multiplayer segment, though the PC version of this game unfortunately only has infrastructural support for local play (unlike the other versions of the game, which have various online and inter-machine options). That said, the players will go through the same game modes as a single player would, so the difference in the experience is not much.

Speaking of game modes, once the player is done with the story mode and have empowered the player characters up to at least level 10, there are two additional game modes that can be unlocked for play: Palantir of Saruman, which is the easier of the two, and Palantir of Sauron. Both modes lock player characters into locales of limited area, thus providing no means of escape from the waves of progressively more difficult enemies that the game modes will throw at the player.

Finishing game modes (with the exception of Palantir of Sauron) will unlock additional player characters, though these are little more than a re-skin of the default ones (especially copies of Samwise Gamgee: there are three other halfings, and they play pretty much like him), which can be a bit disappointing. On the other hand, these models are quite good look to at, especially the Hobbits in battle gear.

In conclusion, Return of the King won't be impressing most players, but it will impress just enough for the latter to know that it is not yet another slap-dash movie tie-in.