Der Herr der Ringe: Die Rückkehr des Königs

The comments here and everywhere else speak for themselves and words cannot descibe the magnitude of influence that such a film, nevertheless triolgy, filmmaker can have on history, art, the world. Return of the King draws you in further and beyond by having the absolute power to keep you engaged with the characters and this epic sotry. You'll leave the theater pondering its magnificence and perhaps saddened that Peter Jackson's mastperiece series has come to an end. For me it reminded me of the potential for the resilience of mankind and the genuine sadness of the brutality of war yet the hope for something better. My admiration and apprciation for the fruition of the literary masterpiece into this movie has only grown and will continue to do so. To be awed, seeing Return of The King on the big screen is one that should not be neglected.

Well in one word yes. The goal was to make a LotR game that would be true to the movies and they did a great job. The levels are well recognized from the movie architecture. Even the characters movements have been taken from the movie into the game. Butt now for some fine details.

You start the game, and well well the THX logo appears. This means you will have a nice listening pleasure waiting up ahead. And its true, the sound/music is terrific. Just think of it, you playing with you're favi character and the tension moves up with the well known music from Howard Shore. Great hah?!! :-) When it comes to the graphics I must say that except from a incident with a low frame rate on the PS2 and NGC its all well done. Even though some details are made of low quality graphics they do give a life feel to the surroundings.

Voiceacting? One word. Superb! The gameplay is nice, not excellent but its higher difficulty than "The Two Towers" game makes it more fun. Interactive elements. Such as throwing spears, pouring boiling oil over enemies give an extra feel of freedom. It will take you at least 10 hours to complete all levels for the first time. So you won't be bored soon cause.....

The cinematics give extra variety and when you finish the game you get three characters, plus extra bonuses after finishing a mission.

Has the game got flaws? Yes one big one, the camera angles are sometimes a pain in the ass. But don't let that ruin the fun cause this war has just begun!!! :-)

It seems a common malady of modern video games, but what we have here is millions of dollars worth of voice actors, graphical rendering, sound engineering, and licensing in search of any level of fun. To its credit, the game finds it for the first few levels, but once it tries to recreate any complex aspect of the novel or the films, it falls flat. The battle through Osgilliath is a good example of this. Video games are meant to be entertaining, relaxing, above all fun. Osgilliath stops this game from being fun. Instead of having fun, we're constantly running blind through the ruins, unsure of which way to go, trying desperately to get somewhere before the time runs out and the Ringwraith takes Frodo.

Needless to say, if it were possible to save the game at any point and return to a viable moment just before the cock-up, it might have been possible to overlook this. Unfortunately, the ridiculous system of only saving at checkpoints that plagues console games is in force here, and there are one or two such points in the levels, if that. So if you should happen to die just before the end of the level, and I garantee that you will, you lose all the work you did in the last half-hour and have to repeat everything you just did once more. Such repetition is exactly what is killing video games in this era. Would it have been too much to ask for a Resident Evil style of game saving, which does the great job of combining gameplay elements with keeping the game playable?

Another thing makes the whole affair annoying is that the game offers no control whatsoever over the camera. Some of the positions we see the heroes and their targets from are so annoying that it's a wonder people played this game fast the first few levels. A close tracking shot behind the character, or even through the character's eyes, would have been nice options to start with. Maybe the people at Electronic Arts should have taken a look at Silver, possibly the best console game revolving around small-party adventure. While that style isn't strictly a good one for a game in this frantic setting, they still could have learned things like keeping a clear view so that the player can see which direction he is meant to swing his sword in.

It's also worth noting that Silver was a lot more fun to play in combat, in spite of being noticeably slower. The reason for this is that slow, deliberately paced combat allows the player to make tactical decisions, accept the consequences of those decisions, and even learn from their mistakes. ROTK as a video game borders dangerously on being one of those "mash the buttons to win" games where the player frantically wiggles sticks around and bashes the buttons in the hope that the outcome might be favourable. This takes the control of the player's gaming experience out of their hands and makes it even more annoying. Considering that ROTK is one of the most, if not THE most, expensive games in Australia at $110 in Australian funds, this is just adding insult to injury.

Small wonder, then, that sites which post walkthroughs and cheat codes for video games are still so incredibly popular. Being that I was a child during the Intellivision days, I can remember when video games didn't need to be cheated on or hacked in order to be fun. The proliferation of sources for information to do these things in the modern era is probably the saddest indictment of all against modern video games.

The video game is awesome. The graphics are great and it follows the movie which is good too. Plus, you get bonus footage of the Return of the King movie too. It's all good in my book. I give it 2 thumbs up. It's a game worthy playing.

First time I played it, it was extremely hard, I was so confused. And I hated this game and I still do. Because it can be real pain the ass, when it comes to gameplay. For instance, camera angles are freaking weird, most of the time you can't run in straight line, opponents are sometimes horrible to beat down and you need to be extremely intense to finish a level and some characters are just… like hobbits for example, most of them are weak, small and slow. There's also a timer on some levels, but first you must go through a bunch of enemies and to enter a different camera angle that simple confuse you, it is so… tense… and sweaty, after one level, you smell like a pig. There are some special ways to defeat your opponents… boring… why not just hack and slash the f**k out of them? But, for most of them, you can. And cut scenes… damn, you can't exit them, that's terrible. I don't understand, who the hell wants to watch those scenes again? We already saw the movie, please, proceed. Now, for some good things… graphics are good, they could be even better, the sound effects are great, straight from the film, to the game, they are just great, the action can be very rage releasing for you, I like the combos too… interviews are good. When it comes to the characters… my favorite is Pippin. I'll explain. While the Gandalf is perhaps, the most playable, he can do very extraordinary things, he has a great magic power and strong fluid attacks. Aragorn and Legolas are great in their own way, while Gimli, Merry, Sam and Frodo are slow, with the exception of Gimli, he can be good on occasions. Frodo is the worst. Faramir… is a badass, he can cut strong, without stopping him. Now, when it comes to Pippin, he is small and slow (when it comes to running), but in fight, he is surprisingly powerful, he can take out even 5 time bigger opponents than him in just a few blows and he can destroy the enemy shields with one fast attack, but first you need to power him up. Overall, think before you take this game, because it's really tense, sweaty and tiresome.