by Steve - June 1, 2004

The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King was a box office success, winning 10 Academy Awards including Best Direction and Best Picture. So, naturally, any game based on it has pretty big shoes to fill.

Hack n' Slash Goodness

Overall, The Return of the King is a pretty straightforward adventure game. The controls are excellent, fluidly combining keyboard and mouse movement. You start where the previous movie(and game) left off. After installing the game, you are immediately thrown into the battle at Helm's Deep as Gandalf. The story then branches off to follow either the Path of the Wizard, the Path of the King, or the Path of the Hobbits. This perfectly portrays the branching plot of the movie, eventually ending at the climactic battle at Minis Tirith. Based on your fighting skills, you game experience and levels appropriately. These experience points can be used to "purchase" new attacks and upgrades to further enhance your killing power.

Graphics

The graphics in The Return of the King aren't anything special, but they do a pretty good job of immersing you in the environment. Hundreds of charging orcs in the distance is a sight to see. In some places, your movement and line of sight can be seriously restricted by the game's camera. It is very difficult to see where you need to go, let alone a small button to push.

The Voice of War

The sound quality in Return of the King is superb. The original movie cast returns to voice their respective characters. Hearing the Legolas or one of the other characters call to you for help or give you direction really brings the game world to life. The sounds of swords colliding and barrels exploding add even more to the environment.

Frustration, Aggravation

The Return of the King is one of the most difficult games I have ever played. Even on the default difficulty setting, the game becomes very, very difficult as early on as the second level. Sure, killing hordes of orcs is a lot of fun, but killing hordes of orcs over and over again on the same level is not.

Meh.

Overall, I had a rather sub-par experience with Return of the King. The gameplay, graphics, and sound enhanced the gameplay, but the difficulty drug it right back down. At some points I had a lot of fun, at others I found myself frustrated and throwing my keyboard around. If you're going to get Return of the King, plan on investing some time playing levels over and over again.

Poor Use of a Great License

The lackluster quality of this game really makes me sad, especially looking at it's source material. The Return of the King was arguably one of the best movies of 2003, but the game hardly reflected that. And as a part of The Lord of the Rings franchise, hardcore fans were expecting a lot. It's too bad the game couldn't live up to the greatness of the movie, because if it had, we would've had a true gem.