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J.R. Tolkien’s fantasy world of Lord of the Rings couldn’t go better hand-in-hand with LEGOs. In 2012, Traveller’s Tales and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment teamed up and released LEGO The Lord of The Rings for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Wii. Is this the one LEGO game to rule them all? There’s one LEGO game to rule them all in this LEGO Lord of the Rings review!
LEGO Lord of the Rings Plot:
You certainly shouldn’t rely on my crappy reviews to explain in detail the fantasy world of Lord of the Rings. I’m a huge proponent of reading books especially when books become movies. Movies NEVER do the book(s) justice just look at the Harry Potter movies for example. Unfortunately for me, I’m a bit of a hypocrite when it comes to The Lord of the Rings. I have the trilogy in books and I’ve tried to read The Fellowship of the Ring on multiple occasions but it’s hard! J.R. Tolkien’s writing is no easy essay to skim through as his writing isn’t for the impatient. Perhaps I’ll try again, but until then, I’ve just watched the movies so shame on me.
SHAME ON YOU though if you don’t know the story of Lord of The Rings! Shame on you so much that I won’t even bother putting in a quick summary of it. Go watch the movies or if you’re a better person than me, go read the books.
LEGO Lord of the Rings Gameplay:
My wife and I were coming off the heels of playing LEGO Harry Potter so I thought for the most part that LEGO Lord of the Rings would be similar. In many ways it is but there are some slight differences in the gameplay. The biggest difference is the voice acting. There are no voices in the Harry Potter games, just mimicking and strange noises like characters from The Sims make. In LEGO Lord of the Rings, Traveller’s Tale must have acquired the rights to voices from the Lord of the Rings movies because when a cut scene occurs the voices of Elijah Wood, Orlando Bloom, Viggo Mortensen, and other favorites are included in the game. They didn’t rerecord the voices, but they are ripped straight from the movies. I’m not sure how I feel about the voices being included. In LEGO Harry Potter, they portrayed the characters so well without speaking that it was believable that I was watching Harry, Ron, and Hermoine. In LEGO LOTR, there’s less room for humor as the characters speak the lines from the movies.
Another difference I found was the difficulty. Sure, Harry Potter is more geared toward kids and LOTR has more of a widened age in the fanbase. Maybe it’s because LOTR has older fans, but the LEGO version is a bit more difficult than LEGO Harry Potter. We found ourselves dying more often and in some instances on numerous occasions during fights. Instead of shooting foes with spells, we used swords, axes, arrows, and frying pans! You have to get up close and personal with your enemies in LEGO LOTR so maybe that led to us dying a few more times. It also probably didn’t help that you can hurt your friends if you are playing co-op. If you swing your sword too close to your partner, you better believe they lose a heart too.
All the famous battles and scenes from the movies are included in the games and that means you’ll be outnumbered in almost every battle as tons and tons of orcs come to splat your brains. You can upgrade your weapons and armor by finding hidden mithril blocks throughout Middle Earth or performing tasks for citizens in need. LEGO LOTR is an open-world game that lets you explore Middle Earth as you make your way to Mordor. We’d go through towns and speak to everyone in need or explore forests and rivers for hidden treasures. I was so impressed with the number of secrets and activities you can do in this game. You’ll play the games as the main characters but that doesn’t mean you’ll have to stick to them. You can replay any level as other characters like orcs, secondary characters, and even Golem! You’ll need to replay levels if you want to complete the game 100 percent as some areas are only unlockable on multiple playthroughs. Each character plays different and comes with their own set of skills and strengths for you to discover. It’s almost overwhelming the amount of replayability that this game presents and I wish I had time to play through the game as every character.
Just like in LEGO Harry Potter, we found some very annoying glitches. In one instance, we needed to enter a building to start a cut scene but it wouldn’t trigger no matter how many times we entered the building or left the area and came back. At first, we thought we were doing something wrong or was missing something but that wasn’t the case. We had to restart the PS3 and replay through a portion of the game before reaching the building again. Thankfully the cutscene happened but it was very annoying that we had to redo all that work. There were other times that we’d slide LEGOs together to make a mithril block only for it not to form. If we restarted the game, the blocks would work but it makes me wonder how many bugs this game has.
Boss fights are very fun and unlike LEGO Harry Potter, these fights aren’t always easy or obvious on how to win. My wife and I got pretty heated a few times when we didn’t know how to advance on a boss or if they continued to kill us. Each boss felt unique on how to kill them and every massive battle felt refreshing. It never got old killing orcs, or climbing monster elephants to wreak havoc. You’ll be doing plenty of killing in LEGO LOTR, you’ll probably die too.
Memories:
I purchased the LEGO Harry Potter video game collection when it was on sale on the PlayStation store because I thought my wife might like it. She loved it and so did I so for her birthday, one of the gifts I bought her was LEGO The Lord of the Rings on the PlayStation 3. We had so much fun exploring Middle Earth and all it had to offer. I came away impressed again by the ability of Traveller’s Tale to put together a fun game not only for kids but for adults too who love the fantasy worlds that are being played in.
Just like in the LEGO Harry Potter games if you collected enough LEGO coins you’d be granted the title of “True Adventurer” (True Wizard in Harry Potter) but my wife liked yelling it out so much whenever we achieved this title that to this day she still annoyingly blurts it out randomly.
LEGO Lord of the Rings Review Score:
LEGO LOTR is a bit more mature than the LEGO Harry Potter Collection. It’s more difficult with the combat and boss fights but it’s still plenty of fun. There are a few bugs in the game that can ruin hours of gameplay if you aren’t careful but the overall open-world exploration of Middle Earth is so much fun especially if you have someone to share it with.
LEGO The Lord of the Rings scores an 8 out of 10.
What would you write in your LEGO Lord of the Rings review? Do you remember when LEGO LOTR first came out? What was your favorite character to play as? What was your favorite game in the trilogy? Was there a boss fight that kicked your butt? Let me know your memories and thoughts, I’d love to read the comments!
Tiger Chainsaw 