LEGO The Lord of the Rings: The Video Game Review, 9.8 out of 10 based on 4 ratings

It’s a great time for the LEGO brand. In addition to having the hit Ninjago: Masters of Spinjitsu series, (which is wrapping up its second season at the time of this review), there was also the release of LEGO Batman 2: DC Superheroes, which was well-received by critics and sold quite well across the multiple platforms it was released on. Finally, this month brought two more games that were part of the LEGO franchise: LEGO City Undercover for the Wii U and, today’s subject, LEGO The Lord of the Rings: The Video Game. While the other two games gave developer Traveler’s Tales complete freedom with what it could do, LEGO The Lord of the Rings is a return to the movie adaptations the franchise has been known for since LEGO Star Wars. Can the series still keep the charm and addictive gameplay that have made it so popular, or has the formula finally gone stale?

LEGO The Lord of the Rings is tricky to talk about. For one thing, the plot is exactly that of the movies, so if you’ve seen them, you know what’s going to happen. The game takes advantage of this by abridging the plot heavily so the game can focus on the humor and gameplay. The cutscenes serve to get the members of the fellowship from one action set piece to the next and each level is based on one of the movies’ action scenes, with filler added to pad out the shorter segments (the fight on Weathertop, for example).

THE LORD OF THE BRACELETS.

The core gameplay has also not changed much from past games. You run through each level, fighting enemies and breaking objects by pressing ‘X’ while also collecting as many LEGO studs as you can so you can purchase new characters and buy cheat-enabling red bricks. While you can’t really lose (dying just costs you studs), the challenge is not getting hit so you can hold on to as many studs as you can. All playable characters have special abilities which can be used to solve puzzles and find secrets within levels (for example, Legolas can jump higher than other characters and shoot targets), and you’ll need to revisit levels in freeplay mode so you can collect all the minikits, design plans, and studs in a level so you can collect a rare type of brick, in this case, the mithril brick.

The mithril bricks are one of the unique features of this game. Once you get to Bree, you can begin forging mithril items. These items can be used in freeplay mode or while you are exploring the world to either fill in for a power you are missing (such as making a mithril rope so you can fill in for not having Sam’s elven rope) or for fun effects like a disco phial that makes everyone start a rave or a hammer that turns enemies into studs. However, to make these items, you’ll need to collect multiple mithril bricks, so there is an incentive for you to keep replaying levels and exploring the world for more bricks.

Hobbiton looks gorgeous in this game.

Speaking of the world exploration, one of the big selling points of this game is the open-world aspect of the game. While this isn’t a sandbox game, you can explore all of the big locations from the movies and even a few areas made for the game. While you’re travelling around Middle-Earth, you can take on lots of sidequests in addition to hunting down Mithril Bricks , such as destroying statues, racing animals, raising the dead (a lot less macabre than it sounds), and taking on fetch quests. Fetch quests require you to either forge an item and bring it to someone or find one of the hidden treasures in a level and bring it back. The quests are optional but they can also be surprisingly annoying since many of them require a sidequest to even unlock.

From an aesthetic standpoint, LEGO The Lord of the Rings actually surprised me quite a bit. Admittedly, there’s a limit to how good LEGO pieces can look but Traveler’s Tales makes up for it in two ways. First off, anything that isn’t made of LEGOs looks great. One of the first sights that took my breath away was walking around Hobbiton. All of the grass looked amazingly lush and the water looked pristine. All of the areas are faithfully and lovingly created from the movies’ visual style. The second way Traveler’s Tales impresses is in how none of the epicness from The Lord of the Rings is lost from being played out with plastic toys. The massive battles still have hundreds of soldiers running around (even if half of the time they can’t be interacted with) and the developers took things to the next level by having some of the more action-packed segments, such as Gandalf’s midair battle with the Balrog, become on-the-rails segments where you are racing at high-speeds, sometimes through hundreds of killable enemies, while the game’s score (which is taken from the films) swells louder and louder. These sections are a blast to play and help keep the gameplay from getting monotonous.

That’s not to say there aren’t some flaws with the gameplay, in fact, there are two big ones that keep the score from being higher: the camera and how freeplay works. The camera in this game only gives you limited control and is even fixed in some cases. While this works from an aesthetic standpoint, since it gives the battles a very cinematic feel, it can make it difficult to judge the actual distance you need to leap for some of the platforming segments, as well as where some of the cliffs and pitfalls are. This isn’t going to ruin the experience but if you’re buying this game for your kids, expect the occasional thrown controller.

How completionists will look by the time they reach 100%.

Freeplay is another area that’s irksome but not game ruining. While the freeplay mode for the regular levels plays the same as other LEGO games, when combined with the mithril items and open world aspects, it starts to show its flaws. While the levels are story-based the first time around, meaning that it would make sense as to why certain characters or abilities would be locked, even the open world portions of the game prevent you from using unlocked characters to search for side items until you beat the game. While this makes sense from a plot perspective, especially when the game splits the party following the Fellowship of the Ring (You can switch between the two parties at any time when you’re not in a level), it negatively impacts the gameplay. Once the party is split, one party can’t fast travel to some waypoints that the other party can, which can leave you having to run hallway across the map if you decide to make a side trip following a level. This creates an incentive for players to just rush through the game and not even bother collecting anything (since treasure and mithril items can’t be used in levels until they are replayed) until Free Play mode is unlocked, which makes the otherwise well-designed levels a hurdle.

However, I still highly recommend this game because of what it and a lot of other LEGO games excel at: humor and content. This game is hilarious and has a wide assortment of jokes. In this game, there are slapstick jokes, fourth-wall breaking jokes, absurdist humor, bloopers, using quotes out of context, and even reference jokes about other video games and movies. The humor comes out naturally and left me in stitches more than once, especially during the scene where Boromir gets shot by Lurtz (let’s just say that the Uruk-Hai starts getting creative with what he shoots at him). The game is extremely funny and will have gamers of all ages laughing.

The amount of unlockables in this game is also ridiculous. In addition to all the minkits, mithril blocks, treasure, and side quests, you also can unlock 84 characters, as well as find bonus levels and secret areas. To give you an idea about how many hours of content there are in this game, I played the game for about twenty hours, beat all the levels and unlocked a host of bonus characters and mithril bricks and still only got about 32% completion. I played another 10 hours with Free Play unlocked, found a secret bonus level and forged over half of the mithril items…I barely got over 50% completion. If you’re looking for a game that offers a big bang for your buck or gives something to keep your kids busy for more than a weekend, then this game will meet your need.

Sauron’s forces make a run on Toys-R-US for a Wii U.

Overall, LEGO The Lord of the Rings did what it needed to do. It doesn’t stray too far from the tried and true formula that Traveler’s Tales has developed since LEGO Star Wars but it doesn’t have to. It’s still hilarious, still packs the quality gameplay that has made the series so poular, and has an amazing amount of playtime. The few changes that were made do have issues but they still add some fun shake-ups to the game play and help make the gameplay even more addictive. If you liked the past games in this franchise, you’ll love this and, if you have kids, they’ll have a blast. If you haven’t played any of the past LEGO games, this is a pretty good place to start.

A copy of the game was purchased for review and the main game was beaten in 20 hours with an additional 10 hours spent to explore post-game content. The title was played on the Xbox 360 but is also available on Windows, the PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii, PlayStation Vita, Nintendo 3DS, and Nintendo DS.

LEGO The Lord of the Rings: The Video Game Review

By Gabriel B.

None can resist the will of quality kids games.