Fido, Gendolf, Sammy, Mirry, Poppin, Barrowmir, Regolas, Arogarn and Spimli

The Dickyblog Games Review
Issue 1
'The Lord of the Rings, The Third Age'

My life for an underline tag. Comment if you know one!

So, The Third Age. I shall start by linking this summary of the game, courtesy of our good friend and role-model, Ethan. Read it? Fantoobious.

Let me clarify what is said in the strip. Yup, thar be teh co-op battles. Yup, ye be not the Fellowship. And while this in theory sounds like a terrible waste, I for one think it's rather clever. I mean, even someone completely ignorant by now knows the basic plot of LOTR, let alone the rivals to Ian Spodworth (the ultimate Tolkien nerd). Since this plot must be stuck to very rigidly, it means that playing the game will be pointless. In any argument I have about which is better of FFVII and FFVIII (i'm such a fanboy...) I ignore arguments about the graphics, the gameplay, the battles etc and focus on what good RPG's are made of : the story.

When you read a book, you're reading it for the story. You're reading it to get to know the characters, their situations, their world, their personalities, and how the events of the narrative affect them. The illustrations may look fantastic, they may be stick men or not there at all. It's better if they are good, becuase its more of a visual relief. But your main focus should be on the words. If the words are nonsense, you won't read it, no matter how nice the illustrations.

RPG's should be judged on STORY first, all else second

And so now to The Third Age. By playing as a character not in the Fellowship, it gives the developers more leeway in the story. For example, before you've even started playing the game, your character is attacked by 3 of the Nazgul. I was crapping myself. This was about the equivalent time that the Fellowship left Rivendell, and here I was fighting Ringwraiths! Who cares about the Fellowship now?

Their are many quests that simply coudl not have been done had you been the Fellowship. For instance, killing 3 packs of Wargs in the roads over Caradhras. So, thank you EA for giving us something new to do! ROTK was good and all, but I knew the story enough to know what would happen.

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Anyhoogan, having lingered on my opinion on the setup and story, we go to what I look for next in my RPG's. The battle system in this game is very simple to use. The reason for that being that it is almost a direct copy of Final Fantasy X's, right down to the CTB bar. Compare these screenshots:

Final Fantasy X
The Third Age

Well, at least I know how to use it... the animations are also very swish, the sounds very similar to those of the films, so it's like a slow version of the films (or the other games.)

I haven't played that far into the game to warrant much else, but since it goes back tomorrow as it is a rental, there wouldn't have been that much I could have written about. I want to get to Moria sharpish though. Cave Trolls and Balrogs!