Lego Lord of the Rings review

[EvilBoris]

Another day and another Lego Crossover.

Being no big fan of Star Wars, Batman or Indianna Jones meant I'd never really bothered giving them a look, only having briefly played demos.

I've played a few hours of this and I'm kinds pleasantly surprised, the gameplay itself is pretty basic, jumping and punching things makes up the majority of the gameplay.
Most of the time you have the rest of the fellowship with you and most characters have their own abilities which you can use to gain access to the next area or find secret items.

The Story missions are told using the audio from the film, with the cute minifigure characters acting out their own version of the scene. They range from mildly amusing to totally nuts. My favourite was seeing Boromir's death scene , a plastic Lego Bananna delivering the finally blow to his heart.

Between the missions there is a free roaming world to explore, there are various missions and many hidden items which you need to of unlocked the correct character to access.

I'm plodding on through it, mostly just so I can absorb myself in the wonderful world and hear the fantastic music again.

The thing that has surprised me the most is the graphics, I'm not even joking when I say this, but its one of the best looking games I've played. Outside of the plastic bricks, the environments you play in are lovingly textured and the lighting is astounding. The whole game is laden with high quality motion blur, depth of field and atmospheric effects. Really beautiful.

[EvilBoris]

No Lego loving? Awww

I am tempted to go and buy a Lego gandalf

[Guts]

Is the gameplay same simple and easy as in the previous Lego games (I've tried the SW ones and the Harry Potter)? Is there any variety? To me they always felt too much as games for smaller kids with their simple gameplay and lack of any challenge in the campaign.

The style and humour was great in these and I do love me some Lord of the Rings. It's probably more fun with a friend than solo?

[gambit6613]

This is without doubt the most brilliant Lego game to date. I absolutely love Lord Of The Rings and i have been waiting for this since it was announced. The actual scale of the game is incredible, i was not sure what to expect from the open world of Middle Earth but the sheer fact you can walk from Hobbiton any location is just brilliant, i mean the scale is so impressive easily much more then Batman 2. So far im only about half way through The Fellowship and the usual Lego humor is intact and brilliantly done.

Boris is right, this game really is an absolute stunner, not just for a Lego game but probably one of the best on Xbox. The views are so good to look at and the view distance is remarkable, from walking along the path to the Misty Mountains and seeing Rivendell in the background, brilliant stuff.

Probably the best thing with the Lego games is the sheer value for money you get from them. This is huge with so much to see and do, i can see me ploughing many many hours into this.

If you compare the later Lego games with the first Star Wars ones, its just amazing the way the games have come on in terms of scale. I really would love them to re-visit the Star Wars universe again but somehow incorporate the huge open worlds into them, that could be just epic if done correctly.

[EvilBoris]

Is the gameplay same simple and easy as in the previous Lego games (I've tried the SW ones and the Harry Potter)? Is there any variety? To me they always felt too much as games for smaller kids with their simple gameplay and lack of any challenge in the campaign.

The style and humour was great in these and I do love me some Lord of the Rings. It's probably more fun with a friend than solo?

It still is pretty basic and quite often repetitive, it's the cutscenes and the locations that are driving me forward.

[Adam]

I am tempted to go and buy a Lego gandalf

They were giving away LEGO Frodo and Urukai in The Daily Star a little while back heh.

I'm still early on at Moria but so far I find the game super simple. Which is to be expected from a LEGO game I suppose. Every time I try to do something different I run into obstacles, I don't have the characters to unlock this path yet. Or don't have a bucket to fill with water yet etc. The blue quest tracker line thingy also likes to switch from what I put it on, to it's own thing without telling me all the time. Funny stuff though, Gandalf

->Open Spoiler<-

hitting his head in bag end and Saruman swatting the moth thing away was great lol!

[sj33]

I received this from my brother for Christmas, which is a great choice as I've really not felt like playing a more 'meaty', serious game recently. I've not played much of the Lego games, though I did recently pick up the Harry Potter game which I am enjoying.

I've only reached Moria so far, but I'm really enjoying this. A light-hearted, humourous take on an established story, with simply gameplay and relatively low difficulty level, yet with enough depth and variety to the gameplay so that it continues to be a joy to play. It takes me back to the days when I played a game purely because I actually enjoyed to play it, rather than feeling some obligation to plow through an overarching campaign. The inclusion of voices from the films really does wonders for the humour, and the ability to revisit previous areas once newer abilities/characters are unlocked and complete previously-unlocked quests gives the game a huge amount of replay value, even after completing the main story.

I can see myself grabbing the previous Lego games and working my way through those. This is a joy to play.

[Neon Ignition]

Been working through this for much of the last week. Lego Batman 2 now really feels like a test bed for this as there's a similarity in the way the series is developing but this is done so much better. The only real weakness, which will depend on what you want from it, is the license as it doesn't have the same level of tongue in cheekness and the array of distinct characters these games usually rely on. It is however better than pretty much every Lego game before it and the series has gone from me mostly ignoring it after growing tired to Lego Marvel Super Heroes being high on my watch list.

[Briareos]

Just finished the main story on this and have started going back over the map getting all the mythril pieces and quests I need before I revisit the story quests on free play. It?s very satisfying now I have enough of the Lego character toolset to be able to unlock every obstacle in my path, I?m clearing the board in the day, then will go around at night and then hammer through the story quests. This may well be the first game I platinum and be happy doing so rather than feeling like a slog!

On a side note I?m glad there seems to be no penalty to using red bricks (I only just found out) so I?m going to turn a few on now to help in my adventures.