What happened EA? You have the resources to release a great "Two Towers" game, and now you give us THIS crap!
I'll start this review with the only good part, the sound. Taken straight from the movie source, and featuring some great effects, this game is a truly sonic marvel to hear. You hear blades crashing, fire burning, all the feel of battle, honor, glory, and adveture are there to hear. The voice talent, being the original actors, is excellent, and the movie effects and sound blend perfectly into the game. If sound alone was what made a game great, this would get a 10. Sadly, right after you hear all the amazement and wonder of this game, you have to deal with the rest of it.
Graphics- I don't know quite how to describe them, oh, I know, CRAPY! Most people who played the game before seing the movie must have wondered when Gimli's beard sudenly was struck with rigormortis. In fact, it looks like they took a picture of an old Irish guy, crumpled up the picture in a pocket on the way to EA studio, and used elmer's glue to paste it to one very huge polygon that became Gimli's head. These graphic are more or less composed of very few polygons, and EA figured if they took a high-res pictire of an actor, and slapped it on a wire-frame manakin, it would look just like them! Well, guess what EA, these are the kind of graphics I describe as DRY. Sure, the textures are really high-res, but the walls are pretty square, so the result looks like a cut and paste job. The lighting is horrible, I could go on and on about how ugly this game is but I'll end my rant with this. EA, I'd like you to call year 2004 and ask them how long it's been since 1999, they should get you up to speed. Oh, and while you're at it, get some advice for Harry Potter to, it looks even worse.
Gameplay- When I saw the movie, I came out wanting to slay orcs, not slay two rocs then go save Orlando bloom from a knome of an orc, and then have ten second to get back to the gate so a troll doesn't rampage on panicing retreating women, then race to save gandalf, and then...you see my point. I want to stay in one place and hack at orcs. Which should be easy given how incredibly small the areas are for the battlefield levels. Funny, In the movie I could have sworn they were a few miles wide, not the size of a football field with rocks hampering most movement. I see how that idea of standing still and slashing could get tiring quickly, and how it would be good to switch up the gameplay a little bit, but switching it every thirty seconds is not nearly long enough time to satisfy. Even when you do get a minute or two to go postal, the enemies all gang up on you, and you can't see yourself in all the blur, and since you can't block anything but what's in front of you you get beaten down ridiculously fast. The difficulty curve is horrid. Three levels in you are cursing at ghosts that won't leave you alone long enought to make a door open, then you meet up with a ghost king boss, straight from the movie, except in the movie, no one fought ghosts but orcs, and they just fell ove dead. Although that boss is a push-over in comparison to others, he's painfully frustrating the first time you meet him. The difficulty elevates way to quickly, the casual gamer will hate this game before the first boss. Generally I rule at hack and slash, and this game is an insult to the genre. EA, call the Prince of Persia team at Ubi Soft, they know how video game combat works with more than one enemy, liekewise you can't handle it with one.
There are other parts of this game I could rant about, but there's just no point. My final score for this game is a 2 out of 10
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