When the topic of LEGO games comes up, unanimously, I have heard nothing but good things. Therefore, I was pretty excited to see a Lord of the Rings one come out. I have never played any of these, so this would be my first foray into LEGO land.
There is a certain charm to seeing movie scenes play out with LEGO characters, I'll give it that, but the actual gameplay sadly wasn't really all that fun. Leaving the Shire, there wasn't really anything to do. You just follow the blue stud trail to your next destination. You can mosey around and beat the hell out of random rocks and plants so little LEGO studs come out, but since that is not fun, I just left. After you're out of the Shire, the four hobbits meet up, and you can control each of them. Considering they're LEGO people and very similar looking, I couldn't tell who the hell was who. This was only really a problem with the hobbits since the others are fairly distinct with their beards, blonde hair, or dwarfism.
Each character has unique abilities that you use to get around blockages and solve puzzles. These unique abilities are a little weird though... Merry can fish, Pippin can collect water in his bucket... Sorry to break it to you, Pip, that was a pity ability. Any motherfucker can do that. No one's playing you. Sam's abilities are more prolific. He can dig shit up, start fires, and grow plants. However, I kind of had a problem accepting the use of these abilities during gameplay and especially during combat. No problem was ever solved in Lord of the Rings by digging holes or fishing. Problems were solved by stabbing it right in the problem.
I encountered more brain resistance when I came across any side quest. While in Bree, for example, some guy had apparently lost his cooking pot and would be ever so grateful if we went back out in the woods and found it. Umm...no. There's a sense of urgency to this tale. We gotta go meet Gandalf at the Prancing Pony. No way I'm traipsing back in the woods to look for some asshole's cooking pot. In that same vein, I ran across an Uruk-hai that lost his weapon and wanted me to find it. Heeeelllll no. How about I try to kill you instead?
Pity...it won't let me. Whatever, I'm still not looking for your shit, and even if I happen to run across it, I'm not bringing it back. Deal with it.
I skipped quite a bit, actually. There are many side quests, items, and collectibles that you can't even get until your second playthrough. Each level has items that are unreachable unless you have a certain character with you. For example, Gimli's special ability is to break cracked LEGO tiles. These tiles exist throughout the game, even in places where Gimli never actually was, like Osgiliath. You'd have to play Osgiliath again after it's been unlocked, bringing Gimli the second time. Fuck that shit.
There's a lot of that though. I played through the main storyline completely, and at the end, it said I had only completed 24% of the game. I'm only a completist when I'm enjoying myself. 24% is just fine when I'm not.
Now hold on, I wasn't hating my life the entire time. I did quite enjoy the Helms Deep section. There were lots of orcs to kill, and you had to keep the different ladders off the walls in different ways which kept it interesting. Some you had to shoot down, others you smashed, so you had to switch between Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli. It was also kind of cool to use the tossing a person mechanic to throw Gimli across at the orcs carrying the battering ram, just like in the movie. The "LEGO humor" was pretty good in this section as well. I remember specifically enjoying that when they were bracing the gate with various things, they pushed a piano in front of the doors. Being an ent and smashing the shit out of Saruman's machinations was also quite enjoyable. Hooray for joy!
For the most part though, I was just waiting for it to be over. It was very repetitive overall. Once you figured out what to do, you had to do it like 12 more times. I was going through the motions for most of the game. I know these LEGO games skew younger, but I had heard all these positive things from grown ass people. I've now decided that they're all liars.
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