The Lord of the Rings is by far one of literary fiction’s greatest works. J. R. R. Tolkien, already a renowned author when he wrote this trilogy, single-handedly defined the high fantasy genre. The adventures of Frodo Baggins and his Fellowship to destroy the One Ring has stood the test of time for over 60 years. Though Tolkien died back in 1973, the expansive world of Middle-Earth that he created will live on until the end of time. And you can bet that many aspiring creators will continue to use the same themes featured in The Lord of the Rings as inspiration to help make their own fantasy epics (A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin comes to mind)
Obviously the one true way to enjoy The Lord of the Rings is in print. It’s where it began and it’s where any fan will inevitably go. But for several decades, people have flocked to Tolkien’s epic with the desire to make an adaptation. Peter Jackson’s Academy Award nominated/winning films are the perfect examples of adaptations done right. Yet while Jackson succeeded in turning an “unfilmable” series into a massive hit, countless others failed before him. This same exact history applies to the video game adaptations as well. While there are plenty of shining examples of amazing LOtR based games, there’s quite a sizable list of those that were just plain terrible. 
Games based on LOtR and corresponding novels have been around for a long time. The series was already world famous by the time video games became huge. However, similar to Jackson’s epic trilogy, technology simply wasn’t strong enough to give the material its due. Beam Software’s The Fellowship of the Ring computer game in 1985 tried this after they successfully made The Hobbit in 1982, but it was not memorable by any means. It truly wasn’t until Jackson revitalized interest in the brand in the early 2000s that Middle-Earth came to home consoles in a way that it truly deserved. And it was done on the backs of video games based on movies!
Now, you’ve heard me discuss ad nauseum how film based games are usually terrible. There are, however, some bright spots, and two of them are games based on Jackson’s film trilogy. I say two because The Fellowship of the Ring‘s adaptation was both based on the books and a big disappointment. It was its sequels by Electronic Arts based on The Two Towers and The Return of the King that were outstanding. Along with Spider-Man 2, these are two games I will always look at for movie adaptations done right. The hack-and-slash nature of gameplay was surprisingly fluid and each game looked absolutely amazing. In Two Towers you could only play as Aragorn, Gimli, Legolas, and secretly Isildur, but Return of the King gave you Gandalf, Frodo, and Sam as well. Each character featured robust skill sets that could be developed to deliver some very devastating combos. In regards to story, The Return of the King was created in conjunction with New Line Cinema, successfully allowing the player to literally experience this Best Picture winning film first hand. Plus, and it sucks that this isn’t even a norm, but not all games feature the same actors voicing their characters. These did and it was spectacular.
From this point on, video game popularity went in the same trajectory of the films. The series became big again and now everyone wanted a piece of it. This allowed various developers to create some truly great entries that weren’t based on a specific film. One especially solid entry is The Lord of the Rings Online. Tolkien’s Middle-Earth is a vast place and LOtRO let people experience it on their own accord. True to the series, your character could be a man, hobbit, dwarf, or elf, and you can romp around all the classic areas like Gondor and Rohan. You can even join a fellowship! To those who wanted to re-live the grand scale battles LOtR is best known for, there’s the real-time strategy game The Battle for Middle-Earth. Quite frankly, LOtR needed technology to catch up before it got its due, and when it did, we all reaped the benefits.
Like every good property, not everything based on LOtR was truly great. Some were downright terrible actually. Remember how I mentioned The Fellowship of the Ring earlier? Yeah, that’s one of them. Developed by multiple companies for release on several consoles, 2002’s Fellowship was simply a disappointment. No one from the popular film was involved (again, it was based on the book), the graphics looked a bit shoddy, and it lacked the sense of scale people were familiar with. It really didn’t help that it came out right when Jackson’s version of Two Towers hit theaters and when that movie’s game became available. Really, with the incredible Two Towers available, why even bother with this middling disappointment? Another good example was Conquest in 2009, a completely bungled mess that tried to emulate the movies and totally failed. Sometimes LOtR is simply too difficult to replicate.
I have loved LOtR since the moment I saw Fellowship in theaters back in 2001. My Dad was a fan and brought me and my siblings to see it for ourselves. The production was simply breathtaking. Naturally I saw the rest in theaters and still hold each film in high regard. As for the games, I’ve unfortunately played very little, but I did own Two Towers for a very long time. To me, if there is one LOtR game I needed to have, that was it. I played that every possible way and completely maxed out my favorite character (Legolas). I also played a bit of Return of the King, but never actually got around to buying it. Oddly enough that movie was my favorite. Unfortunately, when I compare it to the others, Fellowship doesn’t match up.
Tolkien’s masterpiece is still strong in the hearts of many. The recently released Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor is proof of this. That game is absolutely tearing up review websites praising its style, detailed combat system, and engrossing story. There’s no reason to believe it’s not on its way to entering that revered list of top games related to LOtR and Middle-Earth. Just like how the property will live on forever, we’ll likely never run out of tributes to this paragon of high fantasy. But as we’ve seen throughout its lifetime, there will be plenty of bad to accompany the good. It’s simply a fact of entertainment. To paraphrase the ever popular Boromir, one does not simply create a good game featuring core races of heroes fighting against orcs.
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Luke Kalamar is Pop-Break.com’s television and every Saturday afternoon you can read his retro video game column, Remembering the Classics. He covers Game of Thrones, Saturday Night Live and The Walking Dead (amongst others) every week. As for as his career and literary standing goes — take the best parts of Spider-man, Captain America and Luke Skywalker and you will fully understand his origin story.
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