Full Review

When you see a movie as amazing as The Lord of the Rings (Whether it be The Two Towers or even The Fellowship of the Ring), one of the first things young people like to do is to play some game based on the characters exploits. “The Two Towers” for Game Boy Advance allows you to do just that.

In the very beginning, you are given a choice; you can be either Frodo Baggins, Aragorn, Legolas, Gandalf, or Eowyn (the first game based on Tolkien’s universe which features Eowyn as a player character). Aragorn’s the warrior, Legolas is the archer, Gandalf is the wizard, Eowyn’s the hot warrior chick, and Frodo is a thief type character who can use the One Ring to occasionally escape from enemies. Your choice of characters depends really on who’s your favorite character in the series, and what sort of gaming style you employ in Diablo-esque environments. Speaking of which …

For those of you who have played Blizzard’s Diablo series on the PC, you’ll find that this style of play is nothing at all new. In fact, one could say that this game is Diablo; except that it has a GBA engine and the player characters and enemies are based on the LOTR movies. Oh yes, and some of the items have some semblance of Tolkien tacked on to them, for example, Numeanor double mail, elf cloak, orc large shield, and the sword “Orcrist” (how this famed sword manages to escape from the tomb of Thorin Oakenshield, we’ll never know).

In a way, I’m disappointed in this game. It’s quite predictable. You wander from one map to the other, killing basically the same monsters. The game is quite linear, offering no choice of different paths. There’s only one path, and you have to follow it faithfully if you want to be treated to an ending sequence using actual footage from the Two Towers movie. Killing is the only element, aside from pushing a few buttons – pulling some levers, triggering doors to open when you are in Moria. That leads me to yet another question; if this game is called “The Two Towers”, then why is at least half the gameplay from “Fellowship of the Ring”?

The funniest part is, I fondly recall a “Two Towers” game created by Interplay way back in 1992. I actually found this game to be very very entertaining. Mainly because it was not obsessed with combat, you were allowed to explore quite a bit, and there were loads and loads of sidequests that you could perform. I still have this game on my hard drive, and interestingly enough, I find it to be more fun than even this newly-released Gameboy Advance game.

Aside from these gripes, the graphics and sound are quite good as far as Gameboy Advance games go. As I said before, you are treated to actual movie footage, something that I have never before seen in a Gameboy Advance game. Most seasoned gamers could complete this game in two or three hours. From there, you could select another player character, but it’s pretty much the same game, using separate tactics. If you’re a fan of the LOTR movies (LOTR book fan “purists” will probably balk at this game) and/or Diablo style games, you wont mind the repetition at all. From what I see, there are three main paths to follow; Aragorn/Legolas/Gandalf, Frodo Baggins, and Eowyn. The first three characters that I mentioned basically take you to the same locales, the only difference being you’re using different fighting tactics.

So what is my final verdict? 2 ½ stars out of 5. Since we cannot select this as an option on epinions, I’ll defer my rating to 3 stars. I gave it a slight bump up because first of all, it’s Christmas and I’m feeling generous, and second, it is a very good, solid action game. I’m personally not a huge fan of action games; I prefer adventure style games on the GBA such as “Castlevania Circle of the Moon”, where you can do quite a bit of exploring. The designers of this game could have made a fantastic adventure game here, but I believe they were in a big rush to have this game available in time for the Christmas rush.

So yet another fantastic series has succumb to the talons of commercialism. It’s par for the course. If this game makes me yearn for a 1992 VGA graphic adventure game, that’s about the only meaningful thing that I can say about it. Hopefully some of you out there will appreciate it much more than me. I’ll readily admit that for a long trip with a gameboy advance, EA’s new GBA game “The Two Towers” will most certainly pass the time. But what is the best thing for you to do in such a situation? Simple. Buy a copy of “The Two Towers” at your local bookstore and savor every page.

The Fellowship of the Ring (film)

The Two Towers (film)

The Return of the King (film)