365//365: Day 241 – Fellowship of the Ring (PS2) [Comparison Series]

The Lord of the Rings trilogy has been the inspiration for many video games and other related media. When Peter Jackson did a film adaptation of the cherished book series, movie goers went in droves, both new to the series, as well as long time fans. The franchise made such a huge splash in theaters and garnered so much positive press, that it was nominated for thirty Academy Awards, and won seventeen of those nominations, with Return of the King landing Best Picture. With the across the board success of Jackson’s film adaptation, the typical movie cash in video games were released. While The Two Towers and Return of the King followed closely to the movie and were published and developed by Stormfront Studios and EA, Fellowship of the Ring was based off the source material, as well as developed by a totally different company (Surreal Software) and published by Black Label Games. Will the first title, sticking closer to the source material, be the best of the bunch? Will the EA developed and published title Return of the King be the one to bring glory to your controller? Perhaps Two Towers, developed by Stormfront Studios, tower over its peers? One Game to rule them all, One Game to….ohh you know! Lets find out as the Comparison Series takes a look at the Lord of the Rings trilogy, from Fellowship of the Rings (PS2), The Two Towers (Xbox) and Return of the King (GC). As always, on the final day of the Comparison Series, a winner will be selected for Visuals, Audio, Gameplay and Replay Value, as well as the scores for each title, with an overall winner selected.

Today’s focus will be on Fellowship of the Rings, on the PS2.

An early in the life cycle release on the PS2, Fellowship of the Ring was to follow the source material closely. Naturally, the narratives and dialogs are performed with vocal cues to add more of an immersion to the experience. The voice actors are well suited for their rolls, although Gandalf doesn’t convey enough emotion through what he speaks. The birds chirping around the more populated or forest areas add a layer of authenticity to the world around you. The soundtrack feels quite appropriate, almost soothing at points. It’s a well put together audio presentation.

Character models reek of early PS2 detail, or lack thereof. Thankfully they do animate well when on the move.

Fellowship of the Ring paints a pretty plain picture with its looks. Animation wise, it’s pretty strong with no real stuttering or random drops out of the blue. It does look pretty low budget how you’ll spin slowly back and forth if you’re literally in the middle of a conversation between two NPC’s. Lip syncing is pretty poorly implemented, although around the time it was released, There’s a decent amount of detail about, but nothing that screams “high production value” or anything. With such simplicity to the visuals as a while, its a wonder why there’s no on screen map when you need it. Especially early on in the game, you’ll struggle to find where you go right away, wasting time in the process.

You’ll notice a lot of similarities between Fellowship of the Ring and The Ocarina of Time, as they both feature a third person gameplay, a lot of early running around through a town and such. Unfortunately, these aspects that are present in FotR really bog down the pace of the game, making you wish you could just skip through to see the rest of it. Given the fact that load times are pretty atrocious, reaching upwards of 20 seconds per load, you may just give up your journey before you even begin in.

While this might look gripping, the combat in Fellowship of the Ring really is anything but.

The combat and controls have a real clunky feeling to them. While normal running controls have no hindrance towards your journey, jumping feels all but useless, with its limited height, giving you an inability to clear certain slow level obstructions. Throwing rocks to distract certain enemies that lay in wait is a good idea that is executed poorly. Melee attacks work as they should, although there’s really no feeling of satisfaction when attacking an enemy. While Link feels like a force to be reckoned with when he attacks (even as young Link), swinging and attacking here doesn’t feel as potent.

While it starts off a little too slow in an overall sense, Fellowship of the Ring never really tries to change the pace up and be something that it had the potential of being — a mildly entertaining hack and slash adventure title based around the novel. Even though the audio portion is well structured, with some rather inspired backgrounds, the lack of proper texture work, wonky combat system and slow, drawn out pacing will more than likely cut short your adventure. Hard to really justify a purchase, even if it’s below $5.

Check back tomorrow for the next part of this Comparison Series, where we’ll take a look at The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers on the Microsoft Xbox.