365//365: Day 242 – The Two Towers (Xbox) [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 The Two Towers on the Xbox.

The Two Towers and Return of the King games were developed to follow the movies of the same name, rather than the books by JRR Tolkien. With Two Two Towers, oddly enough you start off with the opening piece from the Fellowship of the Ring film, and are thrusted directly into battle, without warning, during the battle with Sauron. In fact, this is more of a mix between The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers films, as stated on the box. Could Stormfront Studios produce a superior Lord of the Rings title thanks to its free use of the first two films and their location and soundtrack?

With the audio, you can definitely hear some of those Academy Award nominated musical pieces sprinkled throughout the game. During cut-scenes or during battle, you’ll be propelled forward by some of the best tracks from a movie, implemented into a video game. The voice overs from the cut-scenes, which are all lifted from the first two films, are all appropriate and unchanged, however listening to the in-game vocals, whomever they hired to portray each character does a really iffy job. Either they’ll sound enough like them, randomly drop their accents or just sound nothing like their movie counterpart. Although the inconsistency isn’t rare, it’s not enough to totally throw a wrench in the the audio as a whole, as the sound effects are fitting and as mentioned earlier, the music is captivating from top to bottom.

This is a slightly brighter look to the dark, gloomy nature of the visuals.

The Two Towers has a bit of a hitch with its controls. The lack of camera manipulation is a crushing blow, as you’ll encounter numerous moments in which you desperately need to shift the camera as much as 180 degrees in order to see an off-screen foe that chose to run to a corner that you cannot see. This is a severe enough handicap to really hurt you from beginning to end. It feels like the AI is aware of the games lack of camera controls, and does its best to evade your field of vision. Moving a character around also proves to be a bit too swift. Combat has some issues with its delivery. Oftentimes you’re enemies will parry everything you deliver and counterattack right away. Whenever you parry an attack, they seem to be slightly out of reach, making you whiff a swing of two. Combat as a whole isn’t as fluid or entertaining as it seemed from previews. In fact, even on easy, it gets downright aggravating when you’re trying to attack one enemy, and another is hopping towards you, attacking you relentlessly. Trying to parry usually results in the enemy coincidentally halting their attack, you whipping the parry and the enemies just go on and beat the living crap out of you.

The graphics share the unfortunate mixed bag that contains the audio. There are moments where you’re presented a movie clip directly from one of the first two films, and then you’ll witness a transition from FMV to in-game models, which is quite with an admirable success. It’s the oppressive lack of light and lighting as a whole that really darkens an otherwise brightened game world. So many of the earlier portions are casted in a predominance of dark and muted colors. The character models on friend and foe alike are quite faithful to the films, with a fluid enough animation driving them. The scenery holds enough detail as well, but the transition from film to game all but sucked out the color variation and lighting as a whole. Many of the scenes during the movie were dark yes, but this is overdone in The Two Towers, to the point where you’re manually raising the Brightness and Contrast setting on your television or monitor just to get a clear perspective. Eventually the scenery brightens up some, but there’s still too many dark spots, with shadows looking a bit too shady.

You will pull your hair out during this iconic battle. Between avoiding clubbing blows, a dozen enemies and the lack of camera control, you will want to hang yourself with your controller cord.

Unfortunately, The Two Towers suffers from a wealth of nagging issues that really brings down the fun factor. The overly dark look, unfair controls in correlation with the enemy AI, the occasionally shifty voice overs and lack of no frills entertainment really hold back would could have been a massive success. While there are numerous issues with The Two Towers, it’s still build much better than The Fellowship of the Ring, with stronger music and more detailed visuals. Hopefully act three will be the one that portrays this franchise in the proper way.

Check back tomorrow, where we’ll take a look at Lord of the Rings: Return of the King on the Nintendo Gamecube, as well as select a winner for Visuals, Audio, Gameplay and Replay Value, along with the scores for all three games.