The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)

This was pleasantly a ton of fun to play. Especially in co-op mode with a friend. It's rare for a sequel to so handily improve from the previous entry while still maintaining most of the core gameplay mechanics. When contrasting this sequel to Dark Alliance 2 (DA2), it's night and day. Where DA2 felt like a lazy cash grab with minimal effort put into the level design and a greater emphasis on padding, Return of the King (RoK) creates unique scenarios for almost every level. Resulting in engaging and fresh game play while creating a tough but fair challenge. In addition, the game handles co-op difficulty in an interesting way that you don't really see. They removed checkpoints (from the single player experience) and instead give you one extra life that either you or your friend can use. While you have twice the fire power, you are far more vulnerable and forced to play better or else you will have to start the level over from the beginning.

With the single extra life in co-op, maintaining and coordinating health pickups becomes paramount to success. It's devastating accidentally taking the health pickup when your ally needed it, and this happens quite a bit. It's hard to control since you naturally pick up the health most times after finishing off an enemy. The better strategy is to stay back and use ranged attacks so your friend can run up and get the health without contest. In the end, this small margin left for error (only having one life in co-op, thus only you or your friend can die otherwise it's game over) forces you to communicate and play closely with your friend. You need to stick together and watch out for each other's back. Or you will certainly fail.

As stated, the game can be brutally hard. There was only one level that felt a bit unfair. it was the one where you fight the Mûmakils (war elephants). The game doesn't effectively communicate to you that you can run down a ramp into a trench. This is required otherwise the enemies will be out of range and you will just fail as you watch the enemy slow walk towards Merry. the first few attempts I did with a friend we failed because we didn't realize we could cross the trench and go to the other side. Once we knew, it still was janky and unintuitive to figure out where to go the first few times attempting the mission. Once we slowly figured out where we needed to go, it still took multiple attempts of playing well to survive the gauntlet. Then there's the Shelob's level. It's another brutal gauntlet and you know it's going to be tough since it's the only level that gives you two lives in co-op! Getting all the way to Shelob, to die and have to reset the level can be demoralizing. Still we preserved and it was a blast!

What's kind of fun is once you beat the game you can replay any mission as any character. So you can beat the hell out of Shelob as Gandalf (who is overpowered)!

Play this with a friend!

Had a PS2 co-op night and revisited this classic. 20 years since I last played this and it's still a bunch of fun in co-op. The voice overs, the epic movie cutscenes before each level, and oh the music. It's all sublime.

My cousin played as Aragon and I played as Legolas whilst the undead tried to terrorise us. We ran across a bridge before getting cut off mid way. Thick fog filled the air and ghostly green trails swirled around us as they closed in. The epic soundtrack kicked in as the undead came from both sides of the bridge, I took one side and Aragon took the other. My cousin was getting overwhelmed at one point so I pushed my foes back and swung a 180, firing a few carefully placed arrows past Aragons head. The atmosphere was incredible and I was reminded how the playstation 2 is a wonderful system. Somehow you're able to fill in much of the blanks with these old games and their dated graphics, almost creating a movie like image in your head as you play.

I'd highly suggest going back and trying out couch co-op on these old systems with a friend or family member. I haven't done this kind of thing in decades and I'd forgotten how much fun it can be.

All hail couch co-op!

I am a sucker for all things Tolkien, and I fondly remembered this gem from when I was younger. Recently, I have been giving it a replay to see if it holds up. Overall, I am happy to say yes it does :D!

First, and most importantly, the gameplay. I found the Two Towers gameplay a little too clunky to ever feel fully in control. However, the combos, leveling, and abilities, for the most part, are better polished here. I was able to pull off combos with characters, finding some characters excelled at using certain attacks, while others relied on different ones. My bread and butter was Orc Hewer, A, A, Y, so good on everyone!

The variety of characters you can play, and their various strengths and differences lends a lot of value to re-playing levels. After beating the game you unlock three mroe playable characters too! The levels themselves had some really nice variety as well, making each character's journey feel unique and fun.

There were times the coloring was too dark, and I had trouble distinguishing if an orc had a shield or not, or the camera angle caused me to die. But considering how prevalent these problems plague this generation of 3D games, these issues were minimal.

Visually, I think the game ages relatively well. Though the characters most certainly don't reach any of the polish of the movies (despite what the interviews say in-game lol).

The Soundtrack is direct from the movies, which means it is excellent. And amazingly they got the actual actors to voice act for the characters, so though some of the scenes and dialogue feel a bit clunky, the overall effect is quite good.

This game also has some hidden gems, with interviews with the actors about the video game and their character, which for Lord of the Rings fans is a real treat.

Despite all this good, there are some problems. First, Aragorn's journey has 1/3 devoted to the Paths of the Dead, which is a very odd choice, since this moment is actually really short in both the movie and the book. Both levels felt very similar and sort of repetitive.

The final ending with Frodo "dueling" Gollum didn't quite work. It wasn't a hard fight, and compared to the Black Gate level was just sort of meh.

And finally, I mentioned it earlier, but the camera angles and coloration of enemies vs. maps is quite poor in some places. Frequently I wouldn't know an orc was on a hill till I saw an arrow flying at me. It's not unplayably bad but takes some definite getting used to.