The Lord of the Rings is a franchise that’s faired moderately well in the video game space with games like Return of the King and LotR: Online taking top billing. Headstrong Games and Warner Brothers are taking another swing with the release of Lord of the Rings: Aragorn’s Quest for release on the Playstation 2 & 3, PSP and Wii consoles. The narrative uses Samwise Gange’s character to tell the story of Aragorn’s heroic journey in a series of flashbacks. Samwise is telling this story to his children as the game is set about fifteen years beyond Frodo destroying the ring in the fires of Mount Doom. It’s a cute way to frame the presentation of the saga, but there’s nothing really new here for existing fans of the series.



The game is broken up over a series of eight levels, alternating from wide open spaces to linear paths to follow. You will see plenty of locales from the movies like the narrow halls of Helm’s Deep or the gorgeous beauty of Rivendell. The object of the game is to reenact the major points in the saga and fight though an endless stream of orcs, goblins, spiders, trolls and other various creatures. The game uses a leveling system as you progress through the game, based on progress and the tokens that you find in Tolkien’s world. This allows you to level your characters, increase their abilities and just get higher quality weaponry.

Unfortunately, one of the biggest problems with Aragorn’s Quest is the motion controls, specifically the loose, imprecise way they were implemented by the developer. Combat is always a difficult action to capture for developers and it’s obvious that Headstrong struggled with it. In theory, the game is designed to follow your gestures with the Wii-mote to capture sword swings and other fighting moves. In reality, it does an extremely poor job of following movement and battles typically just fall into the category of wildly swinging around the controller until the sword hits an enemy. This problem is exacerbated when fighting bosses as they require more finesse to destroy.



But the game isn’t difficult at all to complete, which leads me to believe that the target audience for this title is very young players. It’s really doesn’t require lots of brainpower to swing the Wii-mote around and watch enemies fall in Aragorn’s path. I did like the drop-in co-op player that the developer included. You can drop into the game and play as Gandolf along Aragorn’s side. There were few, if any times, that I would actually need help though. But if a elementary school kid was playing the game, it’s possible that they would need help.

Graphics

• This is not a pretty game, mostly due to the Wii’s graphical limitations; but also due to a lack of general polish in the character models and portions of the latter levels. There’s also a variety of clipping problems with object detection between characters. It’s pretty obvious that the developer created the PS2 version, cranked up the graphical quality a bit and ported it to the Wii.


• The level backgrounds, while certainly representative of locales from the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, are quite boring at times and lack the detail of a title that’s been optimized for the Wii. One of the larger graphical problems is a lack on player control over the in-game camera angles. The preset camera often hides enemies from view when they approach from the rear and I often felt like I was fighting against the camera for control of the game.

Audio

• You will notice Sean Astin’s voice in the game immediately, some of which is new material and some of which was lifted straight from the movie. His voicework is excellent, but the developer’s inability to create proper, flowing conversations creates a segmented script. It’s as if the actors / actresses recorded one line at a time and they were pieced together very ineffectively. The musical soundtrack occasionally borrows from the movies and does an excellent job of heightening the tension around battles. The sound effect work is excellent as well.

Conclusion

The Lord of the Rings: Aragorn’s Quest certainly pays homage to the source material, but the problematic control scheme, lack of difficulty, fixed camera angles and average presentation keeps the game from being entertaining to play or even watch. Lord of the Rings fanatics are going to be disappointed in the quality of the game, but it is a decent way to introduce young players into the Lord of the Rings Saga before sitting them down to watch the movies (or read the books). Aragorn’s Quest might be worth a weekend rental, but it’s definitely not a keeper for your library of Wii games.

Discuss This Game on Our Official VGT Forum