The game actually contains little footage from the flick, although the environments themselves are modeled after the movie's locales. In fact, a few plot points and bosses will be lost on players who haven't read the books.
But the whole thing still hangs together as a high-gloss experience that'll make your Middle-earth move. Return of the King does a fantastic job of putting you into the world of the movie through its graphically stunning reproductions of the film's war-torn sets, smooth transitions from thrilling cinema clips into exciting gameplay, top-notch voice work by the trilogy's actors, and music drawn from the flick's epic soundtrack.
Once you the game, that's it: You've entered Middle-earth, or at least the one from the movie. Granted, that all was true of last year's Two Towers, too. So, what's changed? Return of the King's gameplay has much more variety because the Hobbits Sam and Frodo , the warriors Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas , and Gandalf all play distinctly different. You'd think that nothing could possibly compare to cleaving through almost Galaga-like droves of ores as Aragorn, but blasting them with Gandalf's magic staff and outwitting them using small-fry Sam's stealth and cunning is surprisingly just as much fun.
Each of the three group's stages are also dissimilar enough that--once you've beaten the game and gained the ability to play through levels as any character--you'll want to go back and see how, say, Aragorn fares defending the walls of Minas Tirith or how well Gandalf holds up at the Black Gate of Mordor.
Does Return of the King have an Achilles' heel? Sure: It's too frigging hard. The game can make you more irate than exhilarated on many stages, but its multiple unlockable features, co-op mode, and online gameplay for PS2, anyway make up for a lot of the frustration.
At the danger of sounding like a broken record preferably a warped old 45 of Leonard Nimoy's 'Ballad of Bilbo Baggins' , I must admit that I agree with my fellow reviewers on just about all their points regarding Return of the King. It bests last year's Two Towers game by adding more playable characters, a wider variety of level types, and much-needed two-player co-op action. Like the previous game, King offers an audiovisual orgy of Middle-earth splendors that accurately re-creates the film which, in turn, perfectly adapted the original books with terrifying reverence.
Massive armies battle in the background, siege weapons obliterate fortress walls, and Gollum's loincloth ripples tastefully in the breeze--videogames rarely look this polished and solid.
Also, just as in last year's model, a bevy of impressive bonus features see Small Wonders on the previous page adds even more pizazz to the slick package, plus makes a make fine reward for plowing through those legions of ores. Honestly, the gameplay doesn't quite live up to the presentation's absurd heights of grandeur, but, realistically, it's tough for a hack-n-slash game to offer voluminous depth. Light role-playing elements allow you to customize your characters' moves, upgrade your equipment, and increase your HP, but underneath it all, you're kinda playing Double Dragon with extra emphasis on the Dragon.
Expect to plow through the entire multipath adventure in a weekend. But oh, what a weekend it is. Well, we guess there must be one of you out there. Sword control is now on the right analog stick, and now you can swing on ropes, jump over gaps, kick boulders, throw objects, etc.
Finally, as if that wasn't enough, we've added two-player co-op play. Criminey, Atari should have made Gauntlet LOTR characters to begin with--the cast is perfect for it warriors, magicians, even a dreamboat elf-boy, Legolas. The combat, based heftily on last year's handheld Two Towers title, is mostly raw and unappealing. I saw satisfying changes in my characters' abilities just by tweaking their weapons and accessories, the best of which were usually found rather than purchased.
The frail Frodo himself was soon cracking Ore skull with relative ease, even taking on four Ores at once in a frenzy of murderous Hobbit rage. I was eventually content, however, just to let computer-appointed allies like Sam Gamgee kick all the ass while I hunted for cooler, more "precious" items. Yeah, we'd all be screwed if I had the One Ring.
Playing Return of the King was a roller coaster of conflicting emotions for me--first boredom as I hacked and slashed through endless hordes of Goblins, then addiction as I built up Aragorn and Legolas into level demigods, and finally profound emptiness when I realized your only reward for all this is a couple of still pictures from the film.
Tolkien , in which the future of Middle-Earth will be in the user's hand, that you will have to save by winning all the battles that you encounter. The video game maintains a similar playability to that of the earlier titles because you will have the opportunity to control various characters from The Fellowship of the Ring , with the objective of eliminating the horde of Orcs that are willing to kill you.
The game's controls aren't very complex, something that the users will really thank in the massive battles. The graphics aren't especially good, despite the fact that the characters are well depicted and the scenarios are well designed , managing to be a faithful recreation of the images from the film on which the game is based.
Originally, an even greater deviation was planned: Frodo would heroically push Gollum over the ledge to destroy him and the Ring, but the production team eventually realised that it looked more like Frodo murdering Gollum.
As a result, they had Frodo and Gollum struggle for possession of the Ring and both slip over the edge by accident.
Jackson eventually realised it ignored the point of Aragorn's true bravery in distracting Sauron's army against overwhelming odds, and a computer generated Troll was placed over footage of Sauron in the finished film.
As in all of Jackson's Middle-earth adaptions, the eagles do not speak. During the Battle for Minas Tirith, the White Tree of Gondor is shown to bear one white blossom, thus blooming by itself at Aragorn's coronation. Thereby the film ignores the book's story where Gandalf and Aragorn find a seedling of the White Tree up in the mountains and plant it in the courtyard in place of the still-dead tree.
Aragorn's coronation takes place in form of a great ceremony in the Citadel of Minas Tirith, opposed to the book, where Aragorn is crowned in his tent on the Pelennor Fields before entering the City.
Since Saruman is killed long before, after the battle at Helm's Deep in the film, he is unable to exact revenge on Frodo and the hobbits by ruining the Shire as depicted in the books.
In the film, the Shire is virtually unchanged when they return, and their friends and neighbours seem unaware of the climactic events that have taken place outside of their borders. Thus, the esteem earned by Merry and Pippin at the Battle of Bywater and the work to restore the Shire using Galadriel's gift don't appear in the film. In the film, however, all of the Hobbits travel with Gandalf to the Havens to find the Elves waiting there, including Celeborn, who remains in Middle-earth in the book.
When Sam returns to the Shire, he isn't shown to live in Bag End where he dwells with Rose in the book , but in a different Hobbit-hole of his own.
The Lord of the Rings film trilogy is unusual in that it was, up until the release of Jackson's prequel trilogy The Hobbit , the only series whose separate instalments were written and shot simultaneously excluding pick up shoots.
Jackson found The Return of the King the easiest of the films to make, because it contained the climax of the story.
Middle-earth as envisioned by Jackson was primarily designed by Alan Lee and John Howe, former Tolkien illustrators, and created by Weta Workshop, who handled all the trilogy's weapons, armour, miniatures, prosthetics, and creatures, as well as the Art Department which built the sets.
The city of Minas Tirith, glimpsed briefly in both the previous two films, is seen fully in this film, and with it the Gondorian civilisation. That set's gate became Minas Tirith's second, while the Hornburg exterior became that of the Extended Edition's scene where Gandalf confronts the Witch-king.
New structures included the 8m tall Gate, with broken and unbroken versions, with a working opening and closing mechanism, with its engravings inspired by the Baptistry of San Giovanni. There were also four levels of streets with heraldic motifs for every house, as inspired by Siena. There was also the Citadel, the exterior of which was in the Stone Street Studios backlot, using forced perspective. It contains the withered White Tree, built from polystyrene by Brian Massey and the Greens Department with real branches, influenced by ancient and gnarled Lebanese olive trees.
The interior was within a three-story former factory in Wellington, and colourwise is influenced by Charlemagne's Chapel, with a throne for Denethor carved from stone and polystyrene statues of past kings. Minas Morgul, the Staircase and Tower of Cirith Ungol as well as Shelob's Lair were designed by Howe, with the Morgul road using forced perspective into a bluescreened miniature.
Howe's design of Minas Morgul was inspired from the experience of having a wisdom tooth pulled out: in the same way, the Orcs have put their twisted designs on to a former Gondorian city.
The third film introduces the enormous spider Shelob. Shelob was designed in , [27] with the body based on a tunnelweb spider and the head with numerous growths selected by Peter Jackson's children from one of many sculpts. Jackson himself took great joy in planning the sequence, being an arachnophobe himself.
The Dead Men have a Celtic influence, as well as lines and symmetry to reflect their morbid state, [23] while their underground city is influenced by Petra.
Turner paintings. The Return of the King was shot during , though Astin's coverage from Gollum's attempt to separate Frodo and Sam was filmed on 24 November , when floods in Queenstown interrupted the focus on The Fellowship of the Ring. Hobbiton, home of the Hobbits, was shot in January with early scenes from The Fellowship of the Ring , with the exterior shot at a Matamata farm, while interior scenes were shot at Stone Street Studios in Wellington, [28] shared with the Grey Havens sequence.
Due to the high emotions of filming the scene, the cast were in despair when they were required to shoot it three times, due to a continuity flaw in Sean Astin's costume, and then negatives producing out-of-focus reels. Also a cause for concern were Monaghan and Boyd's scale doubles during a charge sequence. In particular, they spent two hours shooting Sam lifting Frodo on to his back with cross-camera coverage. Scenes shot in June were the Paths of the Dead across various locations, including Pinnacles.
Monaghan and Boyd tried numerous takes of their entrance, stressing the word 'weed' as they smoked pipe-weed. Christopher Lee spent his part of his scene mostly alone, though McKellen and Hill arrived on the first day for a few lines to help. Edoras exteriors were shot in October. The Battle of the Pelennor Fields has more extensive use of computer-generated imagery, in contrast to the more extensive use of live action in the Battle of Helm's Deep in the second film.
Also filmed were the attempts by Faramir to recapture Osgiliath, [32] as were scenes in the city itself. Just as the Hobbit actors' first scene was hiding from a Ringwraith under a tree, their last scene was the bluescreened reaction shot of the inhabitants of Minas Tirith bowing to them. The pick-ups were filmed in the Wellington studio car park, with many parts of sets and blue-screens used to finish off scenes, which the design team had to work 24 hours to get the right sets ready for a particular day.
The film has the most extensive list of re-shoots given for the trilogy. Jackson took his time to re-shoot Aragorn's coronation, rushed into a single day under second unit director Geoff Murphy on 21 December There was also the new character of Gothmog. Christian Rivers also redesigned the Witch-king and all of his scenes were re-shot, because of confusion from non-readers over whether or not Sauron was on the battlefield.
The cast also received various props associated with their characters, although John Rhys-Davies burned his final Gimli prosthetic. Viggo Mortensenheadbutted the stunt team goodbye. Scenes shot afterwards included various live-action shots of Riders for the Battle of the Pelennor Fields and a reaction shot of Serkis as Gollum finally realises Frodo intends to destroy the Ring, shot in Jackson's house.
Salvus 2 points. Gunthi 0 point. Spr 2 points. After I extracted the files, the installation didn't start automatically, so I tried to install it by myself. All discs are in the same hdd. I have windows LOTR 0 point. If your install wont continue with the next disc, check if you mounted it on the same drive as before i. Disc 2 still doesn't work for me, I can't get it to continue to install. Please help. CD Key GameFreak 1 point.
Gamebro 0 point. Share your gamer memories, help others to run the game or comment anything you'd like.
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