The Hobbit

The Good
The over all feel, while a bit childish, is fun. Good character movement, and the acting, backgrounds and animation are all solid. Lots of fun puzzles to solve to advance. Some of which are quite intricate and long. It is a good natured game, and never gets too gory or nasty, which will disenchant the hardcore LOTR gamers, but make it an acceptable game for most preteens or young teens. Lots of different and interesting levels! The AI is OK, with the monsters getting tougher to fight as you progress. Great game to watch. My wife loved watching because one of the unique things is the telling of Bilbo Baggins and his adventures. She liked that. It's a fun puzzle action game. Simply put.


The Bad
The camera is wonky. This makes a lot of the jumps, (and you have to do a lot of that in this game), quite literally "leaps of faith"! It does tend to get quite annoying at times, as you get stuck, dying, jumping, dying, jumping until you get it right! This is especially painful if you have forgotten to save recently! This is not a sandbox world, and you can't go everywhere you'd like. Other than the beginning, there is no real interplay with other characters. You speak to the dwarfs, and get side quests, but nothing else. I would have liked to see more interplay. It gets lonely out there! Haha!

The Bottom Line
Sure they're not super realistic like the LOTR movies, but this game isn't about the LOTR. There was no Mordor yet. Remember, The Hobbit is a prequel, or the tale of Bilbo Baggins, not Frodo or the fellowship etc. That wouldn't happen for almost another 90 years or so, by Tolkien's storyline. Therefore, there are no huge armies of Orc's, Goblins, just what is out and about for what is normal for the time. Which doesn't mean they're not up to bad deeds! lol! It is a fun game, lots of gameplay and more that just a hack and slash epic. It is Bilbo's story and it's fun.