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.

The Good
It was nice to see the characters and places from the book in a videogame, the places are all beautifully made, Hobbiton with all it's lively colors, Smaug's lair with all its majesty, etc. The team artists did an splendid job on what ambientation concerns.

The gameplay it's ok, I liked a lot how well some puzzles were implemented with the action (very easy puzzles if you are used to adventure games, being this my case, but they are ok).

The game has some very interesting bits, I enjoyed a lot traveling around lake-town, the dwarves mountain episode and Smaug's lair.

The music it's also cool, with some medieval and irish influences.

The Bad
Some of the scenes from the book have been reduced just to some cut-scenes with a few pictures sliding and explaining everything, it wouldn't have hurt to have some more videos.

I would also loved to have some more RPG-ish stuff, like levels, abilities and some other things.

Also they took a very few liberties while narrating the story that hardcore fans will notice.

The Bottom Line
If you liked the book, get this game quickly, but if you disliked it I don't think you are going to enjoy this game.

The Good
Well, the controls are pretty simple, as this is your standard adventure, jumping etc. game. There certainly is some nice treasure hunting (which will add health points and allow you to buy items). The voice acting is pretty good and the running length is decent.

The Bad
Well, the graphics are annoyingly cartoony. It's really a shame the graphics weren't more like the Lord of the Rings games. The battles lack the kind of epic scale that was in the books (would you call an army of goblins 30?) and the enemy AI borders on pathetic sometimes. Stand in a particular spot that is slightly elevated above the other terrain and the screaming hordes (ok, maybe 2 or 3 guys usually) will either run around or just walk away and ignore you. Some of the stealth is terrible also. Enemies that don't get alerted when you hit them in the head with a rock? All the added material that the game puts in the levels is pretty annoying. Remember when in the goblin caves, Bilbo had to get these gears to activate these lifts so he could get the wart stone to bribe the goblin guard so he would let him through? No, I sure don't. Too much of the game feels like a chore. Go across great chasm to get crystal door knob, go back to activate the golden doo-hickey, then you can travel to search for the platinum whats-it. Then you activate the purple lift blah blah blah. Oh, and most of the enemies look like something you'd get out of a McDonalds Happy Meal.

The Bottom Line
This game is unfortunately another casualty of game developers rushing a game in time for an event be it Christmas, or the opening of a movie. If you're a big Tolkien fan, then renting this game should be sufficient.