The Hobbit

The Good
First off, the Hobbit has been my favorite book since childhood, so this game was a no-brainer for me. Happily, the game is a good game on its' own merit.

The game plays much like a fantasy version of Tomb Raider or Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver as Bilbo Baggins helps thirteen dwarves to reach their former home by pushing blocks and climbing vines.

He can pick locked chests (he's being sold as a burglar after all) and collect 'courage points' (those are gemstones to you and me) by slaying bad guys.

The Hobbit is fairly linear and the designers have remained faithful to the book, but they also remembered that game play makes or breaks a game. While the meat and potatoes of Mr. Baggins quest are present, there's plenty of extra side quests to keep you busy. Sure they take a little license with the story from time to time, but never too badly. Some things happen out of order (Bilbo names his sword Sting as soon as he gets it and he doesn't meet Beorn until the Battle Of The Five Armies), but at least they're all there.

The graphics are beautiful. Not state of the art, but very artistic, with detailed environments and intricate design on the characters. Running around a fully 3D Shire at the beginning of the game is a childhood dream come true. That's also about the point you realize that the designers haven't totally screwed-up a story you've cherished forever.

Voices were very well done. Thankfully, everyone in the game has a British accent. No American actors trying out accents here! The music is also good and appropriate to what's happening around you.

The controls are very smooth. Bilbo generally has no problem hopping around, climbing ropes, pushing boxes and fighting with his sword/walking stick/stones.

Special mention should also go to the Fizz Factor who did an outstanding job on the PC port. The Hobbit runs smoothly on my mid-level PC with all the details maxed out.

The Bad
My biggest disappointment is the way the story is told. When you aren't in a playable section, there are a few well done CGI scenes, but much of the story is told through static drawings in a story book. Many of my favorite scenes (the showdown with the goblin king and the riddle game with Gollum) are just sort of glossed over. If you haven't read the book before playing the game, you may wonder what all the fuss is about. More CGI scenes would have solved this I think.

Also, a lot of the depth of the book disappears. This isn't the designers fault. How do you describe the inner feelings of a character in a video game? Still, Bilbo's hardly out of the Shire before he's knee deep in man-eating (hobbit-eating?) plants and hungry wolves. These are gripes about the conversion of book to game and not necessarily about the game itself.

My other problems have to do with it being a console port. Instead of saving where you want, you are cursed with save points. Confusticate and bebother save points!

I do wish everybody who creates third-person games would be forced to sit down and play Rune to see how to get camera movement done right. Even all these years later, the Hobbit had an occasional (very occasional, I'll admit) problem with the camera zooming way in or way out. Why are console third person games so far behind their PC brothers on this?

Also, there's no option for full time mouse look. To look up or down, you have to hold down Caps Lock while moving the mouse.

The Bottom Line
Overall the Hobbit is a very well done lite-RPG action/adventure game. Highly recommended.