Gamers love nothing more than nostalgia. Who needs new creative ideas when we can just spend eternity playing remasters and remakes that corporations are compelled to release as we keep on buying them. It’s a vicious cycle and I’m totally part of the problem, so hurry it up and placate me with remasters of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Lord of The Rings: The Two Towers and Return of the King. These movie tie-ins are excellent games that have long stood the test of time, and ar♏e fondly remembered even ❀as Middle Earth continues to dominate the media we consume.
EA has long banished these to the vault, while developer Visceral Games was closed years ago after its ambitious Star Wars project was canned. Given the studio’s legacy, I’m not too surprised to hear these LotR games have been forgotten by those who helped bring them to life. Tolkien’s universe is still massive today, and it was immense to grow up as the films released and slowly took over the world. Our cultural definition of fantasy evolved alongside them, with countless films, 🌊games, shows, and books eager to milk the success of Jackson’s interpretation. Decades later and that influence remains prominent everywhere.
Shadow of Mordor, The Hobbit, LotR Online, and the upcoming Gollum title from Daedalic Entertainment are only a few of the games we’ve seen emerge in recent years. The quality ranges from surprisingly great to inspiringly mid, with most developers struggling to figure out ways to tell stories in this universe that don’t retread old ground or risk bastarding ones fans have long fallen in love with.𒈔 Amazon is facing the same struggles, albeit with a show it has already bankrolled billions of dollars into. Movie tie-ins are a little different, emerging as licensed retellings of media intended to provide an aura 💛of familiarity. The Two Towers and Return of the King are exactly that - stylish, impactful hack ‘n’ slash games that put action over substance in all the ways that matter. They also represent the films near perfectly.
The Two Towers begins during the closing moments of Fellowship as Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli fight through hordes of Uruk-hai amidst the crowded forest of Amon Hen. We see the death of Boromir, the breaking of the Fellowship, and the beginning of the second film. It’s a fitting introduction, and we even recap a few additional moments across the snowy mountaintops and inside the Mines of Moria. My memory is cloudy, but I remember it being a mixture of events from both films give🃏n Fellowship was only ever adapted into a game that reflected the novel rather than what Jackson produced. It was hardly a detailed summation of the film’s events, yet I still remember falling in love with characters and establishing firm favourites from the game set pieces alone. Aragorn was an 🍌agile swordsman with adept strength, while Gandalf had a staff/sword combo because ranged attacks weren’t really a thing the first game considered.
Return of the King was more of the same but on a much grander scale. It had more heroes, more attacks, more locations, and more faithfulness to the films it drew from. The visuals I also remember being somewhat mo𓂃re stylised, like watercolour paintings flying off the page instead of striving for sudden bouts of realism. You were graded on each level and the boon of couch co-op meant I always teamed up with my siblings to take on harder levels and get higher scores. New moves, upgrades, and other bonuses to unlock made it more arcadey than one might expect, instilling an otherwise uninspired licensed banger with plenty of replay value. It also had countless behind-the-scenes featurettes that showcased exactly how much work went into these things. All the original cast return, while Redwood Shores was given unfettered access to film materials to make the best game it possibly could.
My personal favourite is an adorable video featuring Sir Ian McKellen. He puts everything into his performance as Gandalf, and this is followed shortly by the admission that games aren’t for him because his elderly fingers can’t possibly keep up with all the action. Yet he clearly admires the medium, and loves how they are already being used to expr🔜ess these stories to audiences who might otherwise have never heard of them. Elijah Wo🃏od is equally precious, since his love for gaming is evident the moment he pops into frame, and how the opportunity to voice his character in these games is a privilege he can easily recognise. I think this was one of my first major peeks behind the game development curtain as a kid.
I’m not a lawyer nor a developer, merely a gamer - so I have no idea how two movie tie-ins from the mid-2000s would or even can be remastered for a new generation, but it sure feels like a no-brainer given their enduring popularity. We’re ravenous for mo𒊎re The Lord of the Rings, and considering much of its appeal is built on nostalgia, bringing back two cult classics with a new coat of paint would be an easy win for EA and a warm retreat for those of us who haven’t played in years. Or maybe the liꦛcense is stuck in limbo, and I’d better off talking to a wall. Either way, make it happen!
