LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS
PlayStation 2
Electronic Arts
I wish it to be known that I am typing with my feet, while my hands recover from RSI.
Two Towers is more or less an update of the classic button basher Golden Axe. There's a dwarf, a skinny feminine one, and a Hero. They move from one end of the level to the other, slapping people�er, things�until they fall over. Repeat
ad nauseum.
Where Two Towers differs from that earlier masterpiece is in one word: scale.
Two Towers is a big old game, taking the player through the last act of Fellowship of the Ring, and deep into the second film. Live action scenes from the movie are spliced with in-game recreations, making you feel like you're part of the story.
Being able to play the game in any/all of three roles (Legolas the Elf, Gimli the Dwarf and Strider Aragorn), swapping between characters (if you wish) at the start of each level, allows for at least some variation in the gameplay. After all, the different characters do have different fighting styles. It's mostly to do with kneecaps and elbows, but there it is.
The combat method is easy to master. Like most games in this genre, it's a case of bash this button a lot, then that one, then watch the green things die. This simplicity works to the games advantage. It's very much a pick-up-and-play game.
Unfortunately, this also means that there's not really very much to this game beyond the same old bashy-bashy-spudoing! (that's the sound your bow makes). And it certainly doesn't help that you're thrown up against much the same sort of enemies in level 8 that you are in level 1. And sometimes, annoyingly, the only difference between the baddies is the time it takes to work out how to kill them.
The roleplaying "element" in the game - where the number of baddies you kill, and the speed of their defeat, gives you points that can be exchanged for new fighting moves - doesn't make
it a Role Playing Game, either. In an RPG, the characters are supposed to have some sort of choices to make. The only choice the player gets to make in Two Towers is in which character he uses first.
There's no real sense of achievement, either: I've travelled from The Prologue - wherever that is - to The Gap of Rohan, and all I've done is give myself fingerache. I could have taken up the harp, instead: I would have ended up with the same pain in my hands, but at least I could have earned money for physiotherapy.
I shouldn't be so sarcastic. Two Towers is a fun little game - and I really, really have been waiting for a decent home version of Golden Axe, ever since me and Chancey used to waste our pocket money on it, back in the days of Thatcherism and Spandau Ballet.
It's the best-looking stabathon that I've ever played, that's for sure - never mind the live-action scenes, the in-game graphics look as earthy and as real as an afternoon in Epping Forest - and the music is urgent and martial without being annoying.
But the game itself is far too linear to be truly fulfilling. In fact, my inner cynic says that, whereas this game could have expanded upon the movie, taking us deeper into the story, at �40 plus, it's the most expensive movie trailer ever released. It tells the gamer loads about the upcoming movie, without providing any of the depth.
Save your money: the film will be in cinemas soon enough.
And in the end, I find myself wishing I could nip down the Baths with a bag of old 10p's, to see how such a game should really be played.
Review text (C) Matthew Craig
Originally published in the pop culture magazine Robot Fist