The Hobbit

[Jolly Rogers]

Best Buy is selling it for $19.99 this week, I was wondering if this game is any good (worth 20 bucks and 10+ hours). How closely does it follow the book? The graphics looked very kiddish and it seems like they use puzzles and RPG elements (get experience, skill up...) to extend game time.

[1st Border Red Devil]

One review I read said that if you play only one game set in Middle-Earth this year....dont make it The Hobbit. It has very little to do with the original story. Its kind of a Mario Brothers with the Middle-Earth title plastered on the front.

[Jolly Rogers]

I had yet to pick up Return of the King. Looks like I probably should pass on The Hobbit then. Thanks!

[Southpaw Samurai]

I borrowed my friend's copy because of my own uncertainties about it. As long as you can stand the camera angles and the sheer repetitive action nature of it, Return of the King is clearly the superior game, but I would certainly take the Hobbit over the really horrible War of the Ring RTS game.

The Hobbit is a cutesy little 3-D adventure romp through some of the places from the book. Cutesy works because of the nature of the Hobbit book to begin with, so that's hardly a problem in my opinion. You basically run around as Bilbo working your way to the final goal of each level, looking for all the little hidden items and powerups a long the way. Yes, it's very Mario or Zelda-ish. Again, that sort of work for me because the book was at it's heart an innocent little adventure. The game follows the general plotline of the book, but as one would expect from a game needing some meat, it does go off on tangents and makes levels out of events that happened quickly in the original work. Bilbo does do a lot of fighting (Bullroarer Took has nothing on Bilbo the Hundred-Thrice-Over-Goblin-Cleaver Baggings) and the combat is very simplistic. The voice acting is generally good and I do like how the dwarves are all portrayed.

The camera's not bad and I would probably have thought the jumping-climbing-platform elements were really good for the genre had I not been recently spoiled by Prince of Persia. The game isn't excessively long or difficult unless you are obsessed with finding all the pickups (I'm not sure if I should applaud or be scared of people who managed to find every little coin and gem).

To be honest, my only major gripe is that they utilize these little screenshots of handdrawn art for most of the cutscenese. The art is nice and I have nothing against it except that they tend to use them for the scenes that cry for either action control or at least a animated CGI cutscene (for example, the scene with Gandalf and the Three Trolls....it begs to be done up in motion but instead you cut to a picture of a brown piece of paper with a pencil sketch and a narrator just reading the outcome....Rivendell is another example in what could have been either a fun little exploration level or at least a funny little two minute animation is reduced to one sketch and 30 seconds of narration).

Overall, though, it is fun and probably worth $19 (I might have to go grab it), but there are better 3-D platform adventures out there so you'd mainly go for this if you miss all your favorite dwarves with rhyming names.

That's it in a nutshell. I could go on in detail if you want specifics.

[Jolly Rogers]

Thanks for the review, just saw a review for it on X-Play an hour ago. Platformers are't for me so I think I'll pass. It's a crying shame they used those cheap shortcuts instead of doing an animated cut scene... no wonder it's $19.99.