Lord of the Rings – The Third Age (again)
Another couple of hours in and I’m in Rohan – 30% complete. Couple of things I should have mentioned – I’m playing the gamecube version. It’s stunning, graphically, but with a touch of slowdown here and there. I’ve heard that the PS2 version crawls at a few points – hardly surprising given the complexity of the graphics. The Balrog section, in particular, was noticeably sluggish.
The other thing I should have mentioned relates to the difficulty level. FatHippy from UGVM suggested playing on the highest difficulty setting due to the somewhat unchallenging nature of the combat. He’s right. On highest difficulty, it’s hard without ever being frustrating. There are a lot of enemies which do substantial amounts of damage – i.e. whipping away 75% of health of multiple characters with a single strike. The available powerups, buffs, and generally überness of the characters balances this out a lot. On normal difficulty, you’d be as well just watching the movie as there’d be no challenge whatsoever.
As can be seen, it’s a pretty game. The spell effects are pretty spectacular in a not-at-all-lord-of-the-rings kinda way, but hey – it’s a video game 🙂
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