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Need video game sanity.
But today, the most obvious game-review publications are all found online, and... they all seem to be out of their minds. The reviews I've encountered are often poorly written, and more often than not explode with hyperbolic praise about the game at hand. According to
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daerr, the conventional-wisdom explanation for this behavior involves grumbling that all the reviewers are influenced by game-publisher payola. My own experience working within the media, however, suggests that the reviewers all have Harry Knowles Syndrome; that is, they're largely excited young men who like teh shiney and really really want to love every new piece of new-game hotness that comes their way. And so, they are very forgiving of a game's flaws, so long as it's got something cool in it that triggers their fanboy gland. If this fails to happen, it's the wost game EVAR and O the gnashing and wailing &c.Return of the King is a good example of this phenomenon. Most of the online reviewers seem to think it was one of the best games published last year, so I picked it up last week on the cheap. In reality, it's OK, but nothing special in most ways, and flat-out broken otherwise. I state this objectively; it does things that games really shouldn't do.
It's a pure-action game closest in heritage to a side-scrolling beat-em-up like Double Dragon; for all the richness of Tolkein's world, the only thing the characters know how to do in this game is FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT the legions of Orcs and Easterlings continually boiling across narrow, flat landscapes. Disappointing, but at least executed reasonably well.
The broken features include things like a mazelike level with a live map that tells you where all the bad guys are, but, for no real reason, doesn't tell you where you are. It still expects you to find and snuff out the bads in a short time limit. Um, yeah, thanks. There's also a "cinematic" camera system that jumps between angles like a flea, instead of following the lead character smoothly. After each of these jumps, the player must adjust the joystick to compensate for the suddenly completely different screen-relative direction that the character is moving. What were they thinking?! More than once I lost a race against the clock because I unwittingly guided Aragorn to run in a wide circle, which I thought was a straight line. Wheeee! The King is drunk!!! Out of his way, rar rar
The thing I like most about the game, I like for entirely the wrong reasons. Since the game is so fight-oriented, its face-value interpretation of the story is ultra-violent to parodic levels. For example, during the first Hobbit level, little Sam figures that the best way to keep Frodo out of trouble is to slay every Orc in Osgilliath himself. And personally, I thought this was great. I got really into it, to the point of leaping into battles already underway to steal kills from slowpoke Gondorians. And really, that's the way to play, since the only way to get power-ups is to kill as many things as possible. Go Sam! Likewise, Aragon allies with the Army of the Dead by going into their cave and beating them all up before kicking their king's ethereal ass. After he pledges his loyalty, you have to beat up his soldiers a second time on your way out; I guess they didn't get the memo. But, again, it's so over-the-top that it won points with me, even though I don't think it was necessarily trying.
Middle Earth pedantry
On the other hand, from your description of how inane the game seems, it's very well possible that they call the bad guys Westrons.
Re: Middle Earth pedantry