+

Nice Xbox graphical quality. It is still not up to par with the graphics in the movie, but it's the closest you can get.

It does a nice job of capturing the look and feel of the movie in terms of models and themeing.

All of the characters are very well scripted. They each have their own personalities and quirks, and they respond and act the way you would expect them to. They also contribute to the charm of the Lord of the Rings series the way they're supposed to.

Nice voice acting quality.

Espcially in Moria and beyond, the levels have many highs and lows to traverse. There is much ascention and descention. Sometimes your on the ground, sometimes you walking a high wire. Nice variety.

Nice peaceful background music for becoming immersed in an RPG adventure.

Lots of different types of quests to go on, with slightly different activities in each.

All speech is voice acted. All of it. Every single last word each character says. Always. That's good.

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The game completely fails to capture the emotional impact of the movie. You spend the vast majority of your time wandering around this peaceful land helping people out, collecting stuff, and swinging your stick at mosnters. Many key messages and themes that were conveyed very effectively in the movie, wereas in the game they were either just barely conveyed, or not conveyed at all. It's just the same as any RPG, except the short story sequences are based on the movie, and the characters and levels are themed according to the movie. Nothing too innovative from what already exists in the world of video games.

The game play isn't really that innovative either. You go to an area, hit occational monsters that come your way, maybe solve a small puzzle, then go to the next area. The levels are kind of boring, expecially since most of them are just moving down a path. More time should've been spend on refining the game play.

Choppy framerate and occational jerky animations and collision handling. The game is also very buggy, which is well below the standard for console games.

Too linear.

Saving at any time in the game is a bad idea. Manually saving is another reminder that you are in a game, not another place.

The background music is peaceful, but also uneventful and boring. Music and sound are not plotted in any way to create dramatic effect.

There are many large sections of land to wander around and without a map, or any help as to where you should go other than by discovery trial and error. The areas are sometimes so big that it's difficult to remember where you are in relation to everything else in the area.

Facial expressions aren't nearly as sophisticated as they ought to be. There are many other games on the market that handle facial expression much better.

The tutorial "helper" text that appears on the screen dissappears too fast, and you can't go back somewhere to read it.