The Fellowship of the Ring Video Game: Bad but unique

I have a great nostalgic relationship to two different video games that are based on The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers. Both of these came out in 2002 when I was about eight years old and did not have a lot of video game experience. Apart from some games on Sega Mega Drive and Game Boy that I never managed to finish, Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers were among my very first video game experiences. The Fellowship of the Ring is widely considered to be a bad game and I totally understand why, I can even agree to some extent. Right now, however, I want to say some things about what this game did that most other LotR-based games did not.

The perhaps most obvious thing that I like about this game is that it is heavily based on the book, you even sell Bag End to Lobelia before leaving The Shire. You encounter Tom Bombadil, Old Man Willow and the Barrow-wights. These parts are my favorites in the book and I have always appreciated the game for including them. Bree is also a significant part, or more specifically The Prancing Pony. It is basically the opposite of what we see in the film by Peter Jackson. The inn in the game is a calm and cosy place where you can recover after the dangers in Barrow-downs and I have always prefered this version of The Prancing Pony, it makes you feel that you are safe when you are actually not. The game also has a nice soundtrack, it is not a masterpiece but definitely memorable.

When it comes to gameplay there is not really much to be merry about, there is barely any variety of enemies, the combat is horrible and nothing ever really becomes challenging. Note that I am talking about the PC version, as I discovered some years after I got the PC version that the XBOX version appeared to be an entirely different game. After you encounter the Nazgûl at Weathertop you are supposed to protect Frodo from being harmed by wolves and trolls while you travel along a path before meeting Glorfindel at the end of the level. Both games include this objective but here is the fun part: in the PC version, Frodo (as well as any friendly NPC in the game) can not die. You can seriously use the hobbits as a meat wall while spamming Aragorn's ranged attack, and you can do that forever since Aragorn has unlimited arrows.

As I said before, I understand and even agree that this game is bad. Though, despite its great and many flaws I can not reject it entirely, partly because of the nostalgia, partly because of the atmosphere during the first half. To me, one of the best things about The Lord of the Rings is to follow the hobbits as they leave their comfortable home to face the wide and to them unknown world, which most other games failed or did not care to capture.