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| The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (PS2) by FABIO 01/24/2007, 6:41am PST | ||||
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| So this game came out like a year ago. I bought it last month and haven't seen anyone else post anything on it so here goes.
My opinion of this game can be summed up in one sentence: This is the game Dynasty Warriors should have been. Taking on groups of enemies in melee combat has never been done better in any other action game to date. If they make a massive DW-scale battle game with this engine and combat system I'm never playing another game again. Where defending in DW has you lamely holding your weapon in a guard stance that magically blocks all frontal attacks (like every other fighting game ever), TT has you actually swinging your sword to parry and deflect a blow. It seems to obvious and natural when you see it; it's a wonder no game has used this method before. Where combat in DW revolves around continuously juggling your enemy into the air for 20+ hit combos like midieval chinese warfare was a game of Tekken, TT has you parlaying against an enemy's defense with quick attacks before you go for the heavy blow that knocks him to his feet then impale him before he can get up. Where graphical quality, animation, and view disctance are sacrificed in DW in order to render all the models at once, TT can put over 30 gorgeously rendered and animated characters on screen at once without any noticeable slowdown. Combat and moves are beautifully animated. The team motion captured the moves of the actors' stuntmen and the result is great. Speaking of beautiful, you get clips from the movie leading into and out of in-game graphics rendering the same scene. The movie clips suddenly converting to game graphics and thrusting you into the action is extremely well done. Actual combat is a flawless mix of simplicity with strategy. Do you play it safe and go with the fast, weak attack that automatically parries enemy weak attacks? Or do you open up with the slower, strong attack that will leave you open but if it connects will send your opponent flying? Parrying automatically blocks any attack from any side, but do it for too long and an enemy will hit you with an unblockable blow. You can be surrounded and fending off attacks from all sides but you know you'll have to look for an opening and strike at an enemy to break away before one of them hits you with an unblockable hit. Opponents with shields can only be hurt by strong attacks so you'll have to time it right after you parry his strike. Did I mention that this is the best mass melee combat game ever made? If the final mission in the Helm's Deep courtyard doesn't get your blood fired up, you're a lost cause for gaming. The fellowship and a few Rohan soldiers must hold back an endless horde of orcs and Uru-kai (there can be over 30 on-screen at once and their respawning is seamless and unnoticeable) from hacking down the inner-keep's gate. You quickly lose track of your comrades as everyone gets swept up in the massive melee. Rain is pouring down, flaming arrows are shooting past, screams of orcs and dying men shout out, the climatic choir music from the movie is blaring as you get overrun. You'll dispatch one enemy hacking at the gate, only to have two more try to get passed. You lift up one, a goblin, by his neck, break it, and toss him at his orc partner who's crotch you slam with an upward sweep of a two-handed sword, send him flying up, slam him back down with an overhand swing, then while he's lying on the ground dazed, drive your sword into his stomach and watch him twitch and die before withdrawing it and looking for another victim. An Uru-Kai with half a dozen arrows sticking out of him (any arrow hits stay lodged in enemies) charges only for you to swing and bat his sword arm aside, swing again to slash across his defensless chest, and in the same motion spin around and perform a no look behind-the-back impalement throught the stomach. But shit none of that matters because there are two-dozen more enemies pressing you back against the gate. All of the above moves are performed with simple button pushing (the most complex move you'll ever use involves 3 buttons) and are not just automatic animations from just hammering the attack button like a lot of other action games. I've beaten every level with every character on max difficulty, yet I still keep firing up the PS2 to replay the courtyard level yet again and it shows no signs of getting old. You can play as Legolass, Aragorn, or Gimli throughout any of the stages. You gain experience in each one to unlock new moves and abilities. Once you complete the main game you can go back and replay any mission with any character (before beating the game you cannot go back to earlier missions and level up at your leisure). There are several interviews with the actors that can be unlocked by getting their character to a certain level. Once you achieve maximum level that character can be played in a secret mission that has you climbing the 20 levels of Sauroman's tower fighting increasingly difficult waves of enemies at each floor. The secret level comes a close second to the courtyard level in terms of blood-pumping kickassness. Now usually once I beat a game (always on medium difficulty) I don't go back and replay on a higher difficult setting. To date the only game I've done that with is Devil May Cry because my character got powerful, I got good, yet I still wanted to KICK ASS against the toughest shit the game could trow at me. That same feeling hit me this game FIVE FOLD as my characters got super powerful and I craved more challenge in slaughtering hordes of enemies while slittling throats and impaling prone bodies. Downsides? There are a few. The most glaringly obvious is the lack of 2-player co-op play. This game SCREAMS for it, and what makes its exclusion even more maddening is the fact that it could have been implimented so goddamn easily. The majority of the missions has you fighting alongside the other characters who are AI controlled. How hard would it have been to just let another player control them? The levels are fairly linear and you can't really advance to the next part until one is cleared, so keeping both characters on the same screen wouldn't have been a problem, avoiding the need to impliment an annoying split-screen. The next game, based on Return of the King, is supposed to include co-op, but only after you beat the game by yourself. Fucking faggots. Another negative is that a few of the levels are weak. Two have you fighting DOZENS (I think it climbs past a hundred) of those suicide bomber Uru-Kai with explosives strapped to their back (I thought that was a special one of a kind device in the movie?). They charge you, you shoot them with an arrow, they explode and set off a chain reaction to any other bombers near them. This gets old FAST, especially when you reach a part where they endlessly come at you every 6 seconds (not an exaggeration) until you kill off the regular enemies and move on to the next area. Occaisionally objectives in levels will be extremely vague. One level has you trying to save a village being ransacked by Uru-Kai. A cutscene shows two peasents being thrown into and trapped in a burning house. It then switches back to you as you fight an entire townsquare full of Uru-Kai while trying to defend the civilains (they have a collective lifebar that drops whenever one is attacked. If it hits zero you lose) while surrounded by burning houses identical to the one you saw the peasents thrown into. A lifebar quickly counts down and when it hits zero the house collapses and you lose. It took me 3 tries to locate the correct burning house (each try takes close to ten minutes). The mission gets extremely frustrating as you try to juggle saving civilains, rescueing the people from the burning house, and simply staying alive against the Uru-Kai; succeeding in two of those only to fail in the remaining one and starting over AGAIN gets frustrating fast. Luckily the kickass levels more than overshadow the one or two lame ones. This game is like $25 now? Fucking by it if you're any sort of action game fan. Dynasty Warriors meets Final Fight meets melee combat that WORKS and looks sweet meets high production value meets the Lord of the Rings movie license. A WINNER IS YOU! |
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