The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

"I'll teach you to accuse me of having washed out textures!"

The Two Towers was quite a hit for the PS2 just before christmas. The sneak previews of the new movie (the game was released a few weeks before the movie), the much vaunted seguing between video and in-game footage, not least the glorious visuals and frantic gameplay, all served to make the game an instant classic.

It was with obvious excitement that Xbox owners waited for the game to be ported over to Bill's 'Box. With so much more power to play with, Xbox owners were pretty much guaranteed a sharper, smoother, and more polished title.

Sadly, however, they forgot to allow for the Dark Wizard Lazybeggar, Lord of the Ports.

Middle Earth is in a spot of bother and it's up to you to save the day

If only the textures were as sharp as the jaggies....

Following closely to the plot of the first two Lord of the Rings Movies, The Two Towers puts you squarely in the sandals of Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas, in a bid to hack, slash, stomp, and shoot your way from the camp at Weathertop to the Battle of Helms Deep.

The game is composed of a series of missions, each of which can be played as any of the three characters. During the missions, points are awarded for dispatching bad guys with a degree of style. These points can then be spent on gaining new abilities at the end of the level. In this way, it is possible to level up your character throughout the course of the game. Whether you play through the game from beginning to end with one character before trying the next, or play each level as each character in parallel, is up to you.

The gameplay itself is of the simplest kind. If it moves, hit it. If it doesn't, hit it anyway. If it glows pick it up. Available to the player at the outset are a few limited moves; a fast attack, a strong attack, a push, and a block. On gaining levels, players can learn new, more powerful, techniques. Although a fair amount of button mashing will get you through the earlier levels, a more intelligent approach is required for later bosses. Spending the early levels practicing and levelling up your character is certainly time well spent.

Politics. No, not Middle Earth politics, console politics

I don't know how much more brown I can take....

I'm going to come out with this bluntly, because it's getting in the way of the review. Most people reading this just want to know how much better than the PS2 version it is, right?

Well, frankly, the Xbox version of The Two Towers is horrible. I don't quite understand how EA have managed to pull this off - where the PS2 graphics are vibrant and alive, the Xbox images are washed out, jagged, and angular. Where the PS2 cutscenes and landscape pans were smooth and elegant, the Xbox equivalents stutter and judder like Max Headroom on speed. It's almost as if the porting process was performed on a computer built entirely out of ugly sticks.

How much this affects the gameplay is obviously up to the player. The look of the graphics, while disappointing, isn't terrible. Although not as lovely as the PS2, the Xbox version has fair graphics, all things considered. The framerate and sluggish controls, on the other hand, do serve to hinder what is essentially a fast paced beat-em-up. Unresponsive controls coupled with lurching camera movements do not make for a feeling of fluidity - something very much required in a fighting game.

Another source of complaint was the camera. It's all too easy to be trapped at the edge of the screen, being hit by something offscreen. Another problem was being repeatedly knocked over by an offscreen archer who you can't see to target. These problems existed on the PS2 version as well, but the overall fluidity of the game reduced the jarring effect of the problems. The Xbox version has no such saving grace.

Bored of the Rings

Aragorn! Shoot him before he gets away.

The sound in the game is the one thing that stands head and shoulders above the PS2 version. The vibrant beauty of the movie score and the Dolby 5.1 soundtrack really should have brought the game to startling life. Instead it dragged it off its knees to a kind of shambling undeath. Beautiful soundtrack wasted on a lacklustre game.

This has been a difficult game to review. Knowing that it can be (and has been!) done so much better on a lower specced console really gives you the impression that someone somewhere is taking the mickey. Xbox owners deserve better than this - particularly for such an important license.

Tolkien Fans will enjoy seeing the accurately reproduced scenery, but even the most die hard Hobbitphile will be frustrated by the jerky unresponsive and just plain ugly gameplay.