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GameCube | Action | The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

Boxart for The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers 9 screen shots
  • GRAPHICS: 4.5
  • SOUND: 4.5
  • CONTROL: 4.0
  • FUN FACTOR 4.5
  • AVG USER SCORE 4.3
  • AVG CRITIC SCORE 3.9
Winner of the GamePro Editor's Choice Award

Review: The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

Review by TOKYODRIFTER | 02/11/2004 | 14:52:14 PM PST

The evil eye of Sauron has found the GameCube! Luckily. it has Aragorn?s sword, Legolas's bow, Gimli?s axe, and Tokyo Drifter?s WaveBird.

The saga of the Ring Bearer moves from the PlayStation 2 to the GameCube remaining more or less intact. Gameplay issues are about the only things that tarnish the ?precious.?

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers covers the events of the first two movies in splendid fashion. ?Interactive movie? may sound like a dirty term to gamers, but the combination of cinematic presentation and all-out action is executed with noteworthy panache. The in-game visuals are bright and detailed, improving upon the gorgeous PlayStation 2 presentation?even if this edition loses marks due to the lower-quality compression of the movie footage. The audio is also stellar for a GameCube game, featuring the voice actors and soundtrack from the movie, but the overall quality is a notch below that of other versions.

Even though it may look like pure hack-n-slash, the gameplay has quite a bit of depth to it. Mastering the parry and using your upgrades to the fullest is all extremely important if you want to continue making progress. The button layout of the GameCube controller is a bit awkward but nothing that you can?t get used to in a hurry.

Certain nuances in gameplay raise the difficulty of the game. It?s hard to know who in your party is hitting what at times, making it easier to rely on a small array of devastating attacks than to try to achieve a balanced offense. Later in the game, you have so many power-ups that it becomes a moot point?so all?s well that ends well it seems. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers will more than satisfy GameCube-owning Tolkien fans and action gamers alike.