Aragorn's Quest is by no means a terrible game, but it's definitely a bad start for Warner Brothers.
Aragorn's Quest takes place about 10 to 15 years after the events in "The Return Of The King". Middle Earth is at peace now that Sauron has been defeated and Aragorn has been crowned king. The Shire, home of the Hobbits, is expecting a visit from Aragorn. So Samwise Gamgee, now a father and the Shire's Mayor plans a celebration for the king's arrival. He tells his kids the stories of Aragorn's adventures from when they first met at the Prancing Pony to the battle at the Black Gate of Mordor. In these story time sessions you'll get to play as Aragorn while Sam narrates your progress. In between these sessions you'll play as his son, Frodo, exploring the Shire and helping prepare for the celebration.
The concept is great, but the end result is not. The story is filled with plot holes, one moment you may be fighting in the mines of Moria and the next you'll Fangorn Forrest, without any proper explanation as to what happened in between the missions. There is a short text summary during the loading screens for each mission, but again, they don't help the story to be easily understandable. Maybe it was because the developers assumed everyone playing this game has already seen the movies or read the books, but that doesn't make much sense, considering that their target audience is children. I don't think many younger kids are interested in the LOTR mythos, or even seen the movies, so I would expect a more coherent, family friendly interpretation for a wider audience to able to enjoy it. So while the in game narration is great, everything else in this respect falls short of my standards for a game based on this franchise.
Aragorn's Quest was originally going to be on the Wii, PS2, PSP, and DS, the PS3 version was revealed out of nowhere several months later. It's pretty much a high definition port of the Wii version. And as a result, the game looks almost exactly like the Wii version, if not worse. While some of the textures look a bit better, the game is full of glitches, screen tearing, frame rate issues, horrendous animations, and mouths that are out of sync with the voices. It's horrible, yes, but not game breaking by any means. On the plus side, the levels are pretty big and very faithfully recreated. Around 20 to 50 or so enemies can appear on screen at one time, which is very impressive for a wii game, but doesn't even come close to the PS3's power, yet for some reason, the wii version runs a lot smoother and bug free than the PS3 port.
As you've probably noticed from the gameplay shown, Aragorn's Quest has a kid-friendly, cartoonish look, and all the characters and enemies look cute, even the trolls. This was done most likely because of the Wii's technical limitations, but it serves the game well, and once again emphasizes that this is more of a family oriented title.
Sean Austin reprises his role as Sam as does John Reese Davis for Gimli, these two sound as excellent as you'd expect, especially Sean Austin's narration, his performance was probably the best part of the game. All of the other voice actors sound little to NOTHING like their film counterparts. And I found the random misplaced quotes incredibly annoying.
The music for Aragorn's Quest is decent, with a few songs taken from the movies and a couple of new ones thrown in. If you've listened to the music in the movies, then you know what to expect here.
I don't own a MOVE controller yet, so I had to use a regular, Dualshock 3 PS3 controller. I'm not entirely sure how this game performs on the move, but my experience with a regular controller was horrible.
Sword swipes are done on the MOVE controller by simply swinging it in the desired location. On a Dualshock 3, you have to point the right analog stick in the desired direction, then press SQUARE to attack in said direction, somewhat like the Alone In The Dark reboot, but with an extra step. But it almost never swipes in the direction you want it to, this unresponsive feature becomes very frustrating when you have to attack a certain enemy in a specific way, making me have to try a couple of extra times until I finally get it right.
It's not quite as bad as the archery though, which is nearly unplayable on a regular controller. On the MOVE, you just aim the controller on the target and shoot. On the DualShock, you have to use the right analog stick to aim, this is how just about every console game handles aiming, the difference here is that it's extremely sensitive. If it weren't for the auto aim feature, it would've been next to impossible to hit your target, though the auto aiming is also far from perfect, since it stays fixed on the first target it sticks to until it is dead, regardless of where you move the crosshairs.
All the complications mentioned above are further worsened by the fact that you can't control the camera, it remains fixed on the character's back throughout the entire game. So if an enemy is attacking from behind, you have to turn the character around until you face them. And when you have the bow and arrow equipped and aimed, you only have the boxed area in which you're aiming to aim. If there happens to be an enemy you want to shoot down, but he's just a short distance away from the corner of the screen when you start aiming, you have to move your character until the target is in a good position, then you can finally fire away. The archery could've easily been improved with a slight tweak that let the camera move slightly in the crosshair's direction once it reached a corner, kind of like what the new SOCOM is doing, or, better yet, adopt the mechanics of a standard third person shooter, where the crosshair stays in the middle.
Aragorn's Quest could've been much more playable and enjoyable if they'd remove the directional sword swiping on the DualShock and just left us with simple face button attacks. That way the right analog stick could be used to control the camera.
I realize this game was made with the move and wii remote in mind, but they've also made it clear that they acknowledge a lot of people who may be interested in the game still don't own a move by adding the DualShock functionality, seeing how most move games don't. But if it's going to be this bad, they should just leave it out completely.
Besides the controls, the rest of Aragorn's Quest's gameplay is not that bad. I actually really enjoyed the Shire segments which are used as a tutorial to introduce the new weapons and moves that will be used later in the game. You can also play games with other Hobbit kids where they recreate the adventures of some of the other characters from the movies, like the scene when Frodo throws the ring into Mount Doom and so on.
There are a good amount of side quests in both game modes, these side quest range from retrieving an item or person to killing a certain amount of creatures. You earn silver coins for completing each side quest which you can later use to buy upgrades for your character, such as health or damage increases. However, these upgrades are meaningless since the game is very easy, even with the horrendous controls. I only died about 3 or 4 times in my first play though. On top of that there's a generous checkpoint system, so death wont really affect you anyways.
And finally, you can play the entire game in same screen offline coop, very similar to the recent Lego games. When the second controller is activated, one person plays as Aragorn and the other plays as Gandalf. This is a nice addition for parents to play alongside their kids or for kids to invite their friends over to play. But I think the game would've benefited from an online functionality as well.
VERDICT:
Aragorn's Quest will take you around 6 hours to complete, and about 10 if you do all the side quests. As of this recording, the game is still around 40 to 50 dollars, so I really don't recommend a purchase or even a rent unless you're a huge LOTR fan like me or if you own a wii or move controller. In conclusion, Aragorn's Quest is by no means a terrible game, but it's definitely a bad start for Warner Brothers. Though to be fair, not much worse than EA's first LOTR game.
THE GOOD:
+ Family friendly alternative to the movies
+ Sean Austin and John Rhys Davis
+ No EA logo on the cover!
+ Offline coop
THE BAD
- Tons of glitches
- Bad interpretation of the story
- TERRIBLE DualShock controlls
- No online coop option