2:38 As GImlii once said "Dwarves are natural sprinters. Very dangerous over short distance". No wonder he could get away so quickly that it looked like he teleported.
I **loved** the Return of the King GBA game, you never mentioned all the secret unlockable stages and the ability to play as Smeagol who starts with absolutely nothing but upgrades into an absolute ninja psycho beast.
Not to mention it was even more Diablo-like in that it had items of different rarity, including legendary items such as The Witch King's Daugther (his sword), which is fun to use to slay him as Eowyn. I used the duplication trick to see if Aragorn can dual-wield two of them, but alas, he can only wield one. I remember using the mine stage to "magic find" as well, much like in Diablo II.
@@JGWalrus That makes sense, as I remember actually being quite disappointed with the console games, as the GBA games were almost Diablo-esque experiences, whereas the console games consisted of linear set pieces.
The Third Age was just Final Fantasy with a LotR skin, which meant it was pretty fun. The difficulty scaling is quite weird though. You start out in Eregion where all the enemies are underleveled, then you go into Moria (which is the biggest part of the game) and the difficulty ramps very quickly. The Balrog fight is pretty crazy. Outside of some ridiculously tanky enemies such as the Mumakil at Pelennor Fields, the game is fairly well balanced. I also love that you can unlock evil mode for each chapter that rewards you with special gear for your characters.
It has become a routine watching your new videos on sunday for me, I mean they're relatively short but I always find myself getting excited for each new video every week or even if it would take longer I imagine ^^
Coincidentally, I've just got home from watching this movie in the cinema! Because of The Rings of Power series, the 4K extended versions of The Lord of the Rings movies have been reintroducted to a few cinemas. Naturally, I had to go see them since I wasn't old enough to go when they originally premiered. It was a real blast to see these magnificent works of art on the big screen!
Oh man one of my local theaters partnered with uhhh Flashback cinema in like 2018 and did 2 showings on 2 days of the extended editions, each a week after the other and it was downright magical to see them on the big screen again (I was JUST old enough for the first one when it was in theaters)
I feel like it’s important to Include that in the flagship games, that final fight against Gollum is just Frodo vs Gollum. And you’ve not had the chance to use Frodo at all the whole game to this point, so you have to fight the end boss at level 1.
Which is even funnier because Gollum is just a puzzle boss, so no matter how well you play, Frodo just gets a single level up for "killing" one enemy :D
Been really looking forward to seeing you cover some of the other LotR games, like the Third Age, since you started the trilogy ones! Also remember struggling horribly at the GBA version of Return of the King as a kid, but played a lot of the PC version co-op!
I remember playing different versions of the Pirates of the Caribbean My favorite being the GBA, I don't think it even followed anything with the Black pearl movie either, perhaps you could make a video on them too :D
Pirates on GBA ruled. It was more like a pirate simulator than an actual story or adventure game. Sailing around, finding new islands, chasing down ships and taking on fights to upgrade your ship. Was so fun.
All bosses: Return of the king: 2:18 undead king 3:51 mouth of sauron 5:11 shelob 5:34 gollum(final boss) 6:58 witch king Gba: 9:46 mouth of sauron 10:10 saruman 10:54 gollum(final boss)
the hobbit games were amazing, would love to see a video on it. The stealth mission with the trolls saying "that aint no badger" lives rent free in my head.
PS2 version is still one of my favourites games of all time. Me and my friends spent so many hours playing same levels over and over since it was so much to just go through those orcs :D
My brother and I spent SO many hours playing the Return of the King on gamecube. I don't think I've replayed a single game more times than this one. Great memories! And great video!
Return of the King was on the best games on GBA. It was a huge improve over Two Towers, music was very good. There were a lot of campaigns, additional bonus levels, intros, items. I’m a bit disappointed you didn’t mentioned New Game + mode (same as Harry Potter GBC games). In 2003 new game plus was a very uncommon thing. I played campaigns so many times, even being Gandalf 33 lvl, upgraded every single ability and game kept giving me more and more better items. Game was insanely good. I liked shine of the gems, so I even took as ny nickname.
I put so many hours into the console and GBA versions. It was a ton of fun to play the console version with a friend and to fight dozens and dozens of orcs in some of the levels (I also like mixing up the characters as a sort of “what-if” mode, like “what if Faramir was conscious during the siege of Minas Tirith and helped defend the gates? What if Aragorn went to rescue Frodo from Shelob?” etc.). The Southern Gate and all of Gandalf’s levels were my favorites. The combat system was pretty satisfying and I loved the animations for the different combos. The GBA game was also a favorite and the music was great. It was challenging and I wish there were more than 4 save slots, but it really made the adventure feel more fleshed-out and action packed than in the movie, since you’re constantly fighting enemies whereas in the film most of the action is between large armies and side characters. These games made the adventure feel more epic to me because it helped me fill in little gaps that the movies left and offered alternate versions of scenes. It’s something that I’ve always loved about good movie tie-in games, the way they further immerse you in the world of the movie and let you spend more time with the settings and the characters. These LOTR games, Star Wars, Harry Potter, King Kong, 007, Pirates of the Carribbean, and Spider-Man all benefitted from this and it was so fun as a kid to watch an exciting adventure movie and then play the game and just get lost in the world and immersed in the adventure. God, sometimes I miss the early 2000s, but I’m happy that I was able to enjoy these games (and the movies) as much as I did back then. I really appreciate this series and look forward to more!
After the FotR video I decided I was going to attempt to 100% the RotK PC version by the time this video came out. (I had played Two Towers fairly recently and didn't think I could get it done in time). I almost succeeded, but couldn't quite clutch out a run on the Palantir of Sauron. I was literally in the middle of an attempt when I got the notification for this video.
DISCLAIMER: This is a long comment, but see it as an old love letter to one of the first games that started it all for me. I waited a long time for this video and it really pays off. This game was a staple of my childhood! I have the same fond memories of this game as i had with my friends playing Pokémon Sapphire and Emerald on the GBA for the first time. I remember being scared going through the levels of Shelob's lair. I had a first generation GBA so the screen was really dark and you had a small bulb of light to guide you. I have arachnophobia and the Shelob sprite on the GBA was realistic as hell. It took mle over a year to finish it. But i have vary fond memories of this game, the graphics were amazing for a 2003 GBA game, you can see everyone's cape moving, everyone had unique different attack patterns, it was a long game to finish it with every character? i remember being 20 minutes on the loading screen with with headphones in just to adore the "victory" theme when you choose a character to play as. I took my GBA to play this game everywhere, at home, at my grandparents place, at school when allowed. I remember being nostalgic about the "credits" theme, it's such a bitterweet but smooth 8-bit sound after the big adventure you just completed.
The undead level where you run from the collapsing cave was so difficult. I think I could only get through it was Legolas because the other two were that little bit too slow. I also remember that during Gandalf's intro level at Helms Deep, you could actually kill every single orc in the battle. After a certain point they'd stop spawning and most of Gandalf's moves would be unlocked by the end of the tutorial.
The escape part of the Path of the Dead level, the Pelennor Fields level where you’re taking down the approaching Oliphants, and the Final Battle level, on the PS2 version, were the (Isildur’s) bane of my existence as a kid. They were SO difficult, and even going back recently the Pelennor Fields level in particular really made me feel like a fool of a Took.
This game was actually my introduction to The Lord of the Rings. Gandalf's orc hewer combo is OP as hell! I love busting this game and The Two Towers out. Everything holds up great in both. Great work on these, man! I'd love to see you cover all of the other games you mentioned 😃😃
my memories from this game is when i saw this guy on youtube, a guy with silly hair and big eyes, he looked like a cartoon, he was talking about the game, then i comment on his video and he gave me a heart and replied nice things to my comment. Other than that, i never played/saw this game.
So I passed by your two towers video like half an hour ago and I was just thinking how nice it would be to see the ROTK and here you are 😂😂 thank you bro! 🔥🔥🔥
I would like it if you talked about the Third Age, I just did a play through in anticipation for the TV show. The Third Age is such a solid RPG! And extremely underrated!
The Return of the king game(PS2 flagship one) Deserves a remake that combines the three movies in one with adding new characters that never saw the spotlight like Boromir, Elrond or Eowyn as secret ones(Not Boromir he should be part of the main cast)
Oooh yesss!!! I remember playing with my brother in ps2. We replayed every single level to see who defeated most enemies. Thank you very much for these videos
the GBA game was like my diablo experience, I remembering grinding so much for better equipment and finishing so many runs that I was OP enough to kill even the nazguls
the game transitions from movie scenes were so clean, frodo climbing up the mountain switch was perfect in game playing through the entire thing in solo to get coop was a dream, the dedication of little me so nostalgic everything felt grandios
Yes please more Lord of the rings as well as more Lego games too please! :-) Also may I suggest covering all versions of the following properties And their games: Pirates of the Caribbean, Narnia, eragon, The Spiderwick Chronicles, lemony Snicket, Tron, Peter Jackson’s King Kong, Indiana Jones, X-Men, Spider-Man, all of marvel and their movies, all of Pixar and their movies, The Lego movie, the rest of Shrek :-)
Big fan of your videos! I get a little excited when I see the notification pop up! Not sure if the series is your thing but I'd love comparisons like this for Final Fantasy. There are a lot of games in the series that had various ports & remasters 😀
The chocolate river comment made me realize: You should cover both Willy Wonka and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. If anything's nostalgic to a 2000s audience, it's those films!
You say that 'the developers realised how ludicrous this was', but in the book Sam does basically fight his way through the entire tower with nothing more than Sting and the Ring's invisibility powers. By the end of it the orcs are certain they've been invaded by an elf-lord with multiple weapons and fire magic. Never underestimate a pissed off hobbit with a knife, Samwise Gamgee is possibly the biggest badass in Middle-earth.
You're really out here playing the same game across different platforms while also playing through all questlines for our entertainment. That's dedication. I love the content! They're the best things to watch right before bed. Gets me to sleep in a better mood when I know I gotta get up for work in the AM haha 🤣
I remeber with my brother getting stuck in the fields of Pellenor level (or whatever is called, the one where you had to save Eowyn and Merry from the witch king) because we couldn´t figure out how to move between each cliff to take down the mumakills , it was a tough but fun game and playing co-op was the best experience we ever have. A thing you didn´t mention was that in the Gandalf path, the co-op campaign puts him with Pippin (or Merry , i don´t remember well if the game bothered to pair him with the correct Hobbit for his campaign, it´s been a long time) and Sam at the beggining it pairs him with Merry, you could only play with Frodo in his last level and after beating the game you could play all levels with any Character, also, you could unlock Faramir.
I played this game the most of the three main games. It has so much replayability with all the extra characters and how well designed the levels are. I'd love to see you cover third age and the hobbit game as I remember having both for my xbox.
Return is one of my favorite Childhood-Games of all time!!!! Theese are my best Christmas-Presents (PC and GBA) on 2003!!!! It makes also still fun to play today and it never gets boring!!!! Can you also do a Video about the Hobbit-Game from 2004?
Great job. I couldn't wait longer for this video. Yes please, let's do another video about the 3rd Age. Despite waiting too much. And please if you continue doing this kind of videos, consider doing War in the North. Keep doing this wonders
About the part when Saruman is talking to Gandalf „wirelessly” is because Palantiri (This huge crystal ball) is allowing Saruman to exchange thoughts beetween Gandalf and him and Thats Why you can hear him so crisp because its a „Dialoge” inside Gandalf head. But to be used Saruman need to know direction where Gandalf is currently, otherwise it would not work, because the Palantiri user must be facing the direction he wish to communicate ( like satellite dish basically 🤷🏼♂️)
This has been one of my favorite games in my childhood. Played it with my older brother and my best friend on Xbox and neither of us was on the phone during the level with the collapsing cave but we still managed to die all the time. Our favorite feature was Gandalfs Shield which would just be completly oblirate enemies while the second player didn't stand a chance to participate for that time 🤣
I really want to see more! Third Age, Conquest and Shadow of Mordor/War! Maybe even the RTS stuff! Your channel is great! I'll definitely check your second channel! Sounds very funny!
The lego games can maybe be a separate thing with the lego series but definitely do the hobbit and the third age. I have a lot of nostalgia for both, the hobbit is janky as hell but fun and I'd love to see your thoughts. I actually think the third age is really solid and underrated and is one of my favorite games ever, I've been replaying it lately with my daughter lol
I spent countless hours playing co-op Return of the King on both PC and GameCube with my friends/family, using the Banes and getting Perfect ranks across the board. But the GBA version? It had so many unlockables and cool quality of life improvements. My favorite was that, in the Two Towers, you could pick up character specific Legendary weapons. The problem is that other characters could get them, and the only way to trade was to have another GBA and a second copy to trade them back and forth between files. So Return of the King fixed that by giving you a shared inventory system between saves! There were so many cool unlockables too, some related to linking the GameCube and GBA versions, or by playing multi-player with a friend. For a Diablo clone on the GBA, it was chock full of content and very replayable!
I loved the flagship for the ps2 and pc at the time. I sort of killed my own fun at it when I discovered an exploit: If you do the parry attacks, you get a disproportional amount of your "super sayian mode" bar filled, so you can essentially do entire stages getting nothing but perfect kills, getting WAY OVER the expected EXP and becoming overpowered. It was a lot of fun at first, and then my teen brain optimized it too much, but I love this game still.
Me and a friend had a blast reconnecting a PS2 to the tv, playing the return of the king game from 21:00 to 2:00 AM, amazing experience, the gameplay of that game( maybe the animations ) is just so rewarding, it feels very nice to play and is very very simple fun, I wish modern games focused more on the fun, and flow of animations instead of stupid features or graphics, on that I think Minecraft and valheim proved a very important point.
I’ve watched several videos and realized I wasn’t subscribed for some reason. Adding my vote into the mix to say I would love to see you tackle the other Middle Earth games. Easily have 3 videos of content there.
Another great video! You should do the EA James Bond games next. In particular Everything or Nothing and From Russia With Love, which both had mobile versions.
I always like the one-off licensed games, like the PS2 The Hobbit game and the Pirates of the Caribbean: Legend of Jack Sparrow, which is a made-up story where Jack and will are facing execution and Jack pulls a Scheherazade and tells an elaborate story to enthrall the crowd so that the hanging never actually happens. It's also hilarious, with a lot of jokes about narrative structure and the fact that Jack is basically telling fanfiction of his own life, like having Elizabeth Swann fighting alongside him while he takes a harbour town. Confused she's like "Hang on, why am I here? I won't meet you for years." and he's basically like "I need a strong moral compass to bounce off of to make the story more entertaining, figured you'd be a fun addition to the story."
I remember on the Fields of Pelenor field my buddy and I kept losing because we had NO IDEA that you could cross the fields. It was super frustrating and took us about 20 tries before we realized thats what you had to do. (This was before the days of cell phones where you could just google the answer right away).
Very surprised there's no mention of the One Ring mechanic in the GBA game. Frodo can put on the ring for invisibility. However, whenever he uses it, the Eye of Sauron tracks him. Once the Eye is locked on, Ring Wraiths are summoned. It's a cool and lore appropriate mechanic.
Fantastic videos! Loved your following through of the games. I love the Return of the King game on home consoles and PC. Specially cause of coop. But only thing that always bothered me was the echo filled and less impactful sound effects, specially compared to the Two Towers console games. I'd love to see you going through the Third Age, Lego Lord of the Rings (my favorite one given its item based gameplay and open world Middle Earth), and of course the bug filled yet fun War in the North!
I remember going into GameStop a day before Christmas with my own money to buy this game along with a brand new controller because the original one got so worn and torn that the wires were exposed and just stop working. As for the GBA version I still play this on a GBA emulator on my phone from time to time. I think it's my favorite GBA game.
I would love to see a video of all the versions of the third age games. The gameboy advance version was one of my favourites for that handheld console. Keep up the good work! I really enjoy your videos!
My favorite part of this game is using the cheat code that unlocks Faramir early. Because the game recognizes him as a bonus character still, which means you can take him through the path of the Hobbit and just blitz everyone on the definitely not combat focused Hobbit path
I've never watched any of the Lord of the Rings movies or played any of the games except the LEGO ones, but I really enjoy your videos and I like the way you look at the different versions of the game for different platforms and how they're different from each other, so I would like to see you do more Middle-Earth games and also possibly the tie-in games for the Spider-Man movies (plus Friend or Foe and The Amazing Spider-Man games), the Batman movies (plus Batman: The Animated Series/The Adventures of Batman and Robin), the Jurassic Park movies, the Transformers movies (plus War for Cybertron), and Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith.
I liked the 3 paths. I played this on the GameCube all through the Christmas break between semesters. I can still remember the scent of the Christmas candle that was burning back then. I would like to see you cover the Third Age and Lego games.
Please make a video on the other Lord of the Rings games, the Lego games, The Hobbit, and Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor/War! They don’t necessarily have to all be in the same video, but you should definitely do them! If you decide to split them up, I suggest grouping them together as follows: one video for Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War, another video talking about the Lego games, and a third video talking about The Hobbit game. Not sure where LoTR: The Third Age would fit in, but you could give that one it’s own separate video, or you could just combine it with the Shadow of Mordor/War video, or the Hobbit video. Also, it might be interesting to see a video talking about Lord of the Rings: Gollum when it comes out, but it’s hard to say when that will be.
the console version is one of my favorite games. we replayed that so many times , especially in co-op.never gets old! I liked return of the king so much that I even bought the Mobile version back then.
I'd like to see you do these for Tomb Raider games. Especially the LAU trilogy. If memory serves that trilogy was ported all over the place. PC, main console at the time, Nintendo DS, Java phones, Game Boy Advanced and so on. I remember that PC and console versions also had various differences between them.
this game was great i always loved in the southern gate level how you could like one shot the troll if you used the spears and then the Sam level where he has to go through the waves of orcs is really fun.
I remember playing through each level as all the characters until they reached max level. Tho if you played as someone who wasn’t a default character they were just invisible in the cutscenes
I actually preferred the Two Towers and Return of the King on GBA, because they were fairly Diablo-esque games, and I was obsessed with Diablo 2 back in the day, so I loved these games too. In The Return of the King, I even did magic finding, item duping, etc., and ended up sticking with Gimli in that trio's path for subsequent playthroughs after finding the Silver Axe. The console games weren't bad for the time, but they really are just set piece games, and therefore aren't as deep IMHO.
The return of the king game had a lot of cut content and scenes never used in the final movie, like the mouth of sauron and paths of the dead which were cut from the original cinema version, the original witchking armor design, the silent watchers from cirith ungol, the easterlings at the pelenor fields etc Those cut scenes can be seen on youtube nowadays but back in the day i was scratching my head were all that stuff in the game came from
now for another trip down memory lane, thanks Flandrew! as a suggestion could you cover Spiderman 2 on gamecube or ultimate spiderman? those were some of my favorites growing up aside from TLOR series on gamecube id also love to see you review Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War even if they arent completly tolkien accurate they are better than amazons ROP and it feels alot like an actual living breathing world from tolkien rather than... whatever ROP was supposed to be
2:38 As GImlii once said "Dwarves are natural sprinters. Very dangerous over short distance". No wonder he could get away so quickly that it looked like he teleported.
Right
I **loved** the Return of the King GBA game, you never mentioned all the secret unlockable stages and the ability to play as Smeagol who starts with absolutely nothing but upgrades into an absolute ninja psycho beast.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who remembered those!
Not to mention it was even more Diablo-like in that it had items of different rarity, including legendary items such as The Witch King's Daugther (his sword), which is fun to use to slay him as Eowyn. I used the duplication trick to see if Aragorn can dual-wield two of them, but alas, he can only wield one. I remember using the mine stage to "magic find" as well, much like in Diablo II.
Something tells me he doesn't do more than try the "side" games
@@JGWalrus That makes sense, as I remember actually being quite disappointed with the console games, as the GBA games were almost Diablo-esque experiences, whereas the console games consisted of linear set pieces.
Agree. You could also equip different kit and weapons too, including some super rare ones (which I think from memory had their names in red text).
I'd love to see the other Middle-Earth games. The third age is very nostalgic for me.
War in the north, conquest, battle for middle earth, shadow of
replayed the third age a few weeks ago on an emulator. it aged very well. had a lot of fun
I very much enjoyed the Third Age game.
The Third Age was just Final Fantasy with a LotR skin, which meant it was pretty fun. The difficulty scaling is quite weird though. You start out in Eregion where all the enemies are underleveled, then you go into Moria (which is the biggest part of the game) and the difficulty ramps very quickly. The Balrog fight is pretty crazy.
Outside of some ridiculously tanky enemies such as the Mumakil at Pelennor Fields, the game is fairly well balanced. I also love that you can unlock evil mode for each chapter that rewards you with special gear for your characters.
The Balrog was hands down the most difficult boss for me. Even with Gandalf helping.@@MisterDutch93
It has become a routine watching your new videos on sunday for me, I mean they're relatively short but I always find myself getting excited for each new video every week or even if it would take longer I imagine ^^
Flandrew Sunday🎉
Same! Even it's 1 am in my time zone!
Coincidentally, I've just got home from watching this movie in the cinema! Because of The Rings of Power series, the 4K extended versions of The Lord of the Rings movies have been reintroducted to a few cinemas. Naturally, I had to go see them since I wasn't old enough to go when they originally premiered. It was a real blast to see these magnificent works of art on the big screen!
Oh man one of my local theaters partnered with uhhh Flashback cinema in like 2018 and did 2 showings on 2 days of the extended editions, each a week after the other and it was downright magical to see them on the big screen again (I was JUST old enough for the first one when it was in theaters)
During COVID my local cinema showed all the lord of the rings and hobbit films in extended edition over a week which was mind-blowing.
I feel like it’s important to Include that in the flagship games, that final fight against Gollum is just Frodo vs Gollum. And you’ve not had the chance to use Frodo at all the whole game to this point, so you have to fight the end boss at level 1.
Yeah and frodo sucks compared to sam
Which is even funnier because Gollum is just a puzzle boss, so no matter how well you play, Frodo just gets a single level up for "killing" one enemy :D
@@HiddenGemsReviews its been a long time since i played this game,but from what i remember frodo felt slow compared to the other hobbits
@@slaviclad9705 maybe that’s intentional as he would be exhausted by that part
This man came out of nowhere and started making fantastic content, can't wait for your next video!
Been really looking forward to seeing you cover some of the other LotR games, like the Third Age, since you started the trilogy ones! Also remember struggling horribly at the GBA version of Return of the King as a kid, but played a lot of the PC version co-op!
I love the replay value of this game. There’s something about struggling to fight Shelob as Sam, but other characters don’t put up much of a struggle.
I remember playing different versions of the Pirates of the Caribbean My favorite being the GBA, I don't think it even followed anything with the Black pearl movie either, perhaps you could make a video on them too :D
Yes, I support this
Pirates on GBA ruled. It was more like a pirate simulator than an actual story or adventure game. Sailing around, finding new islands, chasing down ships and taking on fights to upgrade your ship. Was so fun.
All bosses:
Return of the king:
2:18 undead king
3:51 mouth of sauron
5:11 shelob
5:34 gollum(final boss)
6:58 witch king
Gba:
9:46 mouth of sauron
10:10 saruman
10:54 gollum(final boss)
the hobbit games were amazing, would love to see a video on it. The stealth mission with the trolls saying "that aint no badger" lives rent free in my head.
"...must'a been one of them badgers"
You just unlocked a core memory for me, thank you sir
PS2 version is still one of my favourites games of all time. Me and my friends spent so many hours playing same levels over and over since it was so much to just go through those orcs :D
Playing that South Gate level trying to get 100% perfect kills… man that was so fun.
My brother and I spent SO many hours playing the Return of the King on gamecube. I don't think I've replayed a single game more times than this one. Great memories! And great video!
Return of the King was on the best games on GBA. It was a huge improve over Two Towers, music was very good. There were a lot of campaigns, additional bonus levels, intros, items. I’m a bit disappointed you didn’t mentioned New Game + mode (same as Harry Potter GBC games). In 2003 new game plus was a very uncommon thing. I played campaigns so many times, even being Gandalf 33 lvl, upgraded every single ability and game kept giving me more and more better items. Game was insanely good. I liked shine of the gems, so I even took as ny nickname.
I put so many hours into the console and GBA versions. It was a ton of fun to play the console version with a friend and to fight dozens and dozens of orcs in some of the levels (I also like mixing up the characters as a sort of “what-if” mode, like “what if Faramir was conscious during the siege of Minas Tirith and helped defend the gates? What if Aragorn went to rescue Frodo from Shelob?” etc.). The Southern Gate and all of Gandalf’s levels were my favorites. The combat system was pretty satisfying and I loved the animations for the different combos.
The GBA game was also a favorite and the music was great. It was challenging and I wish there were more than 4 save slots, but it really made the adventure feel more fleshed-out and action packed than in the movie, since you’re constantly fighting enemies whereas in the film most of the action is between large armies and side characters. These games made the adventure feel more epic to me because it helped me fill in little gaps that the movies left and offered alternate versions of scenes. It’s something that I’ve always loved about good movie tie-in games, the way they further immerse you in the world of the movie and let you spend more time with the settings and the characters. These LOTR games, Star Wars, Harry Potter, King Kong, 007, Pirates of the Carribbean, and Spider-Man all benefitted from this and it was so fun as a kid to watch an exciting adventure movie and then play the game and just get lost in the world and immersed in the adventure.
God, sometimes I miss the early 2000s, but I’m happy that I was able to enjoy these games (and the movies) as much as I did back then. I really appreciate this series and look forward to more!
"Are they undead bees?"
No... they're zombees.
I will show myself the door.
What a lovely door.
After the FotR video I decided I was going to attempt to 100% the RotK PC version by the time this video came out. (I had played Two Towers fairly recently and didn't think I could get it done in time). I almost succeeded, but couldn't quite clutch out a run on the Palantir of Sauron. I was literally in the middle of an attempt when I got the notification for this video.
Enjoyed these after finding the channel, and please do the other lord of the rings games
DISCLAIMER: This is a long comment, but see it as an old love letter to one of the first games that started it all for me.
I waited a long time for this video and it really pays off. This game was a staple of my childhood! I have the same fond memories of this game as i had with my friends playing Pokémon Sapphire and Emerald on the GBA for the first time. I remember being scared going through the levels of Shelob's lair. I had a first generation GBA so the screen was really dark and you had a small bulb of light to guide you. I have arachnophobia and the Shelob sprite on the GBA was realistic as hell. It took mle over a year to finish it. But i have vary fond memories of this game, the graphics were amazing for a 2003 GBA game, you can see everyone's cape moving, everyone had unique different attack patterns, it was a long game to finish it with every character? i remember being 20 minutes on the loading screen with with headphones in just to adore the "victory" theme when you choose a character to play as. I took my GBA to play this game everywhere, at home, at my grandparents place, at school when allowed. I remember being nostalgic about the "credits" theme, it's such a bitterweet but smooth 8-bit sound after the big adventure you just completed.
The undead level where you run from the collapsing cave was so difficult. I think I could only get through it was Legolas because the other two were that little bit too slow.
I also remember that during Gandalf's intro level at Helms Deep, you could actually kill every single orc in the battle. After a certain point they'd stop spawning and most of Gandalf's moves would be unlocked by the end of the tutorial.
Thanks for making videos! They are amazing! ❤️
The escape part of the Path of the Dead level, the Pelennor Fields level where you’re taking down the approaching Oliphants, and the Final Battle level, on the PS2 version, were the (Isildur’s) bane of my existence as a kid. They were SO difficult, and even going back recently the Pelennor Fields level in particular really made me feel like a fool of a Took.
I’d LOVE to see your videos on the other Lord of the Rings and Hobbit games.
This game was actually my introduction to The Lord of the Rings. Gandalf's orc hewer combo is OP as hell!
I love busting this game and The Two Towers out. Everything holds up great in both.
Great work on these, man! I'd love to see you cover all of the other games you mentioned 😃😃
I think the bizarre hobbit game would make a good video. You could even compare it to Lego hobbit to keep the theme
The only thing I'm looking forward to on a Sunday. Love your Videos! :)
my memories from this game is when i saw this guy on youtube, a guy with silly hair and big eyes, he looked like a cartoon, he was talking about the game, then i comment on his video and he gave me a heart and replied nice things to my comment.
Other than that, i never played/saw this game.
Absolutely love your videos man! Your humor is fantastic 😂 that Central Line quote is on point. 😂
So I passed by your two towers video like half an hour ago and I was just thinking how nice it would be to see the ROTK and here you are 😂😂 thank you bro! 🔥🔥🔥
I would like it if you talked about the Third Age, I just did a play through in anticipation for the TV show. The Third Age is such a solid RPG! And extremely underrated!
The Return of the king game(PS2 flagship one) Deserves a remake that combines the three movies in one with adding new characters that never saw the spotlight like Boromir, Elrond or Eowyn as secret ones(Not Boromir he should be part of the main cast)
i dont know how i found your channel all i know is i love these comparison videos
i do know my first video i saw from you was a harry potter video
Oooh yesss!!! I remember playing with my brother in ps2. We replayed every single level to see who defeated most enemies. Thank you very much for these videos
the GBA game was like my diablo experience, I remembering grinding so much for better equipment and finishing so many runs that I was OP enough to kill even the nazguls
the game transitions from movie scenes were so clean, frodo climbing up the mountain switch was perfect in game
playing through the entire thing in solo to get coop was a dream, the dedication of little me
so nostalgic everything felt grandios
Yes please more Lord of the rings as well as more Lego games too please! :-) Also may I suggest covering all versions of the following properties And their games: Pirates of the Caribbean, Narnia, eragon, The Spiderwick Chronicles, lemony Snicket, Tron, Peter Jackson’s King Kong, Indiana Jones, X-Men, Spider-Man, all of marvel and their movies, all of Pixar and their movies, The Lego movie, the rest of Shrek :-)
I would love to see a comparison of the book inspired RTS “War of the Ring” and the movie inspired RTS “Battle for Middle-Earth!”
Big fan of your videos! I get a little excited when I see the notification pop up!
Not sure if the series is your thing but I'd love comparisons like this for Final Fantasy. There are a lot of games in the series that had various ports & remasters 😀
For real though, you could totally get work in professional voice and/or book narration acting with that voice. It's really nice to listen to.
Excellent video as always! I would love to see you cover all the other Middle Earth games
The chocolate river comment made me realize: You should cover both Willy Wonka and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. If anything's nostalgic to a 2000s audience, it's those films!
You say that 'the developers realised how ludicrous this was', but in the book Sam does basically fight his way through the entire tower with nothing more than Sting and the Ring's invisibility powers. By the end of it the orcs are certain they've been invaded by an elf-lord with multiple weapons and fire magic.
Never underestimate a pissed off hobbit with a knife, Samwise Gamgee is possibly the biggest badass in Middle-earth.
You're really out here playing the same game across different platforms while also playing through all questlines for our entertainment. That's dedication. I love the content! They're the best things to watch right before bed. Gets me to sleep in a better mood when I know I gotta get up for work in the AM haha 🤣
I remeber with my brother getting stuck in the fields of Pellenor level (or whatever is called, the one where you had to save Eowyn and Merry from the witch king) because we couldn´t figure out how to move between each cliff to take down the mumakills , it was a tough but fun game and playing co-op was the best experience we ever have.
A thing you didn´t mention was that in the Gandalf path, the co-op campaign puts him with Pippin (or Merry , i don´t remember well if the game bothered to pair him with the correct Hobbit for his campaign, it´s been a long time) and Sam at the beggining it pairs him with Merry, you could only play with Frodo in his last level and after beating the game you could play all levels with any Character, also, you could unlock Faramir.
Definitely check out The Hobbit on ps2. It's legitimately the best adaptation that book has ever seen.
I played this game the most of the three main games. It has so much replayability with all the extra characters and how well designed the levels are. I'd love to see you cover third age and the hobbit game as I remember having both for my xbox.
I would love to see The Third Age, The Hobbit, War In The North and Conquest! These videos were awesome, thank you so much!
Return is one of my favorite Childhood-Games of all time!!!!
Theese are my best Christmas-Presents (PC and GBA) on 2003!!!!
It makes also still fun to play today and it never gets boring!!!!
Can you also do a Video about the Hobbit-Game from 2004?
Great job. I couldn't wait longer for this video. Yes please, let's do another video about the 3rd Age. Despite waiting too much. And please if you continue doing this kind of videos, consider doing War in the North. Keep doing this wonders
I’d love to see more middle earth games! Conquest is very nostalgic one of the best games of the early 2000s
Been waiting on this one since you first started talking about the Harry Potter tie in games. 😄
Nice, another video that can become my „comfort food“ for the next week or so.
About the part when Saruman is talking to Gandalf „wirelessly” is because Palantiri (This huge crystal ball) is allowing Saruman to exchange thoughts beetween Gandalf and him and Thats Why you can hear him so crisp because its a „Dialoge” inside Gandalf head. But to be used Saruman need to know direction where Gandalf is currently, otherwise it would not work, because the Palantiri user must be facing the direction he wish to communicate ( like satellite dish basically 🤷🏼♂️)
Great video. You definitely should talk about the other Lord of the Rings games
At last, the best ones on the series. The GBA version has always been my favorite, so much so that I played through every single campaign back then
This has been one of my favorite games in my childhood. Played it with my older brother and my best friend on Xbox and neither of us was on the phone during the level with the collapsing cave but we still managed to die all the time. Our favorite feature was Gandalfs Shield which would just be completly oblirate enemies while the second player didn't stand a chance to participate for that time 🤣
That first level escape sequence was imposing with my little brother. He’d always forget which character was his and fuck it up.
I really want to see more! Third Age, Conquest and Shadow of Mordor/War! Maybe even the RTS stuff! Your channel is great! I'll definitely check your second channel! Sounds very funny!
The lego games can maybe be a separate thing with the lego series but definitely do the hobbit and the third age. I have a lot of nostalgia for both, the hobbit is janky as hell but fun and I'd love to see your thoughts. I actually think the third age is really solid and underrated and is one of my favorite games ever, I've been replaying it lately with my daughter lol
would love to see you cover the hobbit games! i loved it as a kid but only played on gamecube
I spent countless hours playing co-op Return of the King on both PC and GameCube with my friends/family, using the Banes and getting Perfect ranks across the board.
But the GBA version? It had so many unlockables and cool quality of life improvements.
My favorite was that, in the Two Towers, you could pick up character specific Legendary weapons. The problem is that other characters could get them, and the only way to trade was to have another GBA and a second copy to trade them back and forth between files.
So Return of the King fixed that by giving you a shared inventory system between saves!
There were so many cool unlockables too, some related to linking the GameCube and GBA versions, or by playing multi-player with a friend.
For a Diablo clone on the GBA, it was chock full of content and very replayable!
I still have my copy of The Hobbit. It was a fun game. I played a bit of The Third Age and enjoyed it. I think both would make for cool videos :)
Noticing the improved animation of your avatar 💪
I loved the flagship for the ps2 and pc at the time. I sort of killed my own fun at it when I discovered an exploit: If you do the parry attacks, you get a disproportional amount of your "super sayian mode" bar filled, so you can essentially do entire stages getting nothing but perfect kills, getting WAY OVER the expected EXP and becoming overpowered. It was a lot of fun at first, and then my teen brain optimized it too much, but I love this game still.
Love watching these videos. Revenge of the Sith also lends itself perfectly for such a video. Anyway, keep up the good work!
Me and a friend had a blast reconnecting a PS2 to the tv, playing the return of the king game from 21:00 to 2:00 AM, amazing experience, the gameplay of that game( maybe the animations ) is just so rewarding, it feels very nice to play and is very very simple fun, I wish modern games focused more on the fun, and flow of animations instead of stupid features or graphics, on that I think Minecraft and valheim proved a very important point.
Would love to see a comparison of the Hobbit games!
I’ve watched several videos and realized I wasn’t subscribed for some reason. Adding my vote into the mix to say I would love to see you tackle the other Middle Earth games. Easily have 3 videos of content there.
Finally, a Flandrew video where the intro actually applies to me 😂
Another amazing comparison.
I missed playing this game on my PS2 😂😂
Another great video! You should do the EA James Bond games next. In particular Everything or Nothing and From Russia With Love, which both had mobile versions.
I always like the one-off licensed games, like the PS2 The Hobbit game and the Pirates of the Caribbean: Legend of Jack Sparrow, which is a made-up story where Jack and will are facing execution and Jack pulls a Scheherazade and tells an elaborate story to enthrall the crowd so that the hanging never actually happens. It's also hilarious, with a lot of jokes about narrative structure and the fact that Jack is basically telling fanfiction of his own life, like having Elizabeth Swann fighting alongside him while he takes a harbour town. Confused she's like "Hang on, why am I here? I won't meet you for years." and he's basically like "I need a strong moral compass to bounce off of to make the story more entertaining, figured you'd be a fun addition to the story."
I remember on the Fields of Pelenor field my buddy and I kept losing because we had NO IDEA that you could cross the fields. It was super frustrating and took us about 20 tries before we realized thats what you had to do. (This was before the days of cell phones where you could just google the answer right away).
1:12 Lord Tirek, was that you?
Very surprised there's no mention of the One Ring mechanic in the GBA game. Frodo can put on the ring for invisibility. However, whenever he uses it, the Eye of Sauron tracks him. Once the Eye is locked on, Ring Wraiths are summoned.
It's a cool and lore appropriate mechanic.
I'd love a video covering the other LOTR games. The PS2 and GBA The Third Age, Conquest, Battle for Middle-Earth 1&2, the LEGO games
0:53 As Gandalf once said: 'A wizard is never late, nor is he early. He arrives precisely when he means to!'
Another awesome video 🤘 Hope you do comparisons videos for "The Third Age" and "The Hobbit" 👍
Rotk was my childhood! 🙌🏻🙌🏻 Games like Shadow Of Mordor and especially War bring back those fond memories and then some. 🙌🏻🙌🏻
I remember playing Return of the King with my cousin constantly. Such a good time.
Fantastic videos! Loved your following through of the games.
I love the Return of the King game on home consoles and PC. Specially cause of coop. But only thing that always bothered me was the echo filled and less impactful sound effects, specially compared to the Two Towers console games.
I'd love to see you going through the Third Age, Lego Lord of the Rings (my favorite one given its item based gameplay and open world Middle Earth), and of course the bug filled yet fun War in the North!
This was great, please keep covering LoTR games?
Pushing those damn ladders down as Gandalf was the bane of my existence!
I remember going into GameStop a day before Christmas with my own money to buy this game along with a brand new controller because the original one got so worn and torn that the wires were exposed and just stop working.
As for the GBA version I still play this on a GBA emulator on my phone from time to time. I think it's my favorite GBA game.
I would love to see a video of all the versions of the third age games. The gameboy advance version was one of my favourites for that handheld console. Keep up the good work! I really enjoy your videos!
I would love to see the Hobbit from you along with the third age even though that really is loosely based.
My favorite part of this game is using the cheat code that unlocks Faramir early.
Because the game recognizes him as a bonus character still, which means you can take him through the path of the Hobbit and just blitz everyone on the definitely not combat focused Hobbit path
I've never watched any of the Lord of the Rings movies or played any of the games except the LEGO ones, but I really enjoy your videos and I like the way you look at the different versions of the game for different platforms and how they're different from each other, so I would like to see you do more Middle-Earth games and also possibly the tie-in games for the Spider-Man movies (plus Friend or Foe and The Amazing Spider-Man games), the Batman movies (plus Batman: The Animated Series/The Adventures of Batman and Robin), the Jurassic Park movies, the Transformers movies (plus War for Cybertron), and Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith.
I liked the 3 paths. I played this on the GameCube all through the Christmas break between semesters. I can still remember the scent of the Christmas candle that was burning back then. I would like to see you cover the Third Age and Lego games.
Bitoching about the younger brother is priceless
Please make a video on the other Lord of the Rings games, the Lego games, The Hobbit, and Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor/War! They don’t necessarily have to all be in the same video, but you should definitely do them! If you decide to split them up, I suggest grouping them together as follows: one video for Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War, another video talking about the Lego games, and a third video talking about The Hobbit game. Not sure where LoTR: The Third Age would fit in, but you could give that one it’s own separate video, or you could just combine it with the Shadow of Mordor/War video, or the Hobbit video. Also, it might be interesting to see a video talking about Lord of the Rings: Gollum when it comes out, but it’s hard to say when that will be.
the console version is one of my favorite games. we replayed that so many times , especially in co-op.never gets old! I liked return of the king so much that I even bought the Mobile version back then.
I'd like to see you do these for Tomb Raider games. Especially the LAU trilogy. If memory serves that trilogy was ported all over the place. PC, main console at the time, Nintendo DS, Java phones, Game Boy Advanced and so on. I remember that PC and console versions also had various differences between them.
this game was great i always loved in the southern gate level how you could like one shot the troll if you used the spears and then the Sam level where he has to go through the waves of orcs is really fun.
I remember playing through each level as all the characters until they reached max level. Tho if you played as someone who wasn’t a default character they were just invisible in the cutscenes
9:00 "oh no, it's one of Saurons evil squirrels!" Hahaha
I actually preferred the Two Towers and Return of the King on GBA, because they were fairly Diablo-esque games, and I was obsessed with Diablo 2 back in the day, so I loved these games too. In The Return of the King, I even did magic finding, item duping, etc., and ended up sticking with Gimli in that trio's path for subsequent playthroughs after finding the Silver Axe. The console games weren't bad for the time, but they really are just set piece games, and therefore aren't as deep IMHO.
The return of the king game had a lot of cut content and scenes never used in the final movie, like the mouth of sauron and paths of the dead which were cut from the original cinema version, the original witchking armor design, the silent watchers from cirith ungol, the easterlings at the pelenor fields etc
Those cut scenes can be seen on youtube nowadays but back in the day i was scratching my head were all that stuff in the game came from
now for another trip down memory lane, thanks Flandrew! as a suggestion could you cover Spiderman 2 on gamecube or ultimate spiderman? those were some of my favorites growing up aside from TLOR series on gamecube id also love to see you review Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War even if they arent completly tolkien accurate they are better than amazons ROP and it feels alot like an actual living breathing world from tolkien rather than... whatever ROP was supposed to be