I Don't Care if LEGO: Lord the Rings Will Not Have Good 3D - Demo Playtest Review

As I've mentioned in my previous post, I was spending some time playing the LEGO Lord of the Rings Demo I downloaded from the eShop. At first, I thought I would be playing something that isn't worth my minimal gaming time, but lo and behold, LEGO Lord of the Rings plays classy. Before everything else, check out the video above detailing how the developers created the Middle Earth.

Ready?

The first part of the demo lets you get the "feel" of the game's controls. You move your character around by the D-Pad or the Circle Pad and you attack by pressing the Y button (plus doing other things, such as "jumping" on the other buttons.)

My first task is to cook something. So the game basically instructs me to cut grass, move, crawl, fish, light fire - all these things just to collect the ingredients that can make me cook. But I'm lacking 1 ingredient - the crow's eggs. Thankfully, I slashed here and there in order to come up with right items that would helped me built a cart and a LEGO in human-shaped form. When my character jumped on the cart, the LEGO man was catapulted to the crow's nest and acted like a scarecrow that terrified the crow away.

After those were quest after quest which involves me building and rebuilding LEGO blocks that would act like real-life inanimate objects which would enable me to reach my goal.

And lo and behold I was in this freaking place where Frodo and the hobbits first met the undead kings which were once humans that were corrupted by their rings. (Ha! I remember my books and movies!)

I have to tell you that each hobbit, and possibly each character, has some skill unique to them (or perhaps shared with others as well.) For example, Frodo can, well, put the ring on and become invisible. The task now is to switch between the invisible Frodo and Sam (or whoever) into stunning the kings. I have Sam first distract the kings so that there will be distance between them and Frodo. I would then switch to Frodo to activate some circles which will activate something that will stun the enemies.
 
After all the stunning you did to them, the Kings regained their mobility. Only this time, Aragorn came to the rescue. Only Sam and Aragorn are playable at this point. Now Aragorn has a torch which can be used to throw fire on the kings and stun them. When I hit them once, I had to stun them again so that they will be defeated and will literally jump out the mountain. After this skirmish, the group mentioned they would be going to see the elves. End of the demo.

Writer Thoughts:

What I like in the demo are lots of things. One is the fun controls and the switching. Controlling not just Frodo can give you access to other things as well as being capable of solving traps and puzzles. I think the use of the circle pad for the fishing and other things involving ropes and lines makes sense. They should incorporate that to fhe final copy.

Basically, the demo gave us a better picture on what's in store for us when we buy the game. LEGO Lord of the Rings looks fun and also made an effort to incorporate 3D well. It kind of missed on the 3D part but it looks to me that the game will be massive. What with encompassing the three books in one game, it will certainly be.

What does the demo didn't give us? For one, we only have access to a few characters (with Frodo and Aragorn in the spotlight. The final copy of the game has 80 characters from the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Other than that, we can explore the entire Middle Earth the way we want to, like a single-player Diablo II - LEGO-fied.

Have you checked out the video above detailing how the developers made an effort to make everything looks as closely as possible to the actual fictional setting? Certainly, LEGO Lord of the Rings was given with love from the people who created it. I can't help but wonder if this will translate to sells. Perhaps it will since this is a multi-platform game.

You guys might want to check out the eShop right now and download LEGO Lord of the Rings demo and tell me here in the comments what you think of it.