00:00.14 Dave Hello everybody. My name is Dave Jackson and you're listening to tales from the backlog. This is a video games review podcast where each week I'm joined by a guest to bring a game out of the backlog, play it and discuss. My guest today is a friend of the show returning to the podcast for the second time, one of the hosts of a novel console podcast and lord of the rings. Enthusiast Chris Dominguez Chris welcome back 00:26.47 Chris Hey thanks for having me back. It's been a couple of months since the last time I was on and I'm very excited to be back on and this time talking lord of the rings. Even though my wife is not here I think she's bestowed enough authority on me that I can talk about it. Okay. 00:36.24 Dave Yeah. 00:43.49 Dave Hey right? she's here in spirit for sure. Um, we're ah referencing when I was on a novel console your podcast. We did a whole episode just talking about all kinds of lord of the rings media movies. 00:45.38 Chris Yeah, yeah. 00:57.95 Dave Video games Tv shows all of that stuff. We had a blast talking about it so when it's lord of the rings's time on tales from the backlog I knew who to call. 01:07.84 Chris Yeah, that was actually a really good episode that was ah a fun time. Yeah. 01:09.47 Dave Yeah, yeah, it was awesome. Had a good time and you know what I'm I'm glad you're back on tails from the backlog because last time you're on the show. We talked about eastward which is a game I did not like and I am glad to have you back on for a game that I do like not. And don't want to bury the lead too much here today. We're going to talk about the lord of the rings return of the king game which is an action game developed by Ea Redwood shores and published by ea games for the ps 2 game cube and windows and or sorry. For the ps 2 and windows in 2003 with later ports to the game cube and xbox ah there we haven't we have a special spoiler policy for this episode today which is we're not doing a spoiler section. We're just going to talk about the game freely because this is just the movie. The return of the king there are no extra story things in this game at all. So if you know the plot of the movie you know the plot of the game and if you don't know the plot of the movie apologies but that shake came out twenty years ago and the books came out a whole hell of a lot longer before that. So. No spoiler um wall no avoiding spoilers for this episode. We have some elevator pitches for this game in particular. Um I took the very simple elevator pitch I feel like this game needs. No further pitching you can play through the big events of the return of the king movie. 02:42.40 Dave That's the pitch. 02:44.80 Chris Ah, my mine would be ah Proto Devil Make Christ Slash Muso but with a lord of the rings coat on it. 02:51.54 Dave Who it's yeah, not quite muso but it's close. You're still mowing down hordes of enemies. You just don't swing your sword and see like hundreds of them go flying off into the distance like in Dynasty Warriors or something. 02:59.50 Chris Oh yeah. 03:07.18 Chris But you can get crowded pretty easily especially in those stages when you have to like to do a secondary objective while also fighting off the horde. Yeah. 03:10.89 Dave Oh yeah. 03:18.31 Dave Yeah, absolutely. Um so I played this emulated on my steam deck. It was a great steam deck game. I played the ps 2 version and it took me six and a half hours to beat um with a they said 87% completion I'm not sure what that means I didn't. Beat the game with all the characters even close to it so I don't know how you get that completion percentage. But yes, six and a half hours to run through the story. 03:42.81 Chris So I ah I played it on Steam Deck as well I started it on the game cube but a dolphin on Steam Deck has some games that run terribly so whenever a cut scene would happen. It would just stop until it decided to load. 03:53.21 Dave Okay, yeah, yeah. 04:00.49 Dave Yeah, yeah. 04:02.55 Chris So I had to download the PS 2 version and get it running? Um, but yeah, ah, six thirty four and then you can see your completion percentage on your safe file. It actually tells you all the information of your whole progress and everything. 04:10.50 Dave Man. 04:17.24 Dave Gotcha wait is that six thirty for your completion time. Oh shit I forgot to write my completion down. So I just co-opted your your play time as my own and completion percentage that 87 04:21.38 Chris I Think so ah. 04:33.61 Dave At 87% makes a lot more sense now. Um, but so I would guess my completion percent is much lower, but the total time is probably still around 5 to 6 hours you know 04:47.14 Chris Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's not a very long game. Um I pretty much have been playing it little by little since you invited me on and then this weekend I decided to power through the last couple of stages with all the characters um to get. To the end of the game and about 6 hours sounds right? And that's what a file says anyways. But 05:10.60 Dave Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm still laughing about I because I tell a lot of people like a little um behind the scenes here before we record the podcast. I kind of tell people, especially if it's their first time on the show I like. My outlines are really detailed. I write a lot of stuff down. It's not because I have to talk about everything on the outline. It's because I will forget anything. That's not on the outline. I'm like Ron burgundy in that sense if it's not right in front of me I will not say it. Ah so. 05:38.59 Chris Ah. 05:41.81 Dave I forgot to write down my playtime. I saw yours and I was like yeah that looks about right? that sounds like me that's ah, um, all right? So back to the game here. We should talk about our histories with this game but also talk about our histories with Lord of the rings because I have a feeling that. 05:46.99 Chris Ah. 06:01.10 Dave 99% of people who played this game played it because they like the movies. So Chris when did you first play this game and what's your history with lord of the rings. 06:10.95 Chris So I played the 2 towers a lot when I was younger because I remember I bought it for twenty bucks from KB toys because I had like a little part time job with my uncle and he would pay me like forty bucks a week. So. Spend twenty bucks on it and I played it to the ground to the point where I had nothing left to do in the game and I would just keep replaying the same stages over and over again and then when I got to high school I met this girl. 06:46.97 Chris From high school who had the game and she lent it to me and I managed to play a lot of it but I did get stuck on a couple of stages so I couldn't I never beat it until a couple of years ago for my own show. Um, but it you know it's just lord of the rings came out at that time where. 07:05.41 Chris At least I was like late middle school early high school where the movies were just coming out as I was starting to figure out what I like to watch in the media and it just clicked even though I still find the first half of fellowship to be dreadful. 07:24.56 Chris The second half is just incredible and from there on the rest of the series is just magnificent and it all makes sense. You know it's lord of the rings. It's fucking. Awesome. 07:36.76 Dave Yeah exact I feel like there's a lot of ah we might say that exact sentence a couple more times in this episode where like I don't know I don't feel like I have to explain it's fucking Lord of the rings. It's great. Um, yeah I'm a huge lord of the rings fan like we talked about on that. 07:46.48 Chris He's right. 07:52.42 Dave Um, an episode of your podcast I love lord of the rings. Um I watched the movies as they came out again, kind of hitting at that same time like if I remember right? It was what it was it like 2002 and 2003 like something like that. So yeah or. 08:07.52 Chris Um, yeah, about yeah. 08:11.30 Dave Middle school early high school for me too and again just watch the movies. I did not play the fellowship of the ring game. Um, at the time I have since like played it a little bit. Um, not a big fan. The 2 towers game was fun and then. This return of the king game was the one I played the most of I had it on the game cube and kind of like you said with the 2 towers game. My brother and I just played this over and over again. We beat it with all the characters. It was just we had like you said there was nothing left for the game to offer to us at the time. Um, and I also played the game boy advance games of the 2 towers and return of the king which are cool like you play through the story but they play more like Diablo or a similar type of game than this which is similar but like. Those games are full of like loot and shit and this game we're talking about today is not so I played those a ton too. Um I have like this very distinct memory of playing one of the game boy advance games I don't remember which one may have been the 2 towers game. On a road trip with my parents, I was listening to that good Charlotte ah lifestyles of the rich and famous Cd over and over and over and over and over again. So like a couple. 09:39.77 Dave Like a year ago or something like that I downloaded the rom for that game and I booted it back up and that good Charlotte soundtrack like started playing in my head again because I just have such a strong association. Um. 09:52.17 Chris That's great. You know, kind of the same thing happens to me but it's kingdom hearts chains of memories with ludacris’s get back. So great man. 10:01.75 Dave Oh fuck. Yeah ah I've never played ah Kingdom hearts chain of memories but I can almost guarantee it would be a better game if get back was on the official soundtrack. 10:12.32 Chris Oh yeah, yeah, can you imagine the field day that Eric would have with that. 10:16.65 Dave Oh yeah, shout out to Eric yeah we he would have to include like the complete history of ludacris in guiding Keys and that is something that I'm here for. 10:29.40 Chris Off man it would be amazing. Yeah, go ahead? Yes, um I actually played the second one I Vividly remember going to a martial arts tournament. 10:31.69 Dave Ah, ah, did you play these? Ah did you play these ah game Boy advance games 10:47.86 Chris In Orlando when I was about 13 or 14 and we went one night to this giant flea market and there was a game store in the flea market with a bunch of games and I found it brand new inbox sealed everything for like $10 11:05.40 Dave Nice. 11:07.70 Chris So I grabbed it and again I played it till it wouldn't offer me anything else I beat it with every single character and the cool thing about that game is that it has diverging paths. So if you choose to play as Aragorn. You're not going to get the same experience as if you would play as ao win. Or gandalf or any of the other characters except legolas and gimli um that that was a fantastic game and then return of the king I played it for the first time for the podcast and I enjoyed it but my nostalgia goggles. Made me prefer 2 towers more. 11:45.19 Dave Yeah I get that you'll have that with a lord of the rings related stuff and you know I was kind of worried going back to this game because I have basically spent the last twenty years it doesn't come up in conversation a lot. But anytime it did I would be like this you know the lord of the rings game for the ps 2 in the game cube and stuff was awesome and I loved it back then and I think it's really good and I was a little bit worried as I tend to be when I revisit a game for the first time in 20 years ah but this game I think holds up pretty well like surprisingly well I think and mostly 2 things stuck out and we'll we'll dig into these later um 2 things stuck out to me the gameplay I think still still feels better than I expected that it would for a Ps 2 game and they do a really really good job of like cinematically so merging between movie clips and your gameplay sections. So you really feel like this game is putting you right in the middle of the action. So the goal of the game to me. Was pretty obviously like making you a part of these scenes and I think it really succeeds. There's some things that like haven't aged very well or were never good to begin with. But overall I think this game holds up pretty damn. Well. 13:12.17 Chris Yeah, you know to jump off what you said about? Whatever there was a transition between movie scene and game and in game engine I think it worked very well whenever it was a scenery or a set piece or like ah a background shot. From the movie transitioning over to gameplay because you didn't have that weird Uncanny Valley Gollum face being transitioned from you know at 7 20 p sixty frames per second to 7 Twenty P Sixty frames per second game play in the game engine. 13:34.16 Dave Yeah, yeah. 13:48.74 Chris Ah, character models and the way I I posted a tweet about it because I just it it just I would love to watch the entire trilogy in ah that resolution that my steam deck had from the original games you know because it's It's very.. It's a very low quality resolution. But then it runs at sixty frames per second so it looks incredible, but weird at the same time and for me it worked like I was watching and I was like Wow this is. 14:22.81 Chris This is what I remember the rings being not this new 4K stuff that they have on max or whatever. 14:27.60 Dave Right? It's actually 1 of the reasons I decided to play it on my steam deck instead of playing it like on my pc is because I really like playing ps 2 and like that era games on the steam deck because the resolution is lower and it just looks better than. Playing it on like by 4 k screen or something like that. You know. 14:49.99 Chris Um, right? right? right? You know it. It made me want to download the 2 towers and go through it again because it's just so it. It just has such character like it. It. The only other game that I could say that feels this good to play from a movie based on a movie would be Peter Jackson's King Kong um and maybe the star wars episode 3 game because it's more or less the same type of gameplay. 15:13.49 Dave Oh okay. 15:23.30 Chris You know you're just going through a movie with and it's kind of a beat him up the same way it. It's just an age of a time in gaming That's not going to come back ever again. 15:34.97 Dave Yeah, this um, this really felt kind of like you were on there like this really felt kind of like you just said like a product of like this era of licensed games where like you're still getting. Games for basically every big movie that comes out you know, but this was very clearly made with care ah from top to Bottom. Um, and I think some of like the special features from this game really show how much everyone was into the process of making this. 15:52.74 Chris Right. 16:09.88 Dave I'm trying to make it the best game that it can be whereas you compare it to newer adaptations like the fucking avengers game and stuff where it was just you know a lot of that. It's just a nightmare sometimes and I'm sure there were a bunch of nightmare license games from this era also from the ps 2 but this one in particular really held up in a lot of ways. So I'm excited to dig into it. We are going to set up the story of the return of the king and then talk about what you do in this game after this music break. So the game begins. Um, so the game starts you're following the events through the game of the return of the king movie. It does make some deviations and it obviously skips a lot of stuff. It basically moves you from battle to battle throughout the movie. It skips. All you know, long dialogue scenes etc. But you're moving from big event to big event and 1 thing that we already mentioned that I think is really cool and sets up like the storytelling and cinematic quality of this is it uses clips from the movies. It is a licensed game and. That includes using clips from the movies using the real actors from the movie to voice most of the characters. Ah and it starts with a clip from Helms deep from the end of the 2 towers you get like a montage just in case somebody had not. 17:44.18 Dave Remembered what happened in the fellowship in the 2 towers you get like a catchup montage then it plays some clips from Helms deep and then they show the clip where gandalf is at the top of the hill with the rohirrim and he charges down the hill at the. Ah, when the sun rises. You know that that scene that gives me goosebumps every time I see it and as gandalf and all the horsemen are charging down the hill it transitions into gameplay like seamlessly and you're on the field fighting as gandalf right? there? um. And it's a really really awesome intro to like how this game works. Basically this seamless transition from movie clip to gameplay into movie clip back to gameplay. It's just a great introduction plus fucking Helms deep who doesn't love Helms deep. 18:36.76 Chris Right? Yeah, no I got to agree that that intro it is. It's just fantastic and I feel like they could have made it not better, but like if they would have done the same thing where. Ah, the force unleashed did that at the beginning of the game. They let you play as Darth Vader and you're super powerful and you can wreck shop at everything if they would have made Gandalf like level 10 just from the start so you can wreck everything. 19:05.67 Dave Oh yeah, yeah. 19:10.62 Chris And then if they just they could have just taken Gandalf away for the rest of the game until the end and giving him back to you but it was a great intro. 19:16.36 Dave That's probably true. Yeah yeah, um, you do start out as level one Gandalf but you're still, you're still whoop an ass right from the beginning. It's not like you know this isn't a super difficult game from that perspective. But um. 19:24.91 Chris Um, oh yeah. 19:33.47 Dave Yeah, so you play as Gandalf in Helms deep. You fight off the invasion as the movie goes and then from there you get into the events of Return of the King and this game's broken up into 3 story paths. They're called the path of the wizard which follows Gandalf the path of the king. Which follows Aragorn and Legolas and gimli and then the path of the hobbits which follows Sam and Frodo um in the path of the wizard you do helms deep at the beginning then you do the battle of isengard with the ents and then you do the battle at minus Tire on the path of the king you do the paths of the dead where Aragorn goes to get the ghost armies. You know vow to help in battle and then you do pellinor fields and on the path of the hobbits I think I forgot to write down a couple levels but you know, um. 20:29.32 Dave On the path of the hobbits you do escape from osgiliath you do shelob's lair and then Cirith Ungol then at the end, the paths joined together for the battle at the black gate and then the last level is a boss fight against golem inside of Mount Doom so really hitting like. The hits along the way basically all the battle scenes. You're there. 20:53.99 Chris And they also do stuff that wasn't even shown in movies that I don't even think even happened like Sirith Ungol going in with Sam to rescue Frodo because in the movie that part was just shelob. Then you go to Aragorn and Gandalf and then you come back and it's Sam is breaking in to get Frodo. Um, so you don't really get to see that whole part of Sam just sneaking in which that has to be that hands down my favorite stage in the entire game. 21:24.76 Chris That stage was incredible. 21:25.70 Dave Yeah, it was awesome and it came at a good time too because there were a couple levels before this specifically Pell Nore fields is like in my opinion, a terrible level. It's awful and. 21:39.17 Chris Um, it lasts like 5 minutes. It's not long at all and you just swarmed the entire time. 21:43.36 Dave Yeah, it's a really bad shuttle run of like so I forget what? oh I forget what they call the elephants they call them Ollie fonts so there. Yeah yeah, that one was simple. 21:52.85 Chris Oh oh that one that one I thought you meant the one with the gate before that you have to open the gate and no okay, no the all funds. Yeah. 22:03.18 Dave The one where the yeah the one where the Ollyfants are coming in and you have to like there's 2 ridges and then there's the valley where the battle's taking place and you have to like go up the the correct ridge and shoot all these powder kegs on the Ollyfants back and then you have to run down and protect Eowyn from the the Nazgul. And you have to do that shit like 8 fucking times and you have to do it perfectly and it sucks pellanor fields is 1 of the best parts of the movie and it's my least favorite level in this game like by far. 22:32.16 Chris Oh yeah yeah I did that one three times because I did it with Eric Gor Lego less and gimli and I so I saved gimli for last because he's the one that hits the hardest. 22:38.92 Dave Oh yeah. 22:45.58 Dave Yeah. 22:51.15 Chris So you can hide behind rocks whenever the ollyfants are coming and they're throwing their flaming arrows at you just hide behind the rocks and because the Axe has an arch you could just keep hitting them without taking any damage. So I smashed my head against the floor with. 22:59.30 Dave Oh nice, good strategy. 23:08.61 Chris Aragorn and Legolas and then just had a brief Gimley fact. 23:10.60 Dave Nice Yeah, that was one where it was like if I played really well during one of those little segments I save stated because I'm like well I'm going to fuck this up at some point So I'm just going to save state when I'm doing really well and then I'll pick it back up and. 23:22.12 Chris Yep. 23:28.95 Dave Do Well again, save state again that was how I got through that level. Um, but back to the real winner which was the sirrath uncle level that was like directly after that in the order that I was playing the levels and that was awesome. You just you play a Sam you go in you beat the fuck out of a bunch of orcs. It's.. It's great. 23:49.29 Chris You have to kill 80 orcs with Sam and you don't have to kill 80 ors by fighting them because you have fire pits that you can throw on them. You can throw burning oil. You can smash them with gates. Ah, it's so. 23:59.90 Dave Yeah, there's catapults. Yeah. 24:05.66 Chris So so much fun. Um I had a bit of an issue when I started because you know there's like this one enemy with a health bar that you have to heavy hit until his armor breaks and then you can do damage. I didn't know that if you went invisible you could Auto kill it. 24:22.86 Dave Oh. 24:23.61 Chris So once I learned that every time I saw an enemy with a health bar I would go invisible and kill it automatically. 24:27.90 Dave Nice, nice trying to think of other like standout levels. I think the battle of Isengard is really well paced. You're fighting alongside the ents that introduces you to that system where they'll put up a counter and they'll just say. You know, kill 60 orcs and then you can move on but you have the ents fighting alongside you in that so they're just like smashing orcs in the background and they count for your counter to so that's cool that has one of those awesome transitions. One of the nts is trying to pull the dam apart at the end of that level. 25:02.38 Chris Right? yeah. 25:05.71 Dave And you're supposed to protect him from like the the archers that are shooting flaming arrows at it and when you do it gives you a cgi cutscene of it pulling the dam apart and then it like smoothly transitions into the part from the movie when he pulls the dam apart and the the water rushes in and destroys everything. It's cinematic presentation of this is just awesome. 25:30.13 Chris Yeah, they definitely knew what they were doing. They put a lot of heart and passion into the game, if I'm not mistaken. My wife was telling me that. The games came out before the movies, like a month or so before the movies. 25:48.94 Dave It's possible man I didn't check on the release dates. 25:54.78 Chris And if they came out before the movies, I would have been sentient at that time. Um, if I would have played this before the movie came out I would have been so hyped for the movie because it gives you. A lot of the action set pieces but it doesn't give you the story so you still have something to look forward to when you go to the movie theater to watch it and I think that's just brilliant. 26:16.33 Dave Um, yeah, it did it came out it did it came out a month before the ah the poofy did. So yeah, you're right. 26:25.45 Chris Wow Man I wish I would have been an adult with money at that time. Yeah. 26:32.67 Dave I Yeah, I was thinking like well I would have hated to be spoiled on the story from the game but there the books had been out for decades. So What spoilers really I suppose um did you have any other favorite. Levels or like moments that this game is taking you through. 26:53.19 Chris Skim me once. So go let me take a quick look. I know honestly I think the entire hobbit path was my favorite of the entire game. Um I did like ah the. 27:01.91 Dave Okay. 27:09.95 Chris What's to call the path of the king but those first 2 stages were. They're not bad stages but they are bad stages to start a game with because you have Agor and legolas and gimli and they are so under leveled they're level one and you have these enemies. That just bounce all over the place when you hit them or knock them back and you don't have your autokill attacks yet and you don't have your a ability so that you can get a perfect score running quickly. So it. They just seemed like a slog so I just chugged through those first 2 stages. Just to get them over with and then I played the rest of the game as I felt like it and I don't know if if that makes sense. 27:54.12 Dave Gotcha yeah I don't remember the first level from the path of the king was it the path of the dead or was that the second one. 27:59.50 Chris Yeah, is the one where you're walking to the bridge of the dead and that's where it ends and then the other stage is when you start fighting with the king of the dead. 28:08.51 Dave Right? right? I like the path of the dead level a lot. Maybe that's because maybe it's because that's another part that you don't see a ton of in the movie. Um, you don't spend a lot of time on that. 28:18.66 Chris Right. 28:24.29 Dave That mountain where the dead. Ah the dead army is but in the game you spend a while just going through fighting these ghosts. The scenery is really cool. The part where you go up to the bridge of the dead looks really really good like by PS 2 standards like the framing of it looks awesome. So I always like that. 28:36.30 Chris Oh yeah. 28:43.66 Dave Um, that King of the dead boss fight lasts a little bit too long but you'll have that. Um. 28:46.83 Chris Um, and mean so so do every other want to ah all the other boss fights they last a little bit too long and it's weird when you start a stage and the first thing you get us a boss fight like in the black gate you have to fight the mouth of Sauron and it. 29:02.97 Dave Yeah, yeah, the black gate. The black gate was another one that I had to save state my way through because it's kind of like ah, an escort mission or like a protection mission like you have to fight. 29:06.11 Chris It's strange. But I mean it's still a great game. 29:20.22 Dave Just millions of orcs but you also have to babysit the other characters to make sure that they don't die and I played the black gate as gandalf and so I was just constantly like babysitting Gimley like the whole time and if if if Gimley or Legalus or one of your other characters die then it's game over. 29:20.45 Chris Um. 29:39.96 Dave So I save stated through that. But that scene in the movie or in the books in the story is a very desperate scene for the characters like they think that they're all going to die when they're doing that. That's kind of the purpose of it is just fight as long as you can and give frodo Time. So I mean it. It kind of gave me that feeling but getting game over over and over again because like I said because Faramir dies like I'm not a huge fan of that. So. 29:59.35 Chris Right. 30:13.30 Chris And yeah, though I get that I did safe state through that one and I only went through it with Aragorn I I didn't go back and did it with everybody else. But yeah, it was. It was kind of annoying when gimli was getting his ass beat and then gandalf decided decided to stop being. Stop being useful and then legwell has decided to get in a mob of orcs and start shooting arrows from inside the mob like like everybody I got ah star fox flashbacks what everybody calling for my help like I need up to. 30:35.78 Dave Yeah, right. 30:47.96 Dave Um, I think the Osgiliath level from the path of the hobbits is a really good one too. It's the first one on the path of the hobbits and it starts out with another one of those awesome scene transitions. It's the. 30:55.46 Chris Um, oh yeah. 31:02.59 Dave Scene where Frodo just kind of like stands up and is kind of like holding the ring out and the noscoll is going to grab him and Sam Jumps and knocks him out of the way. It's another one where like you see that scene play out in the movie clip and then it transitions right into gameplay you're playing a sam and it's on. And that level is all about like staying out of sight from the nos school that's kind of flying around um fighting these orcs you've got a bunch of like traps like there's this one where you push a big bell down a staircase and just flatten a bunch of orcs. They're really set up a bunch of cool little set piece moments in these levels. 31:41.53 Chris They did. I feel like that's another reason why I like the hobbit level so much because they set up all of these little environmental cues that would do the job for you because you know hobbit is like. 31:59.50 Dave Right? yeah. 31:59.64 Chris Three feet tall so you're not going to have a hobbit kill ah an Uruk Hai but they gave you the tools to take them out and like in sheellob's lair. You could have the spiders come out and start attacking the orgs or you can set fire to webbing and the webbing would drop. 32:16.75 Chris Flaming bodies on top of the orgs or the spiders. You know , all of those environmental cues for the path of the hobbit were very smart and I've really enjoyed them and. 32:18.39 Dave Yeah. 32:26.67 Dave Yeah, yeah, it's really fun. Um looking at the rest of them the minas tirith level with Gandalf ah part one you're fighting up on the ramparts and like kicking down siege ladders and stuff and. Once I remembered how to kick down the ladders I had to go on game facts and search how to do it because I couldn't figure it out. Um, once I figured that out, that level was pretty fun. You're manning like a catapult you're shooting down these siege towers and stuff that was cool and then part 2. 32:50.85 Chris Ah, beautiful. 33:01.72 Dave You're protecting these civilians as they run into the caves or whatever that part sucked ass that was just like now because it was just like all you're doing is just fighting these endless swarms of orcs. 33:09.25 Chris You didn't like that one. 33:20.89 Dave And there's nothing else to it. It's just you have to wait. It's almost like it might as well just be on a long timer and just stay alive until it's over. 33:28.62 Chris I mean you do have a timer of 200 people but you know the orcs killing the time. So I really didn't mind that part. I liked it. Um, specifically because I kept using the. 33:31.61 Dave Yeah, exactly That's what I mean? yeah. 33:46.11 Chris The 4 button triggers for Gandalf and I would get perfect on one enemy and then just keep getting perfect like crazy. Um, and then when the trolls came in I I kind of hated the trolls in this game because they were. 33:51.78 Dave It is pretty sick. Yeah. 34:04.91 Chris Kind of hard to deal damage to. But if you were able to deal damage to them from a range distance then they were. It's like they were made out of paper mache because you would charge out one shot and take out like 75% of their health. 34:16.17 Dave Um, yeah. 34:23.87 Chris They were. They were kind of annoying. They were nothing enemy compared to the rest of the monsters that you have to fight? yeah. 34:29.86 Dave Yeah, the trolls were always easy because any level that has trolls also has these big you know containers full of Spears and 1 spear kills a troll. You just go grab it and throw it at the troll if it auto aims you don't have to really aim it that much. So. 34:39.13 Chris Right. 34:48.75 Dave They're pretty easy. You can't. I was hoping that you could kind of fight them 1 on one. You know Gandalf should be able to fight a troll. 34:54.59 Chris You can, but you can't parry and if you get hit you fall down and it's like they're they're like oh go fight it. They make it seem like you have to go fight it 1 on one. But then when you do. 35:00.90 Dave Yeah. 35:11.17 Chris You're just sacrificing a bunch of your health for nothing and. 35:14.40 Dave Yeah, yeah, um, the last level is fighting against gollum inside of Mount Doom where you have like this kind of puzzle boss fight where you have to dodge and attack and get him to back up. Close to the edge and then you can kick him off the edge and you have to do that like 8 times or something like that for him to finally fall in but what I think is funny. This game lets you play any level. You get to pick from a certain set of characters for each level. But then when you beat the game you can play any level with any character so then at the end if you want to do the fight against gollum while playing as gimli or something like that you can. 35:56.71 Chris Yeah, it just picture gimli swinging the axe at Gollum's fingers ah right him and they gave you 3 characters after you beat it. They give you. 35:59.80 Dave Yeah, exactly it's goofy as hell but that's after you beat the game. The developers like all right? Yeah, have your fun. 36:13.00 Chris Merry and Pippin and faramir to play as on any stage. Yeah. 36:13.42 Dave Right? Yep yeah, so I think the total characters you can play as yeah gandallf agorn legois gimley Sam Frodo Farramire Mary and Pippin which is quite a lot of characters and a lot of them like. They don't play super differently because we'll talk about the gameplay. It's not like extreme differences between the characters. They all have melee, they all have ranged attacks etc. But the animations are all different and um, the special moves are different so it's pretty cool. 36:45.50 Chris Yeah, do you know if this game was mocapped? 36:52.23 Dave I Think so because I watched some of the special features and I think I saw people in Mocap suits. 37:01.46 Chris I Okay because I know that some of the insta kill animations do scream early Two thousands Mocap Um, but the rest of it. It just looks like it was animated by hand but still it. 37:12.80 Dave Ah. 37:18.54 Chris It looks great and it plays great. So yeah. 37:20.71 Dave Yeah, speaking of those unlockables at the end are those unlockables you? Um, when you're moving through these paths of the story. So like you'll play a level and then you'll unlock like a. An extra scene or like a behind the scenes clip or an interview or something like that and I watched all of these and I thought they were excellent and I thought that they because it's interviews with the cast so it'll be like here's an interview with Dominic Monagan and Billy Boyd and they're just going to like talk shit about how bad the other one is at video games and it's it's just us. They all seem like friends. They all seem so happy to be a part of this like how could you not be but this really hammers home just how like. 37:55.89 Chris Um, right. 38:10.67 Dave Everyone seems like they're having a good time making this game and like when you get to see these interviews even fucking like Christopher Lee looks like he's having a good time. He's the man's like 100 years old and he's having a good time doing this. 38:24.35 Chris Um, right? Yeah I that that I wasn't expecting to see that Christopher Lee interview and that was something special and Ian McKellen won. He was so young back then he was like sixty years old but he was so young. 38:34.74 Dave Um, yeah. 38:39.71 Chris And at the end of his interview. He says maybe those ah players that are a bit more percept perceptive will play as gandalf like I'll play as Gandalf I'll be percept I for you. 38:48.23 Dave Um, yeah for you? Yeah for you? Ian Mckellen yeah um worth mentioning now I mentioned they got a lot of the voice actors for the characters and it's a surprising number so like um. Sean aston billy boyd who plays pippin john ree davies as gim lee sean aston as sam of course christopher lee as saruman ian mckellen as gandalf dominic monaghan as merry andy serkis as gollum. Ah, david wenham as faramir and elijah wood as frodo are all in the game voicing their own characters that means they they did extra work recording voice lines for this game which I thought was notable like the only missing ones that I could tell looking at the credits and then while playing the game. Orlando bloom is not a part of the game and um, viggo mortenson is also not here so legolas and aragorn have like sound alikes I believe outside of the movie clips. 39:50.24 Chris Um I think some of at least that the part where aragorn is screaming at the lord of the dead. I Know that's ripped straight from the movie because it is the exact same line that my wife has made me listen to every single year when she has her marathon. 40:07.84 Dave Ah, they do. They do take some um just movie lines and put them straight in the game from the movie. Yeah. 40:12.50 Chris Right? And I also noticed that Andy Serkis was voicing gollum because it was not edited at all. It just sounded like Andy Serkis doing the gollum voice. It didn't have any of the special effects to make it more gollumy and I was like wow that is impressive. 40:36.70 Dave Yeah, um, there is also narration between and after each level by Ian Mckellen just kind of like setting up the scene and then after the level is over just kind of giving a recap and then a like here's what's next type of thing. And maybe I didn't play enough of these games. Maybe it's because I haven't played 1 in a long time but it felt really notable that a lot of the high profile actors are here doing extra work. Um, and maybe it's in their contract I don't know but it felt notable that so many of the actors from the movie are here. Being a part of this. 41:16.30 Chris You know they as my wife tells me they recorded the whole 3 movies. The trilogy was recorded in one go; they didn't record one movie leave, come back, record the second movie leave. No, they just did the entire thing. Yeah. 41:30.33 Dave Right? right. 41:34.26 Chris That's what she says I don't know if she's telling me the truth but you know that's what she says? Um, so I feel like because of it being lord of the rings and the movies being so amazing and the way that people loved them I feel like they connected with these characters in a way that they feel like they. Are these characters and they have to embody them every single time they can because if I don't know if you've seen the convention videos of Billy Boyd and Dominic Monahan and Shana Eston and Frodo but they are. They talk with such love about these characters and how they feel about them and how recording the movies were and everything so I don't know if they did it because they just loved the characters or because they were obligated to but either way I'm sure they had a great time. Yeah. 42:14.44 Dave Um. 42:25.18 Dave Yeah, yeah, it really shows. Um, one of the really big standout things and I don't normally watch a lot of these like unlockable cast interviews and stuff in in games or back when you know Dvds used to have this kind of stuff I didn't always watch it. But. Made a point to watch it in this because after the first one I was like oh these are actually really good. Um, you can also see concept art slideshows for stuff for making the game um interviews with the actors about their character. The difference between their character in the movie and in the game like some of the hobbits talk about how you can. Finally, just go kick ass as hobbits and how they were excited to you know play as their own character and go stab a bunch of works and stuff. It's just very charming. There's also speaking of charming. 44:04.14 Dave How did you feel about the way the game looks and like the presentation of it? 44:07.76 Chris So I running it on Steam Deck. I Really like the way it looks. It's just that the way that this steam deck makes this games look with the ah emulators built in Upscalers and everything it just makes it. Look kind of like what my memories remember it looking like but also making it look dated like you know the textures and stuff it. It kind of looks old but it looks good Still somehow um you know there there were the. 44:46.80 Chris The moments where you had like the Uncanny Valley face is like golem or whenever you had a close up of Frodo's face or or sam's face and their eyes were like not quite right and kind of like sunken in. 44:57.40 Dave Yeah. 45:02.17 Chris But the way that the game looks and and the way that it moves and moves so fluidly when you're playing and I think it looks great I Honestly think it looks very good and. 45:13.56 Dave Yeah I think that a lot of that you know having weird faces and stuff that's just the PS 2 so like we can just chalk that up to this era of 3 d you know character models and stuff like that. But the way everything is presented. 45:22.96 Chris Um, yeah. 45:32.18 Dave Very cinematic tons of spectacle. Um the way the camera swings around to give you like different perspectives and kind of frame up a shot and stuff like that looked really good to me. Um it made me think a little bit of god of war at times. It's kind of a similar type of game. 45:48.21 Chris Yes. 45:51.75 Dave Um, it never quite reaches like God of War level spectacle but not many games ever did back then that's why God of War was so Notable. Um, but it did have an aspect of that. So some scenes you know when you're fighting ollyfants or. When you're on the bridge of the dead and the camera pans way out to give you like the full scope of the place that you're in things like that really stood out as very cool. 46:21.18 Chris Yeah, some developers on the PS2 really knew how to present scale like god of war did like when you're crossing the sword to get to the I think it's to get to the statue that's holding it in god of war one they present. 46:26.49 Dave Yeah. 46:40.50 Chris That whole. Um I think it's like a harbor and it looks amazing and I feel like sometimes in this game whenever they would present stuff like that it looked just as good. Um the one where you're in the gate to go. The gate where you have to fight the 2 trolls and knock down the tower so you can climb up and open the gate when that stage starts it kind of has like that same type of camera work where the camera comes from over the gate and it shows you kind of like the entire battlefield and then it just gets behind the heroes for you to start the the stage. 47:16.78 Chris They've really did good work with that and I think in this part where you're escaping with Sam and frodo at that first level they do some camera work like that that is pretty good too. 47:30.33 Dave Yeah, because you're trying to hide under stuff to escape the Naskill's like gaze. You've got a meter of like how you know how much the naskell knows where you are or whatever. Um and the camera swings around to give you a bunch of different perspectives. 47:32.30 Chris Right. 47:47.60 Dave To let you hide under stuff to kind of show you the stuff that you need to see to escape. So yeah, really cool I just remember there's 1 part in 1 of the big battles. It's either minas tirith or helms deep at the beginning when you're it's Minas tirith because you're up on the ramparts fighting. And often the distance you can see the like the orc army but they're all pixel art. They look like super Nintendo pixel art and I thought that was really cute. 48:09.39 Chris Right. 48:16.52 Chris Ah, right? and they're all just like running towards the gates but they never get there. 48:22.66 Dave Right? Yeah, it was like obviously the PS 2 couldn't have like you know a thousand real you know characters on the screen at one time. So I thought that was like a nice fun little compromise to show that there are a bunch of things out there. 48:38.98 Chris Right? right? That stage was frustrating and good at the same time. I liked it but I kind of hated it. 48:47.82 Dave Yeah again, some of those stages do kind of sell like the desperation of a lot of the situations in Lord of the rings like they basically every fight they fight is Like. An Unwinnable battle that they end up winning you know like they're outnumbered in every single fight that they're a part of in those movies. So like they do kind of sell how desperate it is but for as a game player. What that means for you is that you just fail a bunch of times and get game overs and have to restart the level. So. 49:21.73 Chris Oh yeah, yeah that that's true, especially that stage because once the those towers with the bridges get on on the wall game over and you. 49:36.25 Dave It can be yeah. 49:39.61 Chris You can't kill Orcs fast enough to. 49:46.15 Dave Ah, yeah, okay, so kind of speaking on the gameplay itself I think we can talk now about what it is like to actually play this game. The developers said that they wanted to make a modern version of Gauntlet. When they were designing this game I've never played Gauntlet. So I can't really speak to that have you. 50:09.34 Chris I can see that um I played gauntlet 64 um it's how can I explain it? Okay so you have at least in gauntlet 64 you could play up to 4 people. 50:12.26 Dave Okay. 50:24.51 Chris Each one would have a different character so you would have like the warrior the mage I think the Amazon and the archer whatever and everybody would attack and when they would attack what they would do is they would throw their weapons so would be kind of like a shooter. Ah, ah. 50:43.20 Chris Ah, twin ah twin stick shooter without the second stick and you would walk around destroying like the little hovels where the monsters would come out of collect loot and just rinse and repeat until yeah and I can see that. 50:54.71 Dave Okay. 51:00.91 Chris I can see the inspiration in this game from gauntlet and that's that's that's interesting I didn't know that. 51:04.67 Dave Nice, um, yeah, just a little light research tails from the backlog style light research before doing the podcast. Um, yeah, so the modern version of gauntlet. Ah, they set it up. So again, you can play as lots of different characters and again after you beat the game you can play any stage as any character um should be kind of fun if you again like you have the level in osgiliath where you're escorting frodo out playing s sam but then on later levels you can be phomeir escorting. Frodo out of there if you want to it plays with a light attack heavy attack style light attack on x triangle is heavy attack and if you hold l one and press x you'll do a ranged attack. Everyone has a ranged attack so like Gandalf will shoot magic out of his staff. Agorn and Legois have has bows Gimli will throw axes stuff like that. Um, everyone has this really everyone has the same basic setup. What's really different is what weapons you're using and then the animations are often pretty. Different for each character like the difference between gandalf will because he gandalf fights with the staff and a sword so he'll like bash someone with his staff then stab him with the sword whereas gimli if you do some of these special moves you can unlock gimli he'll be swinging the axe around like a madman. 52:34.19 Dave Ah, so despite the fact that everyone plays pretty similar. They look different and I thought that was enough to make them feel different too. 52:44.48 Chris Yeah, and while you do have a light swing heavy swing Kick Perry and range attacks. Um, like you said everybody's fighting style is kind of reflective on their personalities like Sam's Sam Hass an ins to kill where he basically trips up over the enemy and ceases opportunity and just slits their throat while you have gimli pirouetting his acts like if he was anakin versus obi 1 knocks down the orc and then just cleaves them in the head and then you have. 53:07.90 Dave Yeah. 53:20.10 Chris Aragorn pulling out his boot knife to stab somebody for a finisher. You know that they did give you kind of like the same ah combos and everything for all the characters but they all have like their the personality of the character put into their animations. 53:39.18 Dave Yeah, yeah, like Legolas is really really graceful in his animations whereas you know Sam is not when you're fighting as sam so they do have some good personality. Um. 53:41.52 Chris Right. 53:52.25 Dave You can unlock special combos as you play through after each level you get taken up to like a level up screen. Basically we have a kind of not a skill tree but you just have a list of unlockable stuff that you can spend your experience points to unlock between each level. And 1 thing I think is really cool about this is each character has their own unique abilities that you can unlock, but they all share several unlocks like. You know an unlock that will give you extra health or there's a move called the orc hewer that you unlock really early in the game. That's basically a combo that just really it just fucks up orcs and what you can do. It's great. Yeah, yeah, it's fantastic. 54:37.21 Chris Um, that's the goat that is the goat. 54:44.60 Dave And as someone who doesn't really do well with memorizing and then executing combos in games I was like oh this one's easy I'm just going to do this forever. It looks great. The animations are awesome. You know do that forever? Um, but 1 thing I thought was cool is you can spend. Let's say you can spend like. 55:02.95 Dave 5000 experience to unlock the orc hewer for one character or you can spend 20000 to unlock it for everybody and I don't think I've played many rpgs or games like this where you have a system like this where you can spend extra to unlock this skill for. Everybody that's available in the game. 55:25.30 Chris I I don't even think the 2 towers had that. I think the 2 towers you had to pay individually pair characters 55:31.76 Dave Yeah I don't remember it's been forever since I played that but I thought this was good. 55:45.38 Dave I thought this was really cool because like let's say you let's say you play through the entire game. Um, but you didn't really touch gimli when you played so now you're going to replay the game and you want to play as gimli more well, you don't have to waste a bunch of. Experience unlocking a bunch of stuff because you've probably unlocked a bunch of stuff already for gimli by playing as the other characters and the more you play with the other characters like the less you need to spend with Gimleys and now you can spend more on his own skills and then. Maybe clean up a couple others to buy for the entire fellowship and by the time you get to like character number 3 or 4 you're starting with a bunch of skills as soon as you hit the level that that skill is at it's already unlocked and you don't need to spend more. It's always an issue when you like to play as new characters in games that let you swap characters but like you have to grind to level them up or something and in this game. It's not really like that they do level up and you do have to spend time or. At least be careful early on until you can level them up a few times but you don't have to waste a bunch of experience unlocking the same skills for everybody and it's ah, just kind of like smooths that out because I think they do want you to play with lots of different characters. 57:10.31 Chris So what I was going to say. It's along the lines of that I feel like having that option to purchase to spend that little bit more to purchase the skill for everybody respects your time as a gamer you you and the. 57:24.00 Dave Yes, yes. 57:28.71 Chris Great thing about that like you were saying is once you level up you already have it. But once you level up while you're playing as soon as you hit, let's say level 4 or level 3 or level 5 or whatever if you bought those abilities with somebody else. You have them immediately. 57:44.23 Dave Yeah. 57:46.10 Chris So you don't have to wait for the stage to be over to use. You know the orc insta kill right? You already have that as soon as it says that you've reached a level and at least when I played it I went through I think it was the first 3 stages. 57:55.63 Dave Right. 58:05.82 Chris Of aragorn' of the path of the king with all 3 characters with Legolas Aragorn and and gimli and by the time that I was done I think I was like at level 8 level nine so I had and I had so many experience points that I had bought everything. Up to that level for the entire fellowship. So when I played with Sam and Gandalf already had dos abilities every time I would level up. It just felt like I was progressing through the game without. 58:25.40 Dave Yeah. 58:37.89 Chris Having to suffer the growing pains of playing a game with a brand new character. 58:40.90 Dave Right? Exactly it just speeds up that progression because you've already done the work in this game like you said respect your time enough to say we want you to have fun when you unlock these new characters and get right into it rather than you know. 58:49.20 Chris Um, right. 58:59.10 Dave Oh well I got to buy all these skills again. So let me I'll grind the first 2 levels 10 times each or something like that. you don't have to do that in this game and for a game that like again I think that. When you unlock those characters at the end and it's like you can play as Merry and Pippin and faramir are and instead of being like oh fuck I got to level them up. You're like okay I've unlocked a bunch of stuff already. So let's roll. 59:24.68 Chris And then all you have to buy is their personal stuff like their upgrades for their ranged weapons, their upgrades to their speed or or their Stamina or whatever. So what you're buying is stuff just specifically for that character. That's not even that important. 59:30.65 Dave He. 59:41.93 Dave Yep, exactly? So um, so all put together like you know, fairly simple gameplay hack and style gameplay with all of these unlocks in this kind of progression system that. Rewards you more the more you play. I feel like um, how does you feel about kind of the act of playing through this game and you know fighting all these hordes and stuff like that. 01:00:07.62 Chris So I'm a big fan of the devil make Christ type type of games where you have different combo inputs to have higher rankings on your style or whatever. I really like that this game. 01:00:26.49 Chris With the combo system that it has it kind of feels like Devil may cry but without being as sweaty. So if you just want to go through the entire state just pressing the X button you can do it. 01:00:40.97 Dave Ah, yeah. 01:00:41.82 Chris But if you want to go through the entire stage being fancy and flourishing your Axs and you know having insta kills or whatever you can do that too. So it's not a game that will gate you into a specific type of play style and I really really like that about this game. 01:00:56.48 Dave Um, yeah, it's also cool and I'm glad you brought that up that scoring system. It's cool that the scoring system plays into how much experience you get at the end of the levels but it also gives you benefits while you're playing. To be at that perfect level so you'll raise up from I think it's like poor to good to excellent to perfect or something like that and when you're at perfect. You're like 1 shotting enemies. You can just kind of cleave your way through dozens of enemies at a time. Um. 01:01:22.47 Chris Right? right. Bright. 01:01:33.89 Dave Almost Muswo style. Um, it's really cool how you're rewarded for doing well in combat by doing better in combat and then at the end they calculate all of that and they give you more experience points for doing well. So. Those points when I did get to that like super high level. It's not like you. It's not like a scoring system where you need to constantly mix up your combos and you know do perfect parries and stuff like that like you'll get up to that perfect level just by. Doing well however, doing well looks to you I mean if you stand there and just press X over and over again I don't think you'll get there but like. 01:02:16.57 Chris You will. It's more like don't get hit don't Ah, it's don't get hit and but back think that basically it just don't get hit right? Oh yeah. 01:02:26.25 Dave Yeah, but this game has a super forgiving Perry You can parry just about anything except for trolls. So um. 01:02:33.12 Chris Yeah, um, so you also have like I've I've mentioned earlier when you press l two r two l one and r one all 4 ah you kind of get like this burst of energy where if you kill one enemy. 01:02:50.63 Chris Then your whole meter goes into perfect and anything you hit will die one hit so there were a bunch of times where I would finish a stage where I would have like 80 perfects and like 20 pores 30 goods a couple of excellent and like I would have. 01:02:51.77 Dave Nice, yeah. 01:03:09.10 Chris So many perfects that my experience would just grow like crazy and whenever you would do an insta kill on an enemy which would be Perry and the ground stab button. Um you would go into perfect mode as well. So. 01:03:20.76 Dave Um, yeah. 01:03:25.25 Chris You don't necessarily have to build a combo. You can just break into perfect and just cheese the game. Basically so. 01:03:30.29 Dave Nice Yeah I forgot I routinely forgot all about that kind of like burst move So all of my perfects were just from you know building that up the old fashioned way I guess but. 01:03:44.35 Chris All right. 01:03:47.82 Dave It's not a really difficult game if you just remember that your block, like your parry, is so good that if you just block counterattack use your combos. You'll do just fine. The only times when I really like got game overs in this game were when the missions had. Other things like protecting people. Um, there is the mission at minas tirith when you have to keep the walls from being overrun with Orcs. I lost that several times before I figured out exactly what I needed to do. Already talked about the black gate protecting all the other characters. I lost a bunch in those levels but like I rarely just got you know, whooped by enemies and like died myself. You know, not a super hard game in that way. 01:04:43.68 Chris Now and those there were like particular stages where I got the game over like you said ministers protecting the ramparts. Um I safe stated the fuck out of that stage and I so. Had a rough time because not only did you have the ladders with orcs coming up and invading the walls so that you couldn't move through them. You also had these towers coming and docking and there were a couple of them. That were on one side that you would have to go and shoot down with your magic because there wasn't a catapult to shoot them down and then when you had to go to the catapult for the second time there was an as goal taking away the people that would shoot the catapult and you would have to wait for somebody else to come up. 01:05:12.89 Dave Yeah. 01:05:26.71 Chris And then as school would try to take it away again and that was kind of a headache I think that's the stage I liked the least apart from the road of the dead. 01:05:39.78 Dave Yeah, there is a level of more old school game design where like I think if they made this game today. They would make it so that you just kind of progress through the level. It would have good checkpoints and. It would be a lot harder to fail this feels like an older era. You know was twenty years ago but an older era of game design where there would be like here's the level here are the objectives, just you're going to replay the level as many times as it takes for you to do this perfectly and then you'll move on. 01:06:03.26 Chris Right. 01:06:17.71 Dave That's how I felt about the minas tirith level the pelennor fields level the black gate to some extent kind of figuring out what your actual priorities are in that because your priorities at the black gate is not to kill as many things as you can. It's to keep everyone else alive and then kill these. 01:06:36.69 Chris Right? right. 01:06:36.81 Dave 6 mini bosses that go on the stage at some point but it's a lot of like figuring out exactly how to do the process of the level like I prefer the levels where you're just kind of going through That's why I like the path of the dead because all you're doing is just moving through killing the stuff that's in your way. Um, as opposed to you know, puzzling out exactly what I need to do in pellinor fields and the most efficient route to get from place to place and all that shit. Um, there is kind of like some of that old school design where it's like now fuck you just learn it do it perfectly 01:07:11.71 Chris Yeah, right? And at there were times where I was playing it where I was like where the fuck is the checkpoint and then 5 minutes later will pop up I was like god damn finally. 01:07:17.98 Dave Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's why save states to the rescue again. 01:07:26.37 Chris Right? right? and you know sometimes when you're playing old games like this you can divide them into 2 camps of what's the back button is it the triangle or the circle because then you know that the checkpoints are going to be kind of bullshit depending on. 01:07:39.91 Dave You. 01:07:46.49 Chris Which they are but no going back to your point of liking the stages there is a path. I feel like that's when the game is doing its best ah because like I said my favorite path was the path of the hobbit because all 3 stages are. You know a path that you have to take and I dislike the road of the dead as a first level but going back to it once you're leveled up and you have more abilities and everything. It's a whole different experience. So it's way better. 01:08:06.72 Dave Um, that's true. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 01:08:24.76 Chris That way. So yeah, the game is at its best when it's a path of a linear game. Not ah, an arena. 01:08:31.55 Dave Yeah, yeah, I think some of the biggest bummers other than those like shuttle run or protection type of things. Some of the biggest bummers is when they would just drop you in an area and say okay kill 80 orcs and then you can move on because then it's just kind of you know. Doing the same thing for a long time. The only time I didn't really mind it was in the isengard level because you're fighting with the nts and the nts can hurt you too if you like get under their feet and stuff so kind of fun. It's the first level It's not hard so it's the first level after like the helms deep intro. 01:09:05.85 Chris Right. 01:09:11.31 Dave But yeah, those linear path levels where you're just kind of moving from spot to spot killing everything along the path tend to be more cinematic and more fun. Yeah. 01:09:20.43 Chris Right? It says kill 80 orcs but it's a linear stage you will kill them by the time you get to the end, especially if you use your environment environmental cues like like the draw man to drawbridge is so funny. It's like a. 01:09:29.80 Dave Right? exactly. 01:09:37.63 Dave Yeah, yeah. 01:09:39.91 Chris I ran through a mob of orcs to get to the lever and I pulled it and that shit just killed all the orgs just started laughing and my wife's like what I killed like 5 wars with Sam in one go. She's like what. 01:09:54.47 Dave Nice, Yeah, yeah, that one's great. Good times. Um, yeah, anything else about the gameplay that you think is noteworthy here before we wrap this up. 01:10:08.74 Chris Um, no, not not really I think we've we've covered it and yeah yeah, we I think we've covered it. 01:10:15.87 Dave Yeah, at its core. It's a pretty simple game just you know presenting these scenes from the movie and stuff. So I guess I think this will be a pretty simple thought process for who to recommend this game too. But. Chris who would you recommend the return of the king game to. 01:10:38.34 Chris So I would recommend this to somebody who has already played the 2 towers and wants more lord of the rings or is a lord of the rings fiend and wants to play through the events of the third movie. Um. 01:10:56.35 Chris Feel like there are way worse sort of the rings games out there that you can play. But if you're a fan of the series, if you went through the 2 towers and you want more or if you like Devil may cry games and you want something a little bit simpler this is it. 01:11:12.00 Dave Yeah fans first and foremost fans of lord of the rings because a lot of the stuff that we've been talking about as being really cool like you know reliving the battle of isengard or reliving the pellinor fields or something like that. If. You're not a big fan of Lord of the rings a lot of that's going to be lost on you but I do think that this is like if you're ambivalent on lord of the rings I think this is still a pretty fun action game to just pick up and play you know run through the levels kill some works use some magic drop a fucking drawbridge on some people. 01:11:30.92 Chris Um. 01:11:48.77 Dave Gonna be fun. Um, if you I think if you're out there and you like if you can't stand the lord of the rings then don't play this because this is extremely lord of the rings like they're going to show movie clips and everything like this is kind of a celebration of the return of the King movie which is. 01:11:57.90 Chris Oh yeah. 01:12:06.47 Dave Weird that it came out before the movie , especially with how long games take to make like I guess those movies took a long time to 01:12:13.57 Chris So at the end of the game. It says the return of the King is coming soon I think. It gives you like an ad after the game is over after seeing that and playing all those stages and thinking back on the game. 01:12:19.20 Dave Oh shit does it I Miss that. 01:12:32.59 Chris Was this game just an ad for the fucking movie. Oh yeah, it was I mean made me want to have another marathon Sure my wife would be down for that. 01:12:36.42 Dave It's an expensive ad but it's a fun one. 01:12:46.10 Dave Oh yeah, absolutely that ah that that'll be a Thanksgiving or Christmas by the time people hear this those will be long past. But yeah I think it's. I think it's time for me to sit down and spend 13 hours with my favorite group of characters here. Yeah. 01:12:53.30 Chris Yes, yes. 01:13:03.64 Dave So um, yeah, pretty pretty simple recommendation for fans of lord of the rings or fans of this kind of action game I think it's good for both but more so for the fans for sure. Um, before we wrap this up. Let's do our housekeeping as per tradition like I said at the top. Chris is one of the hosts of a novel console podcast along with his wife carriden. So Chris tell people what's going on on a novel console and where they can find it. 01:13:29.49 Chris So basically a novel console is a podcast that I do with my wife. We release episodes every Monday. We basically talk books talk games talk food talk whatever caught our interest or. If. We went on a trip recently. We just talk about the trip and the amazing food that we had um, it's basically just an excuse for the 2 of us to tell each other the things that we like and things we're excited about or that we experience that we think are awesome and um. 01:14:00.34 Dave Yeah. 01:14:05.40 Chris You know we do have lord of the rings month we call it middle-ear March every year where I play games. She reads books and Dave comes on and tells us how much he loves the movies. Um, and and we also do other team months like star wars month we tried to have sell the month this year but ah 01:14:23.45 Chris Tears of the kingdom sucked up my entire month of July so I couldn't play anything else. Um, but you know it's a great time. We have a lot of fun on the show and it's basically just a show that's going to go on for as long as we like each other when we stop liking each other. We'll probably stop. 01:14:25.77 Dave Yeah, yeah. 01:14:41.50 Dave Fair enough? Yeah yeah, it's a good time. Um, obviously good chemistry between the 2 of you but you know fun conversations. The food that you all talk about sounds great and you know a lot of video game content on there too like special video game focused episodes with other friends of. 01:14:57.49 Chris Ah, yeah, yeah, definitely. 01:14:59.20 Dave Lots of friends of tales from the backlog past guests Future guests. So yeah, definitely a recommendation to check out a novel console for everybody and if you want a place to start, you're listening to this, you probably? you're at least fine with Lord of the rings. Go check out the episode that we did all about. Lurt of the rings in various media because that was really fun. Ah, fun episode, good conversation. 01:15:20.85 Chris Yeah, yeah, and I want to thank you again for being on that episode because I basically was like hey are you cool to record this Wednesday you're like what? yeah no. 01:15:31.96 Dave Ah, you're one of the lucky few that got me that way. Usually I'm like a man . I need like four weeks of notice before I can record anything but good times. 01:15:40.37 Chris Right? Ah, ah man that is a great episode. Great episode. We shit a lot on rings of power. Um, but you know who doesn't. 01:15:51.74 Dave Yes, we did yeah people with good opinions. They do So um yeah, where can ah where can people find a novel console other than searching on their favorite podcast app. 01:15:56.67 Chris Right. 01:16:04.52 Chris So we are on Twitter at a novel console on Facebook at a novel console on Instagram at a novel console Tik Tok is pretty much dead. I only use that to message my friends and watch stupid videos. We don't post there anymore. 01:16:16.70 Dave You just. 01:16:21.66 Dave Okay. 01:16:23.52 Chris Um, but if you want to get a hold of us. You can do it through Twitter we also have a Discord we have a never ending invite on the pin tweet. So if you feel like joining us and making fun of our episodes with us and the stuff that we like you're more than welcome to join our discord um Dave is there. He met the mythical burger champ. 01:16:37.90 Dave Um, yeah, oh yeah. 01:16:42.92 Chris And some other podcasting friends like thrak so it's ah it's a great time over there and we're also on every single podcasting platform you can think of except for Facebook because Facebook doesn't like podcasters anymore I think they only did podcasts for like six months and then they quit. 01:16:53.99 Dave Yep. 01:17:01.89 Dave Well to be fair who really does like podcasters. But um, yeah, a fun fun Discord server a recommendation to ah to join over there. It's a really good bill tight Knit community but very welcoming at the same time. So. 01:17:03.97 Chris Right. 01:17:18.50 Dave It's a fun place to hang out. Um, yeah, so 4 tales from the backlog. You can join the tales from the backlog discord server. We've got one too. We have an awesome community there . Come in and talk about Lord of the Rings. I somehow don't get enough of that so come on in to talk about it. Especially if you played these games, if you're interested in playing them, come in and chat. You'll find a link down in the show notes to join. You can support the show by leaving a rating and review on your favorite podcast app if it is Apple Podcasts Spotify or podcast addict. So that way when people search Return of the King on their podcast app looking for podcasts about the movies. They'll find this episode instead. Ah ah, oh yeah, so um, you can do that to help us out also seeing a good rating and review. 01:18:01.82 Chris Um, yes, all Bait and switch. 01:18:12.32 Dave Ah, fills my heart with Joy. So if you want that too, if you want to support the show monetarily you can do that at patreon.com/realdavejackson as I said in the kind of pre-show intro that I do this episode won a Patreon poll to be on the show. I wanted to play a lord of the rings game. So I posted 4 games and let the people on Patreon vote and this game was the winner via 1 of our patented super smash brothers tie breakers. So always a good time and once again, that's patreon.com/realdavejackson. 01:18:48.70 Dave All patrons can vote in those polls and then higher tiers have more and more rewards as you go and finally I have another podcast called a top 3 podcast where we do top 3 lists and sometimes drafts. If you want an episode related to Lord of the Rings you can check out our top 3 fictional battles episode which featured heavy Lord of the Rings discussion because some of the best battles in fiction happen in this here. Series. So that's all Chris. Thank you so much for coming on. Dude we don't have any spoiler section so i'm. Ah, kind of scrambling to how to end the show but I appreciate you man. Thank you for coming on again. 01:19:27.80 Chris It was great and and to be honest I'm happy that this game won. When I saw that it went to the battle ah smash bros battle I started sweating because I didn't want it to be the second shadow of war game. 01:19:38.91 Dave Even. 01:19:46.54 Chris Because I played it already this year man and that game oh man it makes me feel stuff that I don't like yeah. 01:19:54.27 Dave Oh man. Yeah, we had kind of talked more behind the scenes tales from the backlog here we had we had talked and we were basically like okay here's the 4 games I'm putting on Patreon are you cool with all of these and you were like yeah whatever wins I'll come on and talk about. Ah, so I was happy that this game won too. The others were shadow of war lord of the rings tactics from the ps 2 which I had never heard of before and ah the third age which is the lord of the rings meets final fantasy 10 game which I still might play someday. 01:20:25.96 Chris Yes, it's worth playing it. It's especially since you're probably going to play it on Steam Deck The steam deck does have a speed up feature which you are going to need to get through the game but it's still a very good game. 01:20:37.00 Dave Oh yeah, yeah. 01:20:45.81 Chris It's a very solid well done rpg. 01:20:46.25 Dave Nice, nice, nice. And once again I'm happy that we got you on the show for an episode on a game that we both enjoy after um, settling our differences during that eastward episode. But yeah. 01:20:54.27 Chris Oh yeah, hey a question are we going to cover the Eastward Dlc. 01:21:03.49 Dave Ah, no I will not be playing the Eastward dlc. No, I hope you kids have fun. But yeah man I appreciate you. I Always enjoy talking with you. So thanks for coming on. 01:21:16.21 Chris And no man anytime. Appreciate being here again. 01:21:19.74 Dave All right? So everybody again, check out a novel console. You'll find a link down in the show notes so that you don't have to go searching and trying to spell things we got you check down in the show notes you'll find a link and as always thank you for listening to the tune in next week for the next game to come out of the backlog.