While many of them aren’t particularly well known, there are almost 50 video games based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. These range from sizable triple-A efforts to Flash games, to mobile trivia quizzes and everything in between. The problem is that the vast majority of them aren’t very good.
Infamous flops in Middle-earth include games like The Lord of the Rings: Conquest, The Lord of the Rings: Aragorn’s Quest, and an especially ill-advised GBA adaptation of Tolkien’s beloved Fellowship of the Ring. War in the North wasn’t quite as bad as many people made it out to be, but, er… well, we didn’t finish it either. Fair enough!
Despite the amount of Tolkien gameses that have broken their footses off Uruk-hai helmetses – ok, we’ll stop with the Gollum talk – there have also been some real Stings and Glamdrings in the rough. For the sake of brevity, we’re going to focus purely on the very best Lord of the Rings games and rank them to find the one game to rule them all. We’ve gone with six entries to match the six books in the trilogy.
And yes, we can count. Tolkien originally wanted The Lord of the Rings to be one manuscript divided into six parts and the final trilogy is still formatted that way even if it’s technically split into three different physical books. See? We’re definitely the right people to be handling this list. Let’s get started.
Middle-earth: Shadow of War
“Boo!” you shout, purely based on the fact that Shadow of War is a relatively flashy looking game compared to some of the older Lord of the Rings titles. Shadow of War is a very good game that is markedly inferior to its predecessor – spoiler, Mordor is on this list too. Obviously.
While Shadow of War was Monolith’s second stab at Middle-earth, its overabundant microtransactions and increasingly listless storytelling really hold it back. It strikes a wonderful balance of being tactile and intuitive and uses the Nemesis system established in the first game to excellent effect, but it’s also probably the reason Monolith is working on Wonder Woman instead of Shadow of Whatever Comes After War, Which Apparently Comes After Mordor.
Lego The Lord of the Rings
Yes, my dear Frodo, Lego The Lord of the Rings is a superior game to Shadow of War. In general, Lego games are extremely good at understanding their source material – there’s a reason Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga has seen such extensive delays to ensure it’s as good as it can be. Lego The Lord of the Rings is no different, tastefully capturing the mood and atmosphere of Peter Jackson’s iconic trilogy while injecting its own sense of humor into it.
Perhaps the best thing about Lego The Lord of the Rings is also the best thing about most Lego games: it’s approachable for everyone without being patronising to anyone. It’s just a smooth, breezy experience from start to finish, teeming with vibrant versions of beloved characters and all sorts of blocky belligerence.
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
[mm-video type=video id=01fneweg9c4wk5v2c2c9 playlist_id=none player_id=none image=https://images2.minutemediacdn.com/image/upload/video/thumbnail/mmplus/01fneweg9c4wk5v2c2c9/01fneweg9c4wk5v2c2c9-a0465eb771466761de4c34fc9ceabc05.jpg]
Not enough people talk about The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. While most fans probably have fond memories of it, it’s worth recalling the context it launched in. The Fellowship of the Ring was developed by a different studio, came out just a month prior to The Two Towers, and was near universally bashed for how rushed it was. The Two Towers, meanwhile, seamlessly integrated scenes from Jackson’s trilogy into a smart, stylish, and impressively tight follow-up.
Beginning and ending at Helm’s Deep, The Two Towers allows you to play all the way from Weathertop to the Battle of the Hornburg as Aragorn, Gimli, or Legolas, with the exception that only Aragorn is playable for the first level. Combat revolves around a fluid, hack-and-slash base and the game’s pacing looks like a miracle next to The Fellowship of the Ring. We initially thought about including The Third Age in here somewhere, but then a) remembered how good The Two Towers is and b) decided everyone else should remember how good The Two Towers is, too.
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor
Here it is, the game that way too many people out there would name as top dog in the world of Tolkienian video games. Shadow of Mordor is an excellent game with great world traversal, sleek level design, smooth combat, and a million-dollar idea in the exceptionally clever Nemesis system.
On the flip side, it fundamentally misunderstands the lore of Middle-earth and succumbs to sameness partway through its runtime. Raiding bases and taking down warchiefs never gets old, but the story often seems as if it’s actively trying to make you turn the telly off and go for a walk. Again, it’s a great game, but it should count its lucky Evenstars it managed to snag a podium slot on this list.
The Lord of the Rings Online
While games like Final Fantasy XIV and World of Warcraft boast astronomically larger playerbases, The Lord of the Rings Online is an outstanding MMO in its own right. Originally launched in 2007, LOTR Online is still regularly updated today, with developer Standing Stone Games bringing out the Fall of Gundabad expansion just this year.
Technically speaking, The Lord of the Rings Online’s main storyline concluded in 2017 given that it takes place at the end of the Third Age, i.e. the same time as Jackson’s trilogy, and Sauron died at the end of the Mordor expansion. Still, updates since have focused on how Middle-earth is changing in the wake of Sauron’s death, while people all over the world are still exploring everywhere from Bree to Barad-dur while experimenting with all kinds of different character builds. If you’re looking for a Tolkien game that will hold your interest in a similar way to the books and films, The Lord of the Rings Online is the one for you.
The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King
Before we get into why Return of the King is the GOAT when it comes to Lord of the Rings games, it’s important to note that Battle for Middle-earth, Battle for Middle-earth II, and The Third Age are all great games that would have been on this list if we’d done a top ten instead of matching our entry count to the number of books in The Lord of the Rings. It’s difficult to say what number ten would have been – probably War in the North or that Hobbit game for the Game Boy Advance that people are always unnecessarily mean about.
Regardless of all of that though, Return of the King is the video game equivalent of when Aragorn clashes blades with the King of the Dead in the caves beneath Dwimorberg. It’s like Legolas taking down an Oliphaunt solo, like Theoden answering the beacons, like Samwise Gamgee coming to save Frodo after the latter was poisoned by Shelob and kidnapped by orcs. Yes, all of those scenes are from Return of the King.
Return of the King is a very clean and precise adaptation of the film, but it’s also a joy to play because of how well made it is. While The Two Towers restored some good faith after Fellowship’s flop, Return of the King was EA Redwood Shores’ way of assuring fans that Tolkien’s works were in good hands. While we still remember how tough that Minas Tirith level was, nothing compares to storming the Black Gate as Gandalf and unleashing barrages of arcane artillery.
All of these games, including the honorable mentions above, are excellent Lord of the Rings games. As long as Return of the King exists though, there’s one clear game to rule them all – if another studio wants to change that, they’ll have to chop it clean off of EA Redwood Shores’ Sauronic finger.
Written by Cian Maher on behalf of GLHF.
[listicle id=1329989]
