It’s no surprise that with all the recent Lord of the Rings action, someone would decide to cash in on The Hobbit, which is the prelude to the Lord of the Rings trilogy. In this case, that someone is Vivendi Universal. However, this version of The Hobbit won’t be dubbed a “timeless classic” anytime soon.

If you’re not familiar with the story, then here is the basic idea. You're called upon by the wizard Gandalf one day and persuaded into joining a group of dwarves on a good old-fashioned dragon-slaying adventure. However, much of this story is told by means of storybook style cutscenes. Ultimately, you will be trying to steal the treasure of the red dragon Smaug without waking him up. The game doesn’t go into a lot of detail, and sums up the entire first chapter of the book in a minute or two.



Each stage in the game has a massive list of quests to complete, and you’ll unlock more by talking to people you encounter along the way. Completing each task earns you either a reward or a new area of the level to explore. While the tasks vary from level to level, they all end up being the same thing over and over again. Jump around, collect something, bring it back to someone, go find something else, etc.

This brings me to my next point. While The Hobbit is supposed to be an action/adventure game, a lot of the time you’ll find yourself jumping from platform to platform. Another thing that annoyed me was that the game makes you collect a wide variety of pointless items as you move along. The platforming elements in the game aren’t good to begin with, but bad camera angels make it a lot worse. Even though the game gives you total control over the camera, you’ll often find the angle switching on its own. This is especially bad if you are jumping over water, because for some reason Hobbits are unable to swim.

While the platforming elements definitely need a lot of work, the adventure part of the game is average at most. The Hobbit plays a lot like a Zelda game would, except it’s a lot simpler. Instead of having an advanced fighting system like The Wind Waker did, The Hobbit is more of a “hack and slash” title, requiring the use of only one button to kill the baddies. This is fun to begin with, but can become repetitive and boring over time. The game doesn’t really offer any type of gameplay that hasn’t already been offered by previous adventure titles.

The graphics in the game are good looking, but the characters are unpolished. While the dwarves and Gandalf look true to the books, Bilbo looks nothing like previous incarnations of himself. The environments themselves are great looking, and add a more cheery look to Tolkien’s world than that of the other Lord of the Rings games. It’s good to be able to finally put a picture to the environments that the books created.



Overall, The Hobbit is a mediocre platform/adventure title. The game offers solid gameplay, tricky puzzles, and a few exciting moments through the game. The main problem is that it just doesn’t offer anything that hasn’t been done better by other games. If you are really thinking about getting into The Hobbit, then I would highly suggest you save your cash and just buy the book.