Sunday, Sep 7, 2008
Fredrik Ekman is a freelance technology writer in Sweden who has devoted a good deal of his life to collecting computer games derived from "The Lord of the Rings." His set of Web pages devoted to the topic is a museum worth visiting, if only for the names. Angband and Angmar, Elendor and Eodon, Mordor and Morgul and Mines of Moria 3. The Bridge of Catzad-Dum, Isildur's Bane, Orcs: Revenge of the Ancient. And how can one ignore Bored of the Rings, The Boggit, Bulbo and the Lizard King, and Fuddo and Slam? Or my favorite title: Where Hobbits Dare.
There are 120 games on Ekman's list, and that doesn't even include the onslaught soon to come from the current chief licensee of the Tolkien estate, Vivendi/Universal, which is planning a host of games, including action/adventure, real-time strategy, and a massively multi-player online role-playing game à la Everquest or Ultima Online. (Electronic Arts owns the rights to games derived from the movie version.) The list also doesn't include the thousands of games that are descended from Tolkien's world, but not directly connected. In fact, the entire role-playing genre of computer gaming is directly copied from the paper-and-dice game Dungeons & Dragons, which itself was inspired by Tolkien (along with the cruder narratives of the sword-and-sorcery genre).
Ekman's Tolkien computer game pages are a testament to computer platforms and gaming companies long gone. The ZX Spectrum, the Commodore Vic-20, the Apple II -- for every new platform there were scores of computer programmers cutting their teeth writing games for machines with resources laughably minuscule by today's standards.
Whether or not Tolkien actually did bring geekdom up to subcultural status, it's not all that surprising that these programmers were drawn to his fantastic world. Mastery of code isn't so different from mastering magic. It's no accident that so many programmers styled themselves "wizards," whether they were just socializing in chat rooms or role playing in multi-user domains (MUDS). The ability of a computer to emulate anything, to create from ones and zeros a vast panoply of productive tools and entertaining amusements, is akin to Gandalf's ability to blow whatever kind of smoke ring he chooses. So no wonder programmers have long succumbed to a practically tribal instinct that requires them to attempt to duplicate in silicon what Tolkien did in text.
The movies, again, are succeeding, with the help of computers, in bringing Middle Earth alive. But bringing Tolkien to life on the big screen is not the same as bringing us into Tolkien's world. As Ekman notes, "No movie can ever bring you actually into the story in the same way as a good computer game. But paradoxically, this is also the curse of the games, because you can never make them absolutely true to the books. If you did, they would become extremely predictable and boring."
Which is precisely my problem with the Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, for the PlayStation 2, from Electronic Arts. The game, at first glance, might seem to be as close to the "real thing" as you can get. It's liberally interspersed with footage from both the first and second installments of Peter Jackson's trilogy. One of the very first missions is a scene from "Fellowship of the Ring" in which Aragorn is defending Frodo from the Ringwraiths. You can't win the mission until you realize that you must use a lighted torch, and not your sword, to fight the Ringwraiths. And you've got to keep relighting the torch from the fire every time it goes out.
On a big-screen TV, it's quite a production. The action frequently morphs into "cut-scenes" that advance the plot, or actual footage, or both. And if you fail to fend off the Ringwraiths, you will be forced to watch one of them actually kill Frodo -- which made me feel quite pathetic the first time it happened. Hardly 10 minutes into the game, and I'd already doomed Middle Earth to eternal Sauronic subjugation!
But at the same time, the end result felt stale -- a hopped-up version of countless hack-and-slash fests before it. And for some reason, my fascination with Middle Earth doesn't quite intersect with the necessity for memorizing the game controller button combination that will make Aragorn charge forward, jump, and then deliver a killing blow. The PlayStation 2 game, as a technical feat, looks stunning, but in terms of intellectual challenge, you could go back to The Hobbit, a text adventure game from the early '80s, and be more stimulated.
Except that you can't really go back. Except in rare cases, old computer games are frustratingly limited after you've become used to new ones. The puzzles that challenge you the first time around aren't interesting the second, and bad, clunky graphics just look dumb after you've gotten used to the new, new thing. For me, it's like watching the original "Star Wars" after having become used to the production qualities of, for example, "The Matrix" or "The Fellowship of the Ring." Man, but don't those storm troopers look silly. And Darth Vader? Evil? Give me a break.
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