One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them, one ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.

Lord of the Rings from Vivendi Universal, rather than being based on the recent films, is instead closely based on the Tolkien books and is also the only game fully approved by the Tolkien Estate. The developers worked over a 2 year period closely with Tolkien Enterprises to create a detailed, interactive world based on Tolkien's fantastic novels. They even created a 386 page style guide to ensure that the game remained as true as possible to the spirit of the book!

I've been a Tolkien fan ever since first reading LOTR when I was 14, I didn't even read the Hobbit until after reading LOTR for the first time so I was pretty excited when this game arrived for review.

The game starts off in 'The Shire' and follows the book fairly closely, we don't see Bilbo's going away party but Gandalf arrives and discusses the ring with Frodo, throwing it in the fireplace to bring out the elvish writing confirming it is Sauron's One Ring that He and the Nazgul are seeking. The script follows the book very well and fans will notice heaps of lines pulled straight from its pages. Some parts will appear glossed over to Tolkien purists but it's only to keep the story moving along.

One small point of concern with the story was when Gandalf puts the ring in the fireplace to test it, he picks it up to do so! And then in the next scene refuses to touch it when Frodo offers it to him. In the book Gandalf refuses to touch the ring genuinely being afraid of it as he knows Sauron would sense his presence and that he may be tempted to use the ring. The game shows much attention to detail in almost every area but small issues like that can't help but be noticed.

During the course of the game your adventures will see you controlling Frodo through the shire and the old forest, playing as Aragorn and also as Gandalf. It makes for some nice and varied gameplay and breaks up the game nicely in case you get sick of controlling one character.

You move your characters around with the left stick, move the camera with the right stick, change weapons or inventory items with the D-pad. One nice feature is the 'Zelda' style camera lock, by pressing the left trigger you can 'lock on' to an enemy to help target it. The controls are very easy to learn and you'll be controlling Frodo around at the start of the game in no time, but I noticed a slight issue with the camera, sometimes for me its movement appeared very jerky when being adjusted manually, moving your character however, was always nice and smooth.

After completing a couple of slightly annoying side quests, I collected the One Ring and ventured off to meet Merry, Pippin and Sam at Farmer Maggots and here's where one A.I issue crept up. By simply jumping a fence and running away, you can get away from the Black Riders. They blindly walk a set path and only stand a chance of catching you if you accidentally run into them. They are pretty dim and it left me with the impression that maybe the developers had kids in mind rather than older gamers when creating the game. There are also some issues controlling Gandalf where you have to shoot a couple of levers and hitting most things in the game, levers, baddies etc seemed a bit hit and miss.

As Frodo you have access to the One Ring, which while worn, makes you invisible, but it pays not to overuse it or even use it at all as your 'purity level' will drop and it also makes you easier to find for the Nazgul.

The hit detection and A.I could have certainly done with some more work but generally Lord of The Rings can't be faulted too harshly. No overtly hard puzzles and the dodgy A.I in parts lead me to believe they wanted to create a 'forgiving' game for younger gamers.

Another small part that annoyed me was the linear nature of some of the levels. For example in the old forest you are restricted to the paths and can't wander off anywhere else. So you're pretty much always headed in the right direction by the game. No guess work or adventuring really required.

There's nothing in the game that will stump a hardcore gamer or adventure veteran. I played through it in about 12 hours and I'm sure that it can be done even quicker and once it's done, there's no great reason to come back to it.

Heres where Lord of the Rings really shines, I just totally loved the graphics. Everything in the game is nice and clear with nice sharp textures featuring fantastic artwork.

At the start in the Shire, leaves fall from the trees as they sway in the wind, squirrels run around and it was very enjoyable just walking around the Shire looking at all the hobbit homes, exploring Bag End, talking to the hobbit kids and just having a general poke around.

The art guys did an amazing job recreating all the locations for the game, everything from the Shire, the rivers, the characters (especially the Nazgul) and locations such as Moria just look fantastic. It's great to see characters left from the film such as Farmer Maggot and Tom Bombadil included as well and faithfully recreated.

There's no doubting how good the game looks. Getting to visit the book locations created into 3d environments by talented artists was a real joy. Everything is animated extremely well and looks nice and smooth.

The audio in LOTR does the job very nicely. The music is good and there's plenty of recorded dialogue to listen to in conversations. No reading here required at all! I liked the ability to be able to skip parts of the conversations or totally skip to the end of them. Mostly because I died a couple of times without saving so I ended up having to repeat a couple of parts a number of times :-)

Also there's plenty to interact with in the game and most things usually illicit some form of comment from the characters. The music is also nicely done and there are a couple of songs from the book that are sung and surprisingly nice to listen to.