The Lord of the Rings - Aragorn's Quest

The framing device is the most interesting thing here, and it is doing real work. Years after the Ring goes into the fire, Samwise Gamgee is a father in Hobbiton, telling his children about the ranger who became king. Everything you play as Aragorn is that story, remembered and embellished by a hobbit who loves the man. It gives TT Fusion licence to skip the dread entirely. Orcs pop rather than bleed, Helm's Deep is a set-piece rather than a siege, and nobody expects you to feel the weight of the Ring.

The structure alternates. In Hobbiton you run about as young Sam, taking errands from neighbours, whacking scarecrows with a wooden sword, collecting the trinkets and costume pieces that the game hands out as rewards. Then a story begins and you become Aragorn, moving through corridors of Middle-earth geography with a sword, a bow and a handful of upgrades bought between chapters. Brego turns up for mounted sections. A second player can join at any point as Gandalf, which mostly means more spell effects on screen and less pressure on whoever is younger.

Combat is simple by design and never pretends otherwise. Light attacks, a heavy swing, a block, a bow you switch to when something is out of reach. Enemies come in waves and fall over quickly. What holds it together is pacing: the missions are short, the objectives are stated plainly, and the game does not punish a player who wanders off to look at scenery. On PS2 the visuals are flat and the draw distance is generous rather than detailed, though the storybook art direction absorbs a lot of that. This was the Wii version brought across, motion waggle stripped back to buttons, and it plays better for the change.

What it lacks is friction. An adult will exhaust the combat inside an hour and spend the rest of the game watching cutscenes that summarise events the films already covered better. The Hobbiton hub is charming but thin once its errands run out. Aragorn's Quest was never aimed at that adult, and judging it as a Middle-earth action game against its own contemporaries misses what it is.

As a first Tolkien game for a child who has seen the films at a friend's house and wants to hold the sword themselves, it is well judged, generous and free of anything that will keep them awake. The Shire framing turns out to be the whole point: a war told from the safe end of it, by someone who came home.