Review The Hoppit Hobbit Developer: Inevitable Studios Publisher: Vivendi/Universal Genre: Action/Adventure Release Date: November 2003 Platform: (version reviewed) Review by Randy Sluganski February 5, 2004

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Considering the recent poor quality of licensed games produced by Vivendi/Universal – The Hulk, War of the Rings - we weren’t expecting much from The Hobbit and, much to their discredit, they lived up to our low expectations.

As an action/adventure game, The Hobbit is a mishmash of genres, none of which come close to reaching their potential.

Apparently Vivendi has possession of some long-lost papers of Tolkiens claiming that the true title of The Hobbit was to be The Hoppit for our diminutive friend Bilbo Baggins spends much time hopping from ledge to ledge, leaf to leaf and vine to vine. As if that isn’t insult enough to Tolkien’s true vision, well, Bilbo has now been turned into a pint-sized warrior wielding a battle walking stick with pointed orange hair so he resembles any number of Japanese anime characters. The Shire and Middle Earth are awash in bright colors, but everything seems strangely homogenized almost as if the developers are saying, “This is how we think you want our game to look, creativity be damned!”

There are enjoyable levels, such as sneaking past a party of Trolls to retrieve a stolen wallet, but like everything else in this game the stealth suspense is diluted as every wrong step requires you to begin again from the start of the level (where you hopefully remembered to save as, yes, The Hobbit is yet another game with console save points).

For much of the game the music consists of annoying, inappropriate guitar or flute riffs that would be enjoyable if they did not loop endlessly. Unlike ‘A Mighty Wind’, a movie in which the folksy guitar music was purposely silly, the score of The Hobbit is somehow meant to reflect an ‘elfish’ or fantasy atmosphere, but when you are attempting to complete a vine jump for about the twentieth time, hearing the same riff loop ad nauseum is reason enough to wish for Biblo to be devoured by the wolves he always seems to be battling.

After playing a game like Beyond Good and Evil with its intuitive controls and jumping sequences that only require you to move the character in the appropriate direction, consider what one must do just to complete a long jump in The Hobbit:

Use your Walking-stick to jump farther than normal. First, cycle to your Walking-stick by pressing the O button. Then get a running start. When you near the jumping point, hold the L1 button to ready your Walking-stick and then quickly press the X button to jump.

Believe it or not, this move that reads as though it can only be accomplished by a contortionist soon becomes second nature as you have no choice but to jump, jump, jump.

One thing I rarely complain about is camera angles in a game, but I don’t think I’ve ever played a game in which it seemed I was constantly adjusting the camera to get a better view or to see what jump was needed next. Never have I played a game in which I had so many bad camera angles as in The Hobbit.

Of course, as this is a platform game that offers nothing original, there are gems scattered about Middle Earth that Bilbo can collect to increase his courage. More realistic are the hidden treasure chests, but there is no strategy involved here either as unlocking them is simply a matter of pressing your mouse or controller button at the appropriate moments.

For those who insist that the very nature of video games demands that a title like The Hobbit include platform elements well, that’s hogwash. If younger gamers had the opportunity to be introduced to adventure elements like exploration and puzzle-solving, instead of constantly being force-fed a diet of violence and running and jumping in search of icons or coins they maybe video games wouldn’t be perceived so negatively by the mainstream press.

Does this game follow the book? Yes, in the most superficial way possible – Gandalf the Gray is present, Bilbo acquires both Sting and the One Ring, and faces-off against Smaug the Dragon. The first chapter of the game – there are eleven chapters total – is a complete rip-off of last years other Vivendi/Universal LOTR release. Bilbo must search the town to collect objects and perform fetch-it missions for the townspeople. While I am a huge advocate of puzzles and adventure aspects in games, what somnambulist believed that retrieving apples, playing hide-and-seek or searching for a needle in a haystack (seriously!) would be interesting?

For some reason, the developers were under the impression that including text from the original novel between levels would lend the game an air of authenticity. In fact, I’ve even read other opinions on this game elsewhere wherein the reviewer(s) remark on the liberties the developers have taken with the novel by adding hopping and fighting elements and then praise the game for sticking to the basics of the book by including the aforementioned text. Good lord, have we finally raised a nation of idiots or what? Even more abysmal is the thought that students today are most likely substituting reading the actual book in favor of playing the game, much like students of the past would read Cliff Notes or watch a movie adaptation, only now everything has been dumbed-down to the lowest common denominator: “Uh, yeah, like my favorite part of the book was like when Bilbo hopped across the pond and then took out a pack of wolves with his ninja staff.”

So if you have children and want to discourage them from ever reading, then just let them play this game. Instead, be a good parent and plop them down with a paperback version of The Hobbit and allow Middle-Earth to exist in their imagination rather than as a lesser version of Super Mario World.

Final Grade: D

System Requirements:

PC

• PII 450
• 128 MB RAM
• 1.5 GB HD
• 32 MB 3D Card