LOTR madness!!

This is madness! I'm this close to finishing Lord of the Rings: Return of the King - the game on PC. Its hellishly difficult, devastatingly hard to complete (and to think I'm only on normal mode) yet really addictive once you get used to it. The level I'm on is second from the last one. Once again I'm Aragorn - King Aragorn, mind you - leading a handful of Gondor and Rohan soldiers fighting orcs before the Black Gates itself in a bid to give Frodo more time to complete the quest. Brutally mind-numbing (try to kill as many orcs as you can while protecting 3 comrades at the same time) and almost impossible to get through. Gahh.

The game revolves around what happens in the movie, of course. I'd say its one of the best movie adaptation PC game around. Graphics are really decent, special effects and GFX are quite pleasing to the eyes and the enemy AI aren't stupid, surprisingly. However, all these cannot beat the main attraction point of the game - the combo. The developers have put in quite an effort to make the characters' movements as fluid and life-like as possible - each combo/stroke/slash is projected like it should as in real life, unlike many games where you simply mash the buttons and see the animated character dish out some colourful and wonderful lights without hitting anything. In LOTR:RotK, the characters are drawn in such a way that their sword strokes and blocks follow the laws of physics: steel clash on steel instead of hitting air. Of course there are some parts of the game where technical glitch is an eyesore - orcs came charging THROUGH of the huge black gates of Mordor - but these minor details can be more than compensated with the well-executed storyline and plot.

I find myself wandering in the world of Tolkien these few days. I think continuous playing of the game has something to do with it. Middle Earth is such a wonderful fantasy realm. I intend to re-read everything when I have the chance. Which reminds me of the dusty, brand new and untouched Children of Hurin released recently, which I bought. Its almost similar to the account told in The Silmarillion but delves more on the tales about Men instead of Elves.

I took the liberty of Googling pictures of the malicious Witch-King, or more commonly known as Nazgul. They're intriguing. I came across this funny altered picture though.


Its hard to picture the Nazguls being funny. This picture shows why.


That menacing iron helmet is awesome though. The picture is that of the Witch-King himself - leader of the Nazguls, most feared and fell among them all. In other words, he's the badass, evil and dangerous liutenant of Sauron. AND he IS a Nazgul, a Ringwraith himself.

Enough about LOTR for now. I shall post more stuff about it in the future.