The Hobbit | DJcube

Lead the quest that started it all.

NA release: 11th November 2003
EU release: 28th November 2003
JP release: N/A
Developer: Inevitable Entertainment
Publisher: Sierra Entertainment
NGC Magazine Score: 48%
Mods Used: Widescreen Hack

Sometimes, when revisiting childhood memories, you realise that the games you originally enjoyed are really not that good. I’ve been lucky in that I haven’t really encountered one of those games, until now. I had The Hobbit on PC and remember playing it a lot, and now I’m amazed how much I put up with it.

With the tagline “The Prelude to the Lord of the Rings”, this was made to cash-in on The Lord of the Rings films, but not being able to use any design elements from them. Other than a few random mentions of Witch-King technology, there really isn’t much added to link the story to its much larger sequel.

The game itself is a rather tedious platformer with frustrating combat. While it made sense for the Dwarves to send Bilbo to do reconnaissance, in this they’ll happily send him into dangerous territory to fight countless creatures while they sit around and do nothing. There’s one particularly frustrating level where Bilbo has to traverse a bunch of caves to find the Trolls’ hidden supplies, with lots of moving platforms. You can use your walking stick for the occasional long jump, but all the jumping is immensely stiff.

What really baffled me is, considering how padded the added troll cave search was, the treatment of “Riddles in the Dark”, probably the most vital scene of the book, especially in relation to The Lord of the Rings. After a drawn out minecart section, you get to Gollum’s lake and…everything is rushed by in a cut-scene. Bilbo accidentally tricking Gollum by mumbling “what is in my pocket?” to himself is changed to Bilbo doing it on purpose, especially as Bilbo goes “ooh, a ring” when he picks up The One Ring. Then Bilbo chasing Gollum out of the caves is just quickly narrated, plus the wolf attack and eagle rescue, all the way up to Mirkwood.

It’s all just rather odd, considering the amount of padding in other areas. You can also complete side quests for extra health, but these are just annoying fetch quests that just mean you have to go backwards in the linear levels to hand someone an object. For a young me that was just wowed to see his favourite book brought to life, I was suckered in, but this is just annoying to play.

Poor

Yes, it’s competent – but on a system with the greatest adventure game int he world, games trying to compete – or at least doff their caps in recognition – need to work a bit harder than on other systems. This just doesn’t do enough to keep us interested.
Marcus Hawkins, NGC Magazine #88

Remake or remaster?

I’d love to see a new video game take on The Hobbit.

Official Ways to get the game

There is no official way to get The Hobbit.