2D was not forever (though it survives on the little screen); violent games are fantastic tools to develop motor skills (but are not for the emotionally disturbed/challenged); and movie games are now representative of the movies they are actually based on, while at the same time taking enough creative license with the material to be fun and, God help us, playable. That last one is relevant to what we are talking about today as I have just completed Return of the King and life as a monotonous hum of endless sword clings, inspiring music, and sexy hobbit ring bearers is now a thing of the past.

Fans of EA's original Lord of the Rings offering will be pleased to see that it is not always futile to send an endless supply of letters and e-mails to a large company's mailbox pointing out what can only be considered as, and I quote the rest of the world here, "glaring" omissions. You see, The Two Towers was a playable game that should have been a great game. Many folks had many complaints over what the game was lacking, including but not limited to:

• a multiplayer mode
• more selectable characters
• longer levels
• more combos

Basically the formula that everyone wanted here was more of everything, plus one buddy to beat orcs with, or M = More, E = everything, and P equals you. So using simple math, you can come to this conclusion: ME(P +1) = FUN! Eh, you do better.

So Lord of the Rings: Return of the King will go down in history as a licensed game that actually takes liberties with its material to make sure it remains fun for you. Now we've had some fun licensed games before, so don't get me wrong, but I can't really remember a game where the developers allowed themselves to fully realize the need to be entertaining you on a different level altogether than the product they spent millions of dollars to acquire. Kudos to EA for the effort that will hopefully be remembered by other developers working under a license as an example that the game comes first.

Well as in TTT, ROTK has an opening which comes before the game even gets you to a title screen. You take control of Gandalf the White on the fields of Helms Deep cleaning up what's left of Saruman's army. You have your basic quick attack and strong attack buttons, a parry, a stab to the ground (useful for when the enemy is laying on it), and a charge attack attained by charging the aforementioned strong attack button. Eventually you will be allowed to use experience points to purchase combos, bonuses, and attack points. Sounds fairly basic, right?

Well, if you are unfamiliar with TTT play mechanics, you should understand that the experience you get from downed creatures is affected by the way you've killed them. There is a meter at the bottom left of your screen that fills every time you whack a creature without getting hit. As you carry this effect over - or "combo" - other creatures, it becomes apparent that the rating you achieve (ranging from Poor to Perfect) for each kill has an impact on how fast you're going to develop your character, which in turn affects how easy or hard the game is actually going to be on you. As your skills increase, you'll find it much easier to pound your way out of melees that would have driven you to frustration only a few levels before - and thank God, since it only gets harder. Even on Easy, the difficulty has been ramped up quite a bit, and you're going to find a lot of situations where you escape a level by the skin of your teeth. In a good way, may I add.

ROTK does suffer from something I like to call "eternal sameness," which under my slightly insane and far from witty definition is when a developer makes a set, very limiting, very unchanging number of levels, gives you a ridiculous number of slightly different characters, and tells you to have fun.

In other words without a buddy, this crap would get boring on your third run through. But you can thank the gods at EA for actually listening and fixing what a lot of people believed was TTT's only flaw, lack of a multiplayer mode. And I will tell you this: you haven't had this much fun in co-op buddy mode since Streets of Rage 2. Yes, it's that good. There will be times you bail him out, there will be times he bails you out, times you're really frustrated; but more often than not, you'll find he wants to finish just as badly as you. This single addition increases the replay value ten-fold and ensures the game won't wind up on eBay after you beat it twice.

Graphically, this game manages to make you think something spectacular is going on when nothing really is. It's very much an "upon closer inspection" engine: the closer you get the uglier it looks. All the models are quite good, the frame rate is respectably high with just an occasional stutter (and for what's going on onscreen, that's an achievement), and the backgrounds are pleasing to the eye. Though you'll never quite pinpoint what it is that makes the graphics look so good in this game, you just know they are.

The sound effects and voice-overs in particular are worth mentioning, as every character in the movie plays themselves in the game. There is something about Gandalf's mental conversation with Saruman that totally makes the price EA probably paid to make this happen worth it. The sound effects are crystal clear, and shove you right into the fray with tons of clanks playing out in a symphony of Braveheart-like death.

The music gets its own paragraph. The score Howard Shore has put together with these movies is almost unparalleled in the realm of filmmaking. This stuff rivals and in some places even surpasses the best John Williams scores, and I think that really comes through in the selections made for the game. It's fantastically booming, appropriately haunting, but always moving forward and usually taking you with it - some of the best music to ever grace a video game system.

And all I can say really is, buy it. Just buy it. You'll thank me and you'll thank EA for one of the best movie-licensed products ever made.

· · · Daniel Riley