Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

10 Hours or Less

The Bottom Line:

"Rent it first"

The game goes between following segments of the book, the movie and creating some new adventures for players. It is filled with puzzle after puzzle that must be solved in order to get to where you are going. There are word puzzles, image puzzles and in some cases, you must figure out how to use items in your inventory to get through a situation. Some of the puzzles are moderately difficult to solve, but in some cases, if you've read the book OR seen the movie, it won't be much of a puzzle for you. Unfortunately, in the case of these puzzles, one play-through seems to be enough. Once you've solved them, they don't change much. While you do get to experience just a little bit of fighting action, this actually, at times, proves to be more difficult than the puzzle-solving when you're trying to balance finding something to solve the a puzzle that you're working on, sneaking around to avoid being seen, trying to catch the directions it throws at you and remember what directions it just gave you, and now you throw in a few people to fight with the few buttons you have to fight with- by forming combos only- and the fighting becomes almost a nuisance, and doesn't exactly seem to fit with the flow of game-play.

The locations and settings for the puzzles are gorgeous and pretty accurate, but the characters are very one dimensional. The voices are the only interesting things about them. They don't seem to really fit in with the surroundings, and their expressions never change, even in the cut--scenes. There are lots of extra items to collect that open up various extras in the menus. There is even a feature in the game menu that gives you interesting little history lessons about the people, places, things and events going on around you or on the history of the places you're visiting.

It's definitely worth a play-through at least once, either renting it or, being one of the cheaper games now, you could even add it to your collection. It's a nice game to relax to between mega-skill fighters and lengthy, challenging RPG's. Overall, if you enjoy puzzles, this game is an absolute, but I wouldn't recommend adding it to your collection with the plans of playing it over and over and over again. The whole game can be completed in one sitting (with a little patience) if you are decent at solving logic problems, and there isn't a lot of extra places to be intricately explored, so you can get that sense of accomplishment at completing a game, easily and quickly. Enjoy!