Of all the major fantasy franchises out there right now, The Lord of the Rings is probably the one that has seen the greatest number of solid forays into the world of video games. In recent times, both Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War did a spectacular job of bringing us releases in Tolkien's universe, even if the story does stray very far from the original texts.
Those are only the more recent entries in that stories history, though, and the 2000s were even more of an exciting time if you were a fan of the franchise. A big part of that golden era for Middle-earth gamers was bizarrely the direct movie tie-ins which (aside from Fellowship of the Ring) really showed that there is no need for games of that ilk to be bad.
In fact, they were genuinely spectacular examples of the action genre in their own right, and they're well worth returning to today, over 20 years since their original release. If that does sound like something you might be interested in, you might not have to dust off the old consoles to get in on the fun.
As first reported by DSO...
