Lord of the Rings Video Games, Ranked Worst to Best
J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy book series The Lord of the Rings has long been an inspiration for videogame designers, with the first game adaptation (of The Hobbit) arriving in 1982, to be followed by dozens of additional game adaptations over the next four decades. The arrival of Peter Jackson's film trilogy in the early 2000s only accelerated the game industry's rush to put Middle-earth on consoles, PCs, and mobile devices. And the games are still coming, with two new titles released during the first half of 2023 alone.
Some of those games have been well received by critics and gamers alike, while others were far from precious. In the gallery on this page, we rank every Lord of the Rings video game adaptation (of both the books and the films) released in the modern era of gaming, starting in 2002. The games are ranked from worst to best by their Metascores, which reflect the consensus views of professional game critics.
Note that titles must have at least four reviews from professional critics in order to have a Metascore. (That four-review cutoff means that many mobile-only games, including the recently released The Lord of the Rings: Heroes of Middle-earth, are not listed here.) If a game was released on multiple platforms, only the version receiving the highest quantity of critic reviews was eligible for inclusion.
PlayStation 4, 2014
also on Xbox One, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC
The second LOTR title developed by the Warner Bros.-owned studio Monolith Productions following the very different Guardians of Middle-earth, 2014's Shadow of Mordor counts both the books (including Tolkien's once-unpublished "legendarium" material) and films as influences on its partly original story set between the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. The open-world action-adventure game combines stealth and combat, and featured a bespoke "Nemesis" system that not only provided for procedurally generated foes but tracked their progress, allowing surviving enemies to level up and become tougher to defeat. The lengthy development time—which included consultation with Peter Jackson and staff at his effects house Weta Workshop—seems to have paid off: Shadow of Mordor sold over three million copies, won multiple awards, and received a positive reception from critics, some of whom praised it as the best LOTR game of all time.
An expansion, Lord of the Hunt, was released later in 2014, while another expansion, The Bright Lord, arrived in 2015, followed by additional DLC in later years. A full sequel (the aforementioned Shadow of War) would arrive in 2017.
“Shadow of Mordor is that ultimate rarity. It tells a fun little story that would be enough to hold up most games on their own. But it also provides all of the tools to ensure that the most interesting tales to come out of the game will be the ones that were not scripted.” —Polygon
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