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.
GameCube, 2003
also on
PC, PlayStation 2, Xbox, Game Boy Advance
Another title that surfaced during the theatrical run of the Peter Jackson LOTR trilogy that nevertheless had no connection to the films, this 2003 title from short-lived Texas studio Inevitable Entertainment (later Midway Studios Austin) is an officially licensed adaptation of Tolkien's pre-LOTR novel of the same name. The action-adventure game is chiefly a platformer (with a few combat, stealth, and puzzle elements in the mix) that gives you control of Bilbo Baggins as it follows the basic story of the book, though it adds some story details not present in the original. A few reviewers felt that younger gamers might get some enjoyment out of it, but most considered it an uninspired, too-derivative platformer.
Note that the handheld version (for GBA) is very different in both look and gameplay but also received middling reviews.
“The Hobbit basically consists of this: Jump here, Shimmy there, Climb up here, and Whack this thing. That’s The Hobbit. If it didn’t have the Lord of the Rings storyline backing it up, we’d be struggling to call it a game.” —GameBiz
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