The next game in the One Game To Rule Them All series is the 1987 text adventure game Shadows of Mordor: Game Two of Lord of the Rings, a nice concise title, and is a straight sequel to the previous game in the series found here.
Like the games so far you can pick up versions of this game for the Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum, Apple II, DOS, the Commodore 64 and a Macintosh.
The game was published by Melbourne House and Developed by Beam Software and the Faceless Programmers’ Corporation.
Shadows of Mordor: Game Two of Lord of the Rings
Graphics and Gameplay
Being a text-based adventure, “Lord of the Rings: Game Two” relied heavily on descriptive text to convey the story and environment. This game boasts an impressive (for the time) 800-word input vocabulary.
The game takes place in real time, which is unusual for a text-based game. This means that while you sit and plan your next move other things are happening throughout the game world.
The graphics like the previous titles, were limited, which is completely typical of games from that era and genre. Gameplay involved players typing commands to interact with the environment and characters, solving puzzles, and progressing through the narrative.
Story and Faithfulness to the Source Material
The game follows Frodo and Sam as playable characters and Smeagol/Gollum as a non-player character on their journey to Mordor.
The game follows the characters from the point of first meeting Gollum after the halflings split from the fellowship.
Macworld previously referred to this game as “literate and faithful in spirit to the original books”. Including the fight with Shelob, who unfortunately for arachnophobes takes pride of place on the front cover.
Reception
“Lord of the Rings: Game Two” was reviewed far better than the previous two games of the trilogy…however they still featured problems with difficult gameplay and broken aspects of the game. But even with all this for collectors of either Lord of the Rings or vintage games is still an interesting piece to have and play.
Legacy
Shadows of Mordor to gaming or Lord of the Rings fans will now make you think of the newer titles in the Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War games (which we will eventually get to), it is however theorised that the modern games took this name as a call back and almost a homage to the original Lord of the Rings games.
One Ring Rating
3.8 out of 5
Check back soon for the next game in this series called ‘The Crack of Doom” released two years later in 1989.
