Lord of the Rings: War of the Rohirrim and Devil May Cry (2025)

Anime set in other franchises.

Lord of the Rings: War of the Rohirrim

Set 200 years before Bilbo finds the one ring, this extremely well animated story focuses on Hera, the heroic daughter of Helm Hammerhand the King of Rohan. An altercation with one of his vassals eventually leads to a war and its up to Hera to save the day (sort of). While the art is awesome and the action scenes sufficiently violent, there are more than a few crazy plot holes in this tale which is a shame. We enjoyed it but were quite amused by some of the narrative choices taken. 

Devil May Cry (2025)

Based on the action adventure game franchise of the same name, this is actually the second attempt at an anime for it but unlike the original Dante is not yet a mature and experienced demon hunter. Instead this protagonist is youthful, funny and foolish but also regularly gets beaten by high level humans. Not sure if that's what happens in the later games as well but he is a bit too immature compared to the Dante I remember. Still, good fight scenes and animation are basically what hold this generic demons invading from hell plot together. Maybe it will improve in season two.

Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth

Two players fight for the One Ring!

In this game one player takes the role of the Fellowship (has more gold at start) while the other is Sauron (goes first), and all you are doing each turn for each of the three rounds is either picking up a valid card from the tableau, selling a card from the tableau or building a fortress (which costs a lot but gives you a bunch of stuff). Blue cards move Frodo and Sam towards Mt. Doom or move the Nazgul towards the hobbits, gold cards give you money, green cards give you skills and friends (with possible special abilities), and red cards let you do army stuff on the small map.

Some cards cost skills to buy (or in later rounds, have "chain" markers meaning you can get them for free IF you already got the first part of the chain earlier). For each skill you are missing, just pay gold. There are three ways to win: complete the "race" track - Nazgul eats Frodo or Frodo reaches Mt. Doom and their player wins. If you collect a fellowship of six different races (green cards) you win. If you have a soldier on each zone on the map you win.

Simple game that so far Sauron has always won in my group, and most of the time it boils down to stopping your opponent from getting the card that he's going to win with. Nice components, with just a little bit of setup time.

Dredge and LOTR: Return to Moria

Games about inventory management!

Dredge

This was a surprise for me: a fishing game that managed to hold my attention for over two weeks! But its not really just fishing is it? Each critter has a slightly different reeling in mini-game which goes a long way to keeping it interesting and some only come out at night and in certain parts of the map. Then you also need to upgrade your boat which gives you more space not only for fish, but to also get different rod types so that you can fish deeper or in more tangled environments.

The best part is the game isn't really about fishing at all. Bad stuff lurks in the dark depths, and making sure they don't get you while intentionally going into their territory is quite the blast. Awesome game - recommended!

Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria

The dwarves have decided to reclaim their greatest territory long fallen to evil forces and when trying to get in (because speaking "friend" to enter isn't working anymore) you (and possibly your co-op allies) are the only one(s) to make it in with basically nothing.

That's ok because this is a crafting survival game and there's loads of material just lying around for you to make everything you need like axes, pickaxes, weapons, armor, food, and your very own base. Good luck trying to carry all of it at once though! Excellent idea with some items being overpowered (insta wooden platforms to avoid enemies? Yes please!) and other things just being stupid like cooking forces you to wait 30 seconds while making a pick axe is instantaneous. Huh? As a player you really feel that idle time.

Alas that type of game loop is boring for me but if you enjoy things where you need to build up to advance a bit then harvest and build up again then this is a game for you! Literal walls of "you need the next level of pick axe" determine how far you can scavenge so enjoy the long dark of Moria!

LEGO Lord of the Rings

Where one CAN simply walk into Mordor.

Following the events of the movie trilogy, this LEGO retelling is much more humorous despite using the same voiced lines. How much more humorous? Well, Strider managing to lock the Nazgul in the toilet in the Bree Tavern is a good example.

Who do you get to play during this? Well, everyone. In story mode you can switch between active party members at will, and will need to as different people have different skills. Sam can make plants grow, Gimli can smash rocks, Legolas can jump higher etc. It's also not too challenging, though some bugs towards the end might require a few mission restarts.

Had to replay the Black Gate battle a few times...

Speaking of bugs, I also needed to reduce the resolution to get it to run smoothly, but YMMV. This is definitely designed for collectors though, because after finishing all the story content I only had 33% completion. The rest is found in the open world "free play" which is both massive and for me, empty. Still, this was a fun and mostly relaxed way to relive the movies so I give it 3 rings out of 5.

The Interview

Stupidity to the max but also incredibly entertaining.

In this movie James Franco is a really stupid yet semi successful entertainment show host who attributes most of his success to his slightly less stupid producer, played by Seth Rogen. By chance they learn that the supreme leader of North Korea actually is a huge fan of the show and agrees to do an interview. Cue some secret agent people showing up, tasking duo the unlikely mission of trying to assassinate the man.

Hilarity ensues.

Despite being thick with sexual innuendo, constant references to Lord of the Rings, and a lot of extremely low brow humor especially for the first act I found it to be a very funny film. It helps that the primary antagonist had such a talented actor in Randall Park to portray him. Yes, it's a silly show but would I pay to watch it again? Definitely! I give the Interview three and a half pieces of gum out of five.

Today I Smiled: Music to my Ears

Hi all! Just another short break from the Tales of the Blight story. Don't worry, it will be back tomorrow!

What has me smiling today are a few things, the first of which is something my cousin sent me... Terry Crews and the Power of Music, which is just as WTF as the rest of his Old Spice commercials. If you actually listened to all of that and had an earfull of Mr. Crews yelling at you then I have the best thing to heal your ears: Malukah's rendition of Pippin's Song - The Edge of Night.

On top of that, I've just discovered the music folder of a particular game that has awesome music. The name of the game? Vindictus. I'll be talking about that more after I finish the Tales of the Blight, but for those who actually have it and are not aware - you can access all the cool mp3 tunes under the Vindictus/en-US/sound/bgm folder. A similar folder exists for Mabinogi namely Nexon/Mabinogi/Mp3 if you wanted to hear those ones.

Lastly, I did a second board game attempt and it was a dismal failure! Mechanics all wrong, boring game play, and too many moving pieces. Back to the drawing board for me! :P

Hope you all have a wonderful day!