Quick Look: LEGO The Hobbit

Dwalin, Balin, Fili, Kili, Oin, Gloin, Bifur, Bofur, Bombur, Dori, Nori, Ori, and Thorin.

This one looks a lot less charming than the LOTR game. Really enjoyed The Hobbit movies though. They feel a lot less high-stakes than LOTR, but I like that. It's an adventure, rather than an epic.

I get the criticism that they're slow to get to the story, at least in the first one, but I enjoy all the time I can spend seeing things going on in Middle-Earth, grand or not. It's oddly relaxing.

You're getting soft.

The video thumbnail came out great!

I never saw the Hobbit movies and have no plans to, but did they really try to make Thorin the epic hero of the films, like the Aragorn of the Hobbit trilogy? From what I remember in the book he's just a greedy little asshole.

Call of Duty? Madden? I think the only LEGO game I have ever played was LEGO Batman and I returned it before beating it.

He is absolutely the he-who-would-be-king Aragorn figure of the movies (and your memory of the character in the books is pretty accurate). It's pretty overwrought, but not nearly the worst of The Hobbit's problems as a movie.

Man, this video was hard to watch. Haven't Brad or Vinny ever Bilbo'd or Dwarf stacked before???

Hell of'a thumbnail.

Damn these games are slow.

The first 10 minutes of this perfectly encapsulate my experience with every Lego game ever.

I don't mind voice acting in Lego games if it's like in the Marvel game, but the sound samples from the movie sound crappy.

I could feel all of Drew's facepalms through the quick look.

only thing that gets my motor running nowadays is some hot dwarf stackin

i also saw both of these films and fell asleep through major bits of both of them. i will say the 2nd is a decent improvement.

I can go fishing motherfucker! - Vinny, 2014

@iodizedjoe: you're silly :D

They didn't trick Bilbo into going on the quest, he really did find his courage in the book. He slept and thought about going on an adventure and his Took side overpowered his Baggins side and he decided he wanted to have an adventure and not just spend his whole life sitting around the Shire. That's why he looked over at the picture of Bullroarer Took before he left.

That's perhaps they best reply to that post anyone could have come up with, Well done.

It's like I climbed into a time machine to a land before Patrick.

@lausebub: The quickest of all Quick Looks.

@brad said:

I dunno I find him a lot less Aragorn like especially in the second movie. I know you said you didn't watch The Desolation of Smaug, Brad, but there were a couple of times when I was just sitting there and thinking "Wow, this guy's kind of greedy dick." I'm enjoying the Hobbit movies so far.

And Middle Earth was decimated because the dwarves couldn't craft a table...

What are they even doing in these games anymore? Just reenacting a movie with lego animation and horrible canned VO while pressing a button prompt?

They have the look, but put some designers on this shit. Also Bilbo sounds like he is coming from a TV in the next room.

@iodizedjoe: Cool. Now you know you do not have to watch this correct?

I wanted to have fun with Lego Lord of the RIngs but every time I got burnt out and eventually came to the conclusion that the game was tedious as hell and I probably don't like Lego games in this vein. Regardless of that, clearly these games have gotten at best comfortable, at worst stale, with their presentation and design.

"Are you loot?"

Great Quick Look guys!

This is the only choice. An all-time classic.

@pudge: I think the reason brad and patrick get so much hate is just because for a website where personality matters so much, they just aren't as funny as the rest of the crew. And watching brad being brad at video games just gets old and annoying these days.

Sorry to say it, but it's true. The others duders don't get nearly as much hate as brad and patrick and I think this is the reason why.

I loved the Lord of the Rings films Jackson did, but I found both of the Hobbit movies thus far to be far inferior. I don't hate them - I even like them - but they lack the verve and are perhaps victims of the success of those earlier movies.

The parallels (like Thorin-as-Aragorn) just feel lazy rather than resonant.

split screen quick looks make me nauseous

These lego quicklooks are always an amazing train wreck. Granted the games do seem kinda vague at times but geezus it takes the gb guys a while to figure things out. haha

christ, not another Lego game...

I thought Christopher lee was dead.

@carg0: They keep making money and are pretty fun. Fuck them, right?

A heart warming QL lol

That last hand-holding moment reminds me of the end of the Matrix Online stream.

POTATOES!!!

At least at one point, Call of Duty was a beloved and exciting series.

Wait, aren't JRR Tolkien and Christopher Lee cousins or something?

Huh, I saw some comments about only bothering to watch the first 15 minutes, but for me the video suddenly cut to black and stopped after 15:44. I'm not sure what's going on there.

It is amusing watching you guys fumble around a bit in successive LEGO games when the base mechanics (stand on glowing spot to do stuff) have never really changed, but good lord they are really cramming in a lot of tedious, inane crap into these now. I liked LEGO LotR a whole lot but this looks way too much of the same, "now with more rhythm games and ridiculous crafting!" Plus I haven't enjoyed the Hobbit movies all that much.

I am still waiting for LEGO Matrix myself, but seeing how the LEGO Movie did so well with an original story, it'd be nice to have them bang out a multi-platform game like that.

... why are Frodo and Sam in this? Is that a movie thing? I never saw the movies.

@mxmark: EVERYTHING IS AWESOME

Watching these guys play any Lego game is one of the most excruciating experiences and I love it.

I don't think Sam was in the movie, but Frodo was, they shot some scenes set during the preparations for Bilbo's birthday (which started off the Lord of the Rings trilogy) for maybe the first 15 minutes of the first movie, and the entire film series is pretty much him retelling that story while writing it down, though that's the only scene set in the Lord of the Rings time line so far, they'll probably wrap the trilogy up with returning to that scene.

I'm enjoying Lego LOTR well enough, and super glad I went with that one over this. Vinny probably puts it best when he says "This is a silly sequence."

I made it 17 minutes.

"I pushed into you"

"Push back into me"