It had to happen. They've finally gone and made a Lord of the Rings adventure game in all its turn-based, levelling-up, goblin-bashing glory. Think Final Fantasy X, only with more mud and less magic. Because the Third Age stays close to the letter of Tolkien's world, but in doing so loses a lot of the spirit.

The Third Age takes Tolkien's cut and paste patchwork 'realms' and pushes it to extremes. One minute you're dashing through verdant elf-filled forests, the next you've turned a corner into the snowy heights. It's like wandering round a Lord of the Rings theme park. An empty one, because in the grand tradition of really annoying adventure titles, your whole party's represented by one character except in fights, and there's very nearly nobody to meet. Things liven up considerably in the turn-based battles, where the attacks are all perfectly animated and even the weakest character has insane magical abilities.