14 November 2002 . . . Risk: The Lord of the Rings is only the latest of many games to tie in to the Tolkien empire currently conquering Middle-Earth. It's only the latest in the Risk lineage as well. Here's yet another cynical and shortsighted product which will in the long run turn off many potential future American board game customers and their children, nieces and nephews. We want to play a game not just to feel the excitement, but also to use our brains and when we win feel that it is because of the way we went about it. After a couple of times losing at this no matter what brainpower one applies, it will languish in the closet until the garage sale. Who at Hasbro is convinced that they can keep selling us the same game design that was last state of the art in the 1950's? Meanwhile there are a lot of great game designs out there which could be published with the same sorts of plastic pieces, but languish in obscurity, some of them even published by Hasbro's own European division. If we look at why boardgames aren't doing as well in America as they are in Germany, one of several reasons has to be the lack of leadership at the top. So don't be a Boromir. Resist your parakeet tendencies. You know "the Ring is evil". Besides, if for some crazy reason you simply must own every Tolkien game ever made, you'll probably be able to pick up copies for bargain basement prices in a couple years. Meanwhile, there are plenty of other Tolkien games out there that are actually good. Buy those and maybe I won't have to annoy you by clambering up on the idealist soapbox quite so often. . . . Spiel Mit Mir, the German site, is apparently less unhappy with the game. Although their ratings appear to be about the same, their review feels it can still be rescued, but that the situation is so desperate it must needs offer a home-brewed variant right there in the review. . . . French readers may like to continue the discussion at this folder from ankou.net. . . . Italian readers can find a similar discussion at newsland.it. . . .
