J.R.R Tolkein's epic fantasy gets another game re-telling as you take on the persona of a young hobbit in the shire who is being told stories of the mighty King of Men, Aragorn. That's the dull bit. You then get to re-enact these stories - which is the good bit. But just how good is it?

Name

Lord of The Rings: Aragorn's Quest

What platform is it on?

PS3

When's it due out?

September 2010

What other game is it like?

Zelda, Super Mario Galaxy (because of dual player mode)

Does it use any new tech?

Yep - PlayStation Move

The pitch

Set following the events of the three books, players guide a young hobbit around The Shire (the hub world), who listens to stories told by Samwise Gamgee about Aragorn. These stories make up the game's levels, with players controlling Aragorn through the events of the three books. Gameplay consists mostly of sword fighting, as well as horse-mounted combat. A second player can drop in, playing as Gandalf

The storyline

Wow, that's a toughie. There's absolutely no way we can justify placing the entire LOTR saga into a mere paragraph and do it justice, but we'll try.

Little people get on with bigger people who kind of get on with elves and some more types of little people and some (but not all wizards). Orcs are bad. One little person gets a ring from his uncle which is precious and awesome, but must be destroyed. Epic quest ensues, ring is destroyed and little people are rescued by eagles, who surely could have been used from the off to avoid the aforementioned epic quest.

Video

Our first impressions

This game is coming out across all platforms, but the PlayStation Move tie-in was a big enough incentive to give the PS3 version a try.

And we weren't disappointed. The developers had put the PS3 version and the Wii one side by side, so straight away you could see the far superior graphics of the PS3 title.

The characters are very cartoon-like, which kind of makes sense as Samwise tells the story in a fairytale-style way, which reminded us of Zelda titles, but the Middle Earth backdrops are stunning.

Gameplay with the Move controller was easy and very enjoyable. You get a few weapons to try out and the Move controller is very accurate in delivering the action onto the screen.

The level we tried out was the first one so it was a bit easy, as it's more of a tutorial, but it was still fun hacking the crap out of the orcs that we came across.

The game is a lot more child-like than other LOTR titles, but it's still pretty violent and although we only had a quick bash at it, it seemed as if it had enough about it to keep us interested for a while.

Please note

Gamescom is a fantastic chance to see the latest games due out over the coming year, letting us get a glimpse into what are going to be the big titles and the ones to avoid like the plague.

The big problem however, is that for most of the titles that glimpse is, well, just that. At the show you'll get to play a level here or a multiplayer map there.

So with that in mind we present you with our Quick Play.

What we've done is broken down the key facts you need to know and then given you our first impressions based on around 15 minutes of gaming. For us that 15 minutes isn't enough to do a First Look review. How can you rate a game that offers over 30 hours of gaming on just 15 minutes of play? However, it should hopefully give you an idea, a feeling, a notion, of what to expect come launch day.