Lego The Lord of the Rings: The Video Game was released in the states today, but only on PlayStation Vita, Nintendo 3DS, and Nintendo DS. For the rest – PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii, and PC – we didn't even have a release date until today, when Warner Bros. announced that those versions of the game will hit American shelves on November 13th.
As for the UK, we don't even have the handheld versions yet, and will apparently have to wait to have all of them made available to us more than a week later, on November 23rd. Obviously, with such a well-known tale, there's little risk of the game being ruined for UK players by online conversations between those in the US who've already had it for plenty long enough to finish the story, but I've no idea why there needs to be such a gap.
Lego The Lord of the Rings: The Video Game will be the first Lego game to feature actual voice recordings from a movie, and the team at Traveller's Tales have obviously tried to stay true to the much-loved story, with – for example – an open world that matches as closely as possible to Tolkien's map. With that level of detail to look forward to, I'm beginning to feel a lot less patient about the unnecessary wait.