From the more whimsical singing of the elves, to the prevalence of magic, etc, it had a different quality. The world presented in the Hobbit wasn't really the same. People take the Lord of the Rings as the definitive statement, when it seems to me it's simply one 'edition' of his world. I'm no expert on Tolkien, but it sure seems to me that he changed his mind about how he wanted to present Middle-earth as he went along. But one thing that has sort of bothered me is that the Middle-earth games I've actually looked at (the One Ring, Adventures in Middle Earth, and that older Lord of the Rings Role-playing Game by Decipher Inc) tend to stick very closely to the Lord of the Rings theme, at the expense of the world that the other books hint is there.
I've never actually played a game set in Middle-earth, but I'd like to.
