The Lord of the Rings: Gollum has undoubtedly made an achievement; by uniting the internet to ridicule it.
The Lord of the Rings: Gollum Has Just Released
And Oh, People Are Not Happy
The internet is quite a diverse place. Whenever there's an issue, you will always find people on every side of the argument. That's how it works when everybody has a platform to speak their minds on. However, the internet agreed on one thing recently; The Lord of the Rings: Gollum by Daedalic Entertainment is a disaster.
Set in-between J.R.R. Tolkien's Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring; fans rightfully hoped that the experience would be at least somewhat worth the money they'll have to pay. But instead, The Lord of the Rings: Gollum releases with one of the lowest ratings I've seen in a long time since Babylon's Fall last year — and even that had higher ratings than the former. And the reason?
Here we look at others' reactions, reviews, and comments about the game. Unfortunately, most of these are negative (and hilariously so).
Steam
First, let's check what you, the players, have to say about the game.
Immediately, the first thing that would catch someone's eye is that foreboding red text at the right side of the game's store page that reads, ALL REVIEWS: Mostly Negative. For most people, that would be the end of it. They would close the window and go on with their life or check out what other game they could purchase with their hard-earned cash. However, for the curious souls who wonder how or why the game has such a bad rating among the people it should have been targeted for, they would be greeted with reviews like these on Steam's Customer Reviews section:
Then there's this guy:
gameranx
"You guys mostly know me at this point. I just love a good, single-player adventure. That's what I'm here for first and foremost. Unfortunately, this Gollum game, is not good."
The "Before You Buy" review for The Lord of the Rings: Gollum by gameranx opens up by pointing out the elephant in the room: "Who wants to play as this guy?" However, he follows it up with an argument that many initially optimistic people about the game often brought up. Gollum is a complex character. That is true. At the very least, he is interesting.
But that's about it. After that, he points out that the game is priced like a triple-A game but just about feels like an above-average double-A game. It suffers from performance issues and flat design, among other things. While the plot itself was interesting enough, as it attempts to bridge the events between the two pieces of work it's set in, unfortunately, he noted that the game was a dull slog.
"It's basically a slave simulator," the review mentioned, referring to the first half of the game.
Skill Up
"Gollum is a largely original story. It piggybacks off the events of the books to deliver a new, and hopefully non-canon chapter in Tolkien's epic saga."
Skill Up's review of the game touches on an issue that's very important to the grand scheme of things; the price. That's because price sets expectations. For a game selling at a whopping $59.99 for next-gen consoles, that means everything becomes fair game in criticizing it. Sadly, the game fails horribly to meet those expectations.
He goes on to mention that the really eye-catching part (or rather, what "sent him over the edge") was the deluxe edition for the game, aptly named the "Precious Edition."
"I've never heard of a game paywalling lore-accurate dialogue, but okay."
You read that right. The game's Precious Edition has the option to have Sindarin voice-over for the elves, the most common vocabulary among their race. Not having this means the elves speak in Westron instead.
The Precious Edition also had the "Lore Compendium," which all other games provided to you for free. Lastly, there was an emote pack where players are provided with six exclusive animations for Gollum to perform using a dedicated button. You can watch as your scrawny character chases a beetle around the screen for a few seconds. That's where your ten additional dollars went, by the way.
IGN
"Prison Simulator: Mordor Edition is sadly less interesting than it sounds."
We're now on a more hilariously-written review of The Lord of the Rings: Gollum, with IGN taking to YouTube to explain why they think the game deserves the pile-on it's receiving.
Narrated by Ryan McCaffrey and written by Justin Koreis, who both sound like they had an existential crisis, the review focuses on the more egregious parts of the experience, namely the gameplay itself. They didn't have much good to say about it.
"It thrusts you into the role of the titular character without doing anything meaningful with his defining internal conflict, and sends him in a series of missions that are neither fun to play, nor interesting to experience."
The gameplay is repetitive, uncleverly-hidden behind what seem to be different tasks. For most of the game, you must do chores and collect trinkets for forgettable NPCs. The developers could have improved the experience if playing as Gollum was fun. Still, unfortunately, the game also fails that aspect by limiting your freedom by designing linear levels, excessively holding the player's hands through the platforming stages, and even giving Gollum an extremely short stamina bar.
"Trying to get anywhere involves too little speed, too much waiting, and an unfortunate amount of hearing Gollum choking on his own breath."
Another point they made sure to give well-deserved attention to is the stealth sections of the game. For this, they did not hold anything back and criticized just how poorly designed the enemy AI was when it didn't take much for them to lose track of you.
"Enemies seem to suffer from acute rapid-onset amnesia, forgetting Gollum existed not long after losing sight of him."
At the end of the day, one thing is for certain; most of the internet agree that The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is truly one of the games of all time.
