The Lord of the Rings: Gollum
MSRP $59.99
“The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is such a mess of barely formed ideas that it feels like a game still in its pre-alpha stage.”
Pros
Faithful to Tolkien’s writing
Solid Gollum efficiency
Cons
Disjointed story
Clumsy platforming
Underdeveloped stealth
Half-formed mechanics
Performance points
Lifeless visuals and sound
As I struggled to wrap my head round an unclear platforming puzzle in The Lord of The Rings: Gollum, a sport from my childhood flashed into my mind: The Grinch.
See, gaming was a really completely different expertise for youths within the 12 months 2000. There weren’t a bevy of fantastic free video games obtainable to play on nearly any platform. Instead, youngsters like me had been largely on the mercy of the adults in our lives. I didn’t a lot select the video games I wished to play as I inherited no matter my mom introduced house at some point. With no straightforward device like Metacritic to examine overview consensus, that often meant that she was shopping for video games that featured some IP she was accustomed to. Unfortunately, licensed video games like that weren’t the high-quality initiatives they are typically right now; they had been bottom-of-the-barrel cut price bin tie-ins.
One day, The Grinch magically appeared in my home. It was a PlayStation sport revealed by Konami that was constructed as a tie-in to the Jim Carrey How the Grinch Stole Christmas movie adaptation launching on the time. Since I had seen the film, the adults in my life deemed this may be the one sport I’d get to noodle on for some time till I used to be given one other. I performed for what felt like months and barely made any progress. I couldn’t work out its obtuse targets or navigate its clunky platforming. It’s actually laborious to discern the standard of artwork at age 11, however it could be the primary time I’d notice {that a} online game might, in truth, be unhealthy.
The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is a throwback to that Wild West period of carelessly greenlit licensed video games. It’s the sort of sport your mother would have lovingly purchased for you 20 years in the past and that you just’d rib her about eternally. With an incomprehensible story and haphazardly assembled gameplay concepts, I’m left questioning if the Lord of the Rings’ rights holders are nonetheless below the impression that video video games are the identical throwaway revenue machines they had been many years in the past.
A tricksy story
When The Lord of the Rings: Gollum was first introduced, followers had one recurring query: Who requested for this? Sure, it’s a reductive thought. I can’t think about Lord of the Rings followers had been clamoring for a sport that went deep into the lifetime of a cave-dwelling creep with a break up persona, however that shouldn’t dictate how artwork is made. If the crew at Daedalic Entertainment felt that it had a robust inventive imaginative and prescient for Gollum, then I respect and welcome any left-field inventive swing that defies expectations.
The downside is in what precisely that imaginative and prescient is. The Lord of the Rings: Gollum goals to inform a considerably definitive story of the enigmatic character, and it goes to nice lengths to do it. The story stitches collectively varied anecdotes about Gollum’s travels pulled straight from J.R.R. Tolkien’s writing. It chronicles his life as a slave, showcases his run-in with the fierce spider Shelob, and finally builds to his interactions with an Elven kingdom. On paper, it’s a respectful method to honor the much less celebrated elements of Tolkien’s world.
Plot beats are stitched along with little regard for narrative circulate or cohesion …
In observe, it feels just like the online game equal to the infamously botched restoration of Bartolomé Esteban Murillo’s Immaculate Conception of Los Venerables; it’s a monkey face painted over a masterpiece. The disjointed story appears like crumpled pages from varied unedited manuscripts stapled collectively. Plot beats are stitched along with little regard for narrative circulate or cohesion, making it troublesome to observe Gollum’s journey from set piece to set piece. When scenes aren’t simply abruptly ending, they’re usually punctuated with “weeks later …” title playing cards that give little sense of time and area. On a number of events, I started to surprise if the PC construct I used to be enjoying was by accident skipping some cinematics fully. It was the one logical rationalization for why it could be so laborious to observe what appeared like a easy fantasy story. That wasn’t the case.
It doesn’t assist that the narrative is essentially informed by way of the eyes of an erratic character who speaks completely in riddles and damaged sentences. It’s laborious to actually determine any vital plot factors or emotional beats from Gollum’s deliberately confused manner of talking. The story seemingly tries to rectify that by including a body story the place Gollum tells his story to a wizard, however that narrative system is all however forgotten for many of the journey. Good luck attempting to piece the remainder of it collectively from the antihero’s ceaseless ramblings.
Daedalic Entertainment
To its credit score, The Lord of the Rings: Gollum does a minimum of flip in a advantageous adaptation of the character. The voice efficiency right here intently follows the groundwork laidby Andy Serkis within the sequence’ movie universe, bringing some endearing moments for the Sméagol facet of Gollum’s mind. Though nothing makes a lot sense on a pure plot stage, there are some empathetic moments to be present in a narrative about an outcast struggling to seek out their place on the planet.
Perhaps it’s thematically becoming that the sport itself is such an oddball outlier that’s been met with cruelty and misunderstanding since its announcement. There’s poetry to that, however it didn’t make my 11-hour playthrough any extra pleasurable.
Not so treasured
The Lord of the Rings: Gollum tries to smash collectively just a few completely different gameplay concepts, none of that are notably good. At its core, it’s a stealth journey sport that’s heavy on Uncharted-like climbing and platforming. In a deceptively advantageous opening sequence, Gollum scrambles by way of Mordor in a scene that may have you ever anticipating a boring, however fast-paced cinematic journey. From there, issues go downhill sooner than an eagle diving into Mount Doom.
Daedalic Entertainment
The fundamental concern is that each gameplay hook launched solely feels half-formed at finest. The platforming is essentially the most full characteristic, however even that feels prefer it’s just a few playtests away from working as supposed. Poorly signposted footholds make it troublesome to see the place you’re speculated to seize subsequent whereas finicky leaping and wall-running results in irritating deaths (Gollum’s well being bar is so low {that a} tumble off a highschool auditorium stage would kill him).
It’s the dearth of little particulars that actually create ache factors right here. In most polished video games with this sort of climbing, there’s a typical trick the place the character will attain their arm out if there’s a ledge they’ll safely bounce to. It’s a wise, sensible trace that naturally guides gamers’ eyes with out explicitly lighting up the best way ahead. Gollum borrows that visible, however not the context. The character will attain out as if to sign {that a} ledge is close by, solely to end in a bounce to his loss of life. Poorly designed ranges don’t assist both, as platforms are sometimes hidden someplace off-camera, forcing gamers to depend on a “backwards jump” immediate that seems when he can safely leap to a different ledge.
Unfortunately, that’s essentially the most completely developed gameplay hook right here. Its simplistic stealth is in a lot worse form, as Gollum merely slinks across the shadows to keep away from orcs that behave with the identical intelligence as a guard in a PS1 sport on a strict patrol. He can sneak up on guards from behind to choke them out by holding a button, however there’s no actual method to rigorously creep up on somebody. I’d usually simply transfer my stick as slowly as attainable, hoping that the button immediate would seem earlier than the sport determined I’d gotten too shut and alerted my prey. Getting caught by an enemy outcomes immediately loss of life, abruptly triggering a dull animation of an orc choosing up Gollum and punching him within the head — with no sound impact to emphasise the impression.
Other gameplay bits really feel like concepts that had been absolutely designed and carried out after one informal brainstorming assembly. Gollum has his personal model of “Spidey-sense,” permitting him to light up his path ahead. Well, generally a minimum of. Most of the time, urgent the button does nothing in any respect apart from flip the surroundings grey. At the very begin of the journey, Gollum picks up a rock that seems prefer it’s going to be the central foundation for stealth and fight encounters. The concept barely ever pops up once more, as rocks are solely helpful when thrown at a small variety of noisy objects that may draw an orc’s consideration.
There isn’t a single second right here that I’d describe as enjoyable.
The worst offender is a totally left-field companion system, which is so terribly carried out that you might simply persuade me it’s a pre-alpha characteristic the crew forgot to completely take away. In a handful of very particular encounters, Gollum can “direct” a companion to tug levers or stroll to a delegated glowing spot. The first time it pops up is throughout a mission the place Gollum teaches a prisoner easy methods to herd creatures right into a cell by appearing as bait. After struggling to determine easy methods to manipulate the animal AI appropriately, I inadvertently soft-locked the sport by dropping the cage earlier than the creatures might get into it, freezing their character fashions in place completely.
There isn’t a single second right here that I’d describe as enjoyable. From menial duties like fetching tags off of lifeless prisoners to a sudden Shelob escape sequence that performs extra clumsily than the unique Crash Bandicoot’s boulder chase, most missions are solely tolerable at finest – and it’s not usually at its finest.
Split persona
The extra I performed, the extra I struggled to grasp what ambitions Daedalic Entertainment initially had for the character. That particularly involves gentle in a bizarrely underdeveloped selection system that squanders the one ingredient that makes Gollum such a novel character. On just a few sporadic events, gamers are offered with a morality selection that they’ll both clear up with Gollum’s egocentric villainy or Sméagol’s light empathy. It’s an important concept offered within the least interesting manner attainable.
Those selections play out in a Telltale-style dialogue minigame that takes place on a black display with textual content written out in essentially the most primary pc font attainable. There isn’t a lot to the debates apart from choosing considered one of two or three apparent choices that decide the top end result. Other dialogue selections have extremely unclear outcomes by way of the majority of the sport. Gollum’s selections can result in sure characters’ deaths, however the journey jumps between unrelated set items so usually that these mishaps don’t have any emotional impression. It appears like a prototype system created to provide a obscure concept of how that might work had been it absolutely constructed out.
That Gollum sport was by no means going to be nice however rattling if this isn’t the funniest “alpha footage vs final release” since perhaps the primary Watch Dogs pic.twitter.com/JRL5I9xhvT
— Lumpy (@LumpyThePrepare dinner) May 25, 2023
What’s particularly weird, although, is how stripped down it’s in comparison with the model of the system we noticed in pre-alpha screenshots years in the past. An outdated improvement picture reveals a UI with considerably extra persona, full with extra fantasy-appropriate fonts and a few iconography to provide choices just a little extra aptitude. How we received from that to the tasteless dialogue screens offered right here confounds me greater than any of Gollum’s riddles.
That thriller finest speaks to the general state of The Lord of the Rings: Gollum. It very a lot appears like a sport filled with bold concepts that by no means got here collectively because of time and funds constraints. While the sport by no means crashed on me throughout my PC playthrough, I usually felt like I used to be one misstep away from melting my pc. Some load instances exceeded a full minute, I’d get lengthy freezes occasionally, audio usually desynced from cutscenes by a number of seconds, and extra. I’d say it feels prefer it’s constructed on spaghetti strings, however a plate of pasta continues to be in a position to help a pleasant Sunday sauce.
I assumed we’d lengthy handed the times the place a sport as transparently unhealthy as Superman 64 might exist.
Even its visuals look like they had been scoped down from what was proven in authentic pre-alpha renders. Though Gollum’s motion is expressively animated as he skitters round on all fours, his lifeless face feels considerably extra dated than his CGI counterpart in a movie that got here out over twenty years in the past. Sound design solely feels half completed as properly. Some of Gollum’s pained grunts when he takes harm sound like they’re coming from a wholly completely different actor doing placeholder sound results.
The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is a catastrophe in a manner that I sincerely thought wasn’t attainable anymore. With a lot cash on the road, I assumed we’d lengthy handed the times the place a sport as transparently unhealthy as Superman 64 might exist. Popular IPs are like gold in 2023, and corporations rigorously guard them like protecting dragons. And but, Gollum appears to have slipped by the watchful eye of so many stakeholders undetected. It’s a uncommon sight within the fashionable gaming panorama, and one that nearly makes me nostalgic for the unhealthy video games of my childhood. In some sick manner, it makes me completely happy to know {that a} naïve dad or mum would possibly mistakenly purchase this for his or her child and provides them the sort of bizarre lasting reminiscence I had, one that can form their understanding of inventive high quality eternally.
The Lord of the Rings: Gollum was reviewed on PC. We initially tried to overview it on PS5 prelaunch, however discovered the construct too buggy to evaluate earlier than its day one patch.
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