The Lord of the Rings: Gollum

The Lord of the Rings: Gollum
"The time of development... is over. Do we leave Daedalic Entertainment to its fate? Do we let them publish only?"
Protagonist(s): Gollum/Sméagol Genre(s): Action-adventure Platform(s): Microsoft Windows Nintendo Switch PlayStation 5 PlayStation 4 Xbox Series X/S Xbox One Release: May 25, 2023 Engine: Unreal Engine 4 Developer(s): Daedalic Entertainment Publisher(s): Daedalic Entertainment Nacon 3goo Country: Germany Series: The Lord of the Rings

"DAEDALIC, MY BALLS!!"

— Angry Joe

The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is an action-adventure video game developed by Daedalic Entertainment and co-published by Daedalic Entertainment and Nacon.

Plot

The game's story follows the lesser explored character of Gollum before the events of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.

Why It Should Be Casted Into the Fire

1. Firstly, the game costs way too much money for its low quality. It costs $49.99 on Steam, which feels more like a scam if anything, since there are games with better quality. The "Precious" edition is even more scummy, since it locks the features such as a lore compendium and even Sindarian voiceovers for the elves behind DLC, something should be in the main game and not buy the DLC.
2. Despite there being much better character choices like (Galadriel, Gimli, or Bilbo), it feels like a weird choice to make Gollum/Smeagol the main protagonist.
3. The game over screen is bland and generic as it has no animation for dying, falling or getting spotted (aside from seeing Gollum/Smeagol being grabbed by one of the guards), whenever players die, the screen just abruptly appears without any animation of Gollum/Smeagol dying. Gollum/Smeagol also happens to die right in mid-air when falling.
4. The game's graphics are outdated and hideous as it truly looks like an Xbox 360/PS3 game, or computer-animated shows that have much better looking animation like ReBoot, The Little Prince (2010), Arpo the Robot, Thunderbirds Are Go, Bolts & Blip, Iron Man: Armored Adventures and even Video Brinquedo rip-off films such as Little & Big Monsters despite running on Unreal Engine 4. When compared to modern standards, the art design, game design, and sound design are all poor as well, especially at $59.99. In addition to that, the fonts are basic Calibri which is even lazier than the already maligned Comic Sans, especially when one were to compare them to the pre-release screenshots.
   • Speaking of the game's visuals, the facial animations and character models are quite creepy and look like they came straight from Uncanny Valley, especially Gollum's/Smeagol's who looks like a deformed fetus.
   • There is this one part of the game where one can see in the distance 2D Sprites of people walking on the bridge, and sometimes they can even be seen clipping through.
5. The game also runs very poorly due to continuous framerate drops, strange framerate timings, and shader compilation difficulties. When the game transitions to a cutscene, the framerates generally dip to the single digits.
   • Even the credits can cause big framerate drops.
6. Horrible and uncharismatic voice acting from all the characters, with Gollum/Smeagol himself being the worst example. To make matters worse, both Gollum and Smeagol are voiced by Wayne Forester, known for voice roles such as Horrid Henry and Xenoblade Chronicles.
7. The gameplay itself isn't any better as it mostly consists to climbing, collecting tags, stealth, rinse and repeat till the end.
   • The stealth is outright broken because of the bad A.I that sometimes are too stupid to see the players and sometimes they spot in out of nowhere.
8. The controls can truly be frustrating and distracting, such as when players pull the left trigger to throw a rock and are frozen in place, unable to strafe left or right. Usually, they can be discovered very easily due to this control.
   • There is no way to make players' screen field of view wider during exploration, which can be frustrating to those who play the game since it can be a pain to see where you're going.
9. The longer one has played the game, they will notice that various visual effects aren't functioning as they should.
10. Development Hell: It was supposed to be launched in 2021, but it was never released till now. Despite this, the game feels out of date and unfinished. It was also reported that developers were paid under the minimum wage, forced into overtime, and leadership even exploited young employees who lacked experience with this game.
11. This game has many, and we mean many bugs and glitches. For example:
    • Luke Stephens said that while playing the game, he saw a man who was stuck inside the floor.
    • There are other cutscenes in which Gollum/Sméagol's face is incredibly fuzzy and out of focus.
    • During a cutscene, it went incredibly buggy where the cameras were unaligned properly.
      • Speaking of cutscenes, sometimes it tends to cut off when ending or even restart which can cause confusion.
      • Sometimes the cutscenes can even be triggered out of nowhere which can cause players to die for no reason.
    • The most annoying glitch is when players have to leap on a spinning wheel to go to the next platform across it. However, the wheel is not properly anchored, and as it moves, it clips through objects, making it impossible to reach the ledge and complete the level.
    • Sometimes there is a bug where players get a checkpoint at the wrong time, which makes them have to restart the level from the beginning and its very annoying.
12. The story are uninspired, it's unfaithful to the book counterparts.
13. The final boss, Candle Man, has a very anti-climatic death as its shown off-screen.
14. The worst part of all of this? When the game was released into an awful state, an "apology" was issued frequently stating that the developers would fix the game. The "apology" itself was allegedly written using ChatGPT.
    • Even worse, the apology misspelled The Lord of the Rings as The Lord of Ring, and it was also issued without the development team's consent. Is it any wonder why this game was maligned to kingdom come?

Redeeming Qualities

1. Throughout the game, players will be asked to choose either Sméagol or Gollum's side in a dispute, and there'll be a mini-game where they have to win an argument. This mini game could be an interesting game mechanic to some people.
2. The soundtrack by Jun Broome is solid.

Reception

Overall, it garnered mostly negative feedback. It has a Metacritic score of 40% and a Steam rating of 5/10. Because of this, it is widely regarded as one of the worst games of 2023, right after Redfall and Forspoken.

Angry Joe of The Angry Joe Show gave the game a 1/10, making it the seventh game to get such a score after MMPR Mega Battle from 6 years.

Ultimately, the game was so horrible that Daedalic Entertainment canceled another Lord of the Rings game and scrap development on future projects entirely, becoming solely a publisher instead.

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