Developer: Daedalic Entertainment
Publisher: Daedalic Entertainment
Release Date: 11th May 2023
Platforms: PS VR2 (already on Quest 2 & PC VR)
Reviewed on: PS VR2
▫️ Code provided by the publisher ▫️
The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is a video game set in the world of Middle-earth. It follows Gollum as he tries to find Bilbo Baggins and get the One Ring back. Daedalic Entertainment made the game and co-published it with Nacon. It was released on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S on the 25th of May, while a Nintendo Switch version is scheduled for release later in 2023.
I’ve been playing the game for around a week, and I’m massively confused as to why anyone thought this would be a good idea. It’s a stealth platformer with occasional choices to be made through dialogue.
I’m a positive person when it comes to games, happy to overlook minor issues when the overall result is worthy of both my and your time. Unfortunately, Gollum is not a game I could recommend to anyone, even if you were the world’s biggest Lord of the Rings fan. I’ll break down the reasons why, but please don’t think this is a game that will get better with time. The technical issues in the game aren’t great, but there is a more significant issue that patches or updates won’t fix.
On my first load of the game, I was greeted by a main title screen with textures that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a Nintendo 64 game. Although this was (mostly) caused by the game loading at low settings and a resolution not seen in 25 years, switching to 4k ultra only helped so much. When textures loaded fully, some of the worlds created were nice enough and turning on ray tracing added an extra element to the game, but character models and animations seem broken at best and unfinished in other places.
As I got over the game’s looks and started to see what it was all about, I hit my first game over screen for getting noticed. By the end of my time with the game, I must have seen this screen 100 times. As much as I’m not the best at stealth games, this wasn’t always my fault. The mechanics of these parts of the games don’t always work, and on too many occasions, I found it hard to judge where I would or wouldn’t be seen. This cut scene also seemed unfinished, as I would hear an orc say they had seen me, pick me up, and their slap or hit to Gollum had no audio.
I enjoyed some of the platform puzzle elements of the game, as they featured some excellent-level design while I worked out the best way to reach my next objective. Unfortunately, the game mechanics again didn’t back up the design. Gollum moves on all fours and can run, climb and jump to get around the world. The running and jumping are incredibly inconsistent; it’s hard to tell when a normal jump will be enough to make a gap or if you need to sprint and use the bigger leap. Paired with the fact that the game gives away when you need to use things like a backwards jump from a ledge, it’s not a great feature.
Some of the more significant issues I had, were objective points not loading correctly after being seen or captured. Resulting in searching levels endlessly looking for a way to progress; it only happened a couple of times but would mean starting a level all over again, which was something I wasn’t happy to do.
The story of the game is incredibly bland, and although I’m not a Lord of the Rings fan, it seems to have been created to explain the puzzle and exploration sides of the game. The voice acting is poor throughout the game, but it’s a shame that Andy Serkis couldn’t have reprised the role he played so well in the movies. This could have been an easy win for Gollum and raised at least one part of the game.
In terms of performance, the PC game wasn’t the worst. There were some stutters at the start of each level, but they quickly evened out, and my current average framerate sits at 125fps. This is a mix of gameplay at both 4k and ultrawide resolutions at high and ultra settings. However, enabling ray tracing sent the FPS way below what I consider acceptable; this wasn’t helped by the fact that I lost the ability to use FSR in the game after a couple of hours of play. It was there at the start, but now I have an option showing it with no way to enable it or set the level.
Outside of the acceptable puzzle platform elements, the game occasionally lets you pick dialogue options to progress the story. These don’t seem to change much and come in the variety of good or bad choices. What could have been a great way to explore the differences between the darkness of Gollum and the lighter side of Smeagol ends up being misused and very much underbaked. These sections also feature some of the worst ingame fonts I’ve ever seen, and they look like something that would be used on Word from the 90s rather than something more fitting of Lord of the Rings. (This has been downgraded from earlier showings of the game around its original announcement).
To get back to one of my original points, I don’t know who thought this gameplay loop would be a good idea. For large sections of the game, you are playing instant-fail stealth sections, the same type of much-maligned sections of a wonderful game called Spiderman. Fans were quick to complain about those, and it’s baffling to think that this is such a significant part of a game released in 2023. That sums up the game perfectly, as it feels like a franchise or movie tie-in from 20 years ago.
Although I appreciate the developers apologising for the state of the game, this isn’t likely to get any better going forward, even with a massive amount of patches. It’s also worrying to hear that Daedalic Entertainment might have another Lord of the Rings game in the works, as this is an abysmal showing.
Avoid like the One Ring itself; nothing good will come of this for you.
-BigGP
