But we can’t find it the precious is gone we swears whether it’s a book a movie or a video game creative Works generally exist for a reason sometimes it’s to Delight by entertaining with moving stories or fun gameplay other times it’s to inform by exposing the audience to different perspectives or it
Makes you think with interesting ideas that challenge you to consider or reflect the Lord of the Rings Gollum however is a game that does none of these things what if he watches us instead it thrusts you into the role of the titular character without doing anything meaningful with his defining
Internal conflict and sends him on a series of missions that are neither fun to play nor interesting to experience the one question it poses is why would someone want to play this I crave disappointment foreign sounded like it might have been a decent pitch for a game since he’s one of the
More interesting and famous characters in J.R.R tolkien’s fantasy Universe he and Smeagol are two sides of the same coin the good person that was smeagle was tragically corrupted by the One Ring Twisted into this pathetic creature it’s his clammy bare feet that you step into ostensibly with the goal of regaining
Possession of the ring from Bilbo Baggins however most of your time is spent experiencing gollum’s Life as a prisoner during the years between The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring in a linear story-driven series of levels prison simulator Mordor Edition is sadly less interesting than it sounds instead
Of a grand Lord of the Rings Adventure you are stuck collecting bits and baubles for forgettable NPCs and hiding in bushes from monotonous guard Patrols you are you ugly there are generally three parts to any level ranging from uninteresting to just plain bad there’s the chores phase in which Gollum goes from one
Waypoint to another to complete some menial task there’s always some conceptually different scenario like crawling through small openings to detonate these explosives but functionally they’re all a series of marches across the same areas over and over again it never feels like there’s any point to
It just busy work it could be fun to run around with Gollum thanks to his surprising Sprint speed but he has a stamina meter that depletes in just a few seconds and takes far longer to replenish trying to get anywhere involves too little speed too much waiting and an unfortunate amount of
Hearing Gollum choking on his own breath the platforming phases are more compelling but still poorly designed spacious rooms with handles to climb walls to run and leaves to take bring a faster pace of action but the loose and floaty way Golem moves and the imprecise controls make it feel like something
From the PlayStation 2 era having experienced a modern Assassin’s Creed or Tomb Raider game it feels far too easy to jump toward the correct point and still fall to your death because you drifted to one side or missed the part of the ledge that has the white line
That establishes exactly where you can grab the paths are rigidly defined and often involve blind jumps or best guesses at what the next intended handle is rather than a thoughtful throwback it comes across as outdated a poor facsimile of Classics like the Prince of Persia series finally there are the
Stealth segments which are simply bad anytime Gollum needs to go from point A to B undetected it’s going to be a slog enemies have extremely limited Patrol patterns are terribly nearsighted and seem to suffer from acute rapid onset Amnesia forgetting Gollum existed not long after losing sight of him these are
Issues that plagued mediocre stealth games 15 years ago and it’s jarring to see them in 2023. there’s no cat and mouse game of outsmarting enemies using interesting abilities and clever level design as you do in something like Dishonored or Hitman you just exploit their painfully obvious blind spots with
No objective outside of reaching the designated Point Golem’s only tools are his ability to sneak quietly throw rocks and disappear in tall grass or Shadows because the enemy AI is surprisingly terrible doing something as simple as clinging to this wall can make you completely immune to capture spotted by
Guards in the animal pits of barodoor just jump up here until they lose interest eventually some of the Orcs get crossbows but even then the threat is minimal there’s no combat per se which makes sense because Gollum is no fighter when it comes to any opponent larger
Than a hobbit you do have the option to strangle enemies which is on brand but it comes with some odd caveats first it doesn’t work on anyone with a helmet this makes sense for someone in full battle regalia smeagle’s grubby mitts wouldn’t bend steel after all however
What defines a helmet in this game is broadly open to interpretation like whatever this is on this orc’s head is that a hat it’s anybody’s guess but there’s a decent chance he’s strangle proof let’s have a little also strangling only applies to Orcs it makes sense you can’t choke beasts like
Spiders where would you even grab but humanoid races like elves apparently have Invincible throats eliminating the only method to bypass enemies apart from the bad stealth a few Chase sequences change up the pace though they are hit and miss this wagon Chase where you dodge obstructions and archers is
Legitimately fun but this crash bandicoot-esque run toward the camera where you run from an iconic spider is miserable thanks to the imprecise platforming and inability to see obstacles until moments before you need to avoid them it is frustrating to play as a character who is looking ahead and
Should see incoming objects but not being able to see them yourself and die because of it yeah got them got them hardcore Lord of the Rings fans no Gollum himself is a complex character both a victim and a villain but that’s not explored in any meaningful way in this story there are
Occasional binary choices to answer questions or take action as Gollum or smeagle but it never felt like this altered the story or had lasting effects on Gollum himself sometimes there’s a need for one side of gollum’s personality to convince the other to go along with plans like when Gollum is
Hiding from an orc and a painting of the eye of Sauron sends him into hysterics the two choices were kill the orc which Golem supported or the Smeagol endorsed option to keep panicking what you’re very very quiet picking the correct argument to win the debate from the multiple choice is exceptionally
Easy and makes it all feel pointless it’s not very interesting to look at either even with all the PC graphics options set to Epic places like Bara door look drab and flat and the empty lifelessness of the merkwood stands out in an era of games where Lush flora and
Fauna has become the norm Golem’s model looks good enough including his surprisingly detailed wisps of hair and his mannerisms are well captured but other characters suffer from distractingly stiff animations and a haunting lack of facial expression the sound design however is strong too dangerous the raspy almost choking
Speech of Gollum is well acted as is the clearer and more timid smeagle side of his personality is my love it sounds exactly like someone who saw Andy circus’s performance in the movie trilogy would expect even small details like the clammy sound of gollum’s hands slapping on different surfaces as he climbs or
Runs or the reverberation of ringing bells in certain spaces stand out as authentic with impressive attention to detail but even if it looked and sounded uniformly spectacular Gollum would still feel pointless to play and that feeling turns to despair when the technical issues crop up on three different occasions
During this review levels needed to be fully restarted once because of an unfortunately placed auto save and twice because parts of puzzles were outright broken so despite the solution being evident there was no way to advance they weren’t fully game breaking problems because restarting fixed them but they were Spirit breaking playing through
Areas that were uninteresting the first time bordered on painful for a second go-round that never should have been necessary finally if for some reason you wanted to go through all of this again there are hidden Collectibles but they don’t offer any sort of rewards unless
You count this as a reward it just felt pointless to add to his sad horde of not so precious Treasures oh please build all their things with these always Nails the Lord of the Rings Gollum fails to provide a satisfying answer to the big wives why of all the interesting
Characters in The Lord of the Rings lore would anyone want to play an entire game as Gollum why would one trade the solid action of Prior games in this universe like Shadow of Mordor for busy work uninspired and frustrating platforming and bad stealth it’s not clear who this
Is for or what it was intended to achieve what is clear is that it’s not fun to play and not something to recommend to any but the most curious and dedicated Lord of the Rings fan dad dad smells like salvages for more fantasy to see a darkest dungeon 2 and The
Legend of Zelda tears of the kingdom and for everything else stick with IGN