One game to rule them all, one game to find them, One game to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them. Out of all the installments of Lord Of The Rings video games, is Gollum the greatest of them all? Of course, the answer is no. While not exactly anybody's "precious", I do believe it should not be considered one of the worst games of all time.
In March of 2019, the studio Daedalic Entertainment announced a new game set in the majestic world of Middle Earth that will allow players to play as a character that I don't believe anyone really expected nor asked for; the wretched, slimy creature known as Gollum. After being delayed multiple times, Gollum was released with such a negative reception by players that it has now been given the title of one of the worst games to have ever been made. I may be in the minority here, but I still think Gollum has a bit of good to it, that fans of the franchise should indeed experience it for themselves, despite its faults. To be fair, yes, I have also made jokes at Gollum's expense without giving it a fair chance, and for that, I am truly sorry, well half sorry, that is. As a big LOTR fan, I owed it to my ten-year-old self, who originally fell in love with the series, to give the game a chance. So when I was able to snag the game for a pretty good price, I was determined to start and finish this quest…mission…thing.
With my expectations low from hearing nothing but terrible things about Gollum, I surprisingly came to realize that it is not all completely awful. Honestly, I wasn't sure if I was going to care too much about Gollum's story, but it caught my interest in a way that had me eagerly anticipating what would happen next. The story of Gollum is set after the events of The Hobbit and before The Fellowship Of The Ring. While on his quest to retrieve The One Ring from Bilbo Baggins and get revenge, he is captured and tortured by the dark lord Sauron, to whom he is forced to reveal its location, "Shire…Baggins!" (yea, that part from the movie). Now imprisoned in Sauron's fortress Barad-dûr, it is up to the player to guide Gollum, aka Smeagol, to freedom by undergoing countless sneaking sequences, solving tedious puzzles, and a ton of platforming. The graphics don't scream next-gen, as some cutscenes are a little rough, but at times, the world looks absolutely stunning, giving me the impression that this game could have taken place in the Peter Jackson films.
Unfortunately, that's about all I can say that is great about this game, as the rest of it was honestly disappointing. The one thing that bothered me the most was the controls. I swear most games on the N64 felt better to play than this game did. Trying to platform your character around the world of Middle Earth is like trying to pull teeth from a Balrog (best of luck to you). I believe I died more from accidentally jumping in a direction I didn't intend to than dying from the game's actual enemies. I could not believe that the game had the audacity to include its own achievement/trophy to make it through the game without dying once. I want to shake hands with anyone out there who has actually accomplished this feat fairly, as to me, it seems impossible due to the current state of the controls. The game also allows players to make certain decisions throughout the story as the split personalities of Gollum/Smeagol argue with one another. You have to persuade the other party to go along with your decision by selecting the best dialogue option given to you. Sad to say that it would have been pretty cool if not for the majority of your choices ending in the same overall outcome, making it seem like a complete waste of time.
At one point halfway through the game, I encountered a strange glitch where Gollum says a random line to one of the game's elves. Shortly after I died (due to platforming), and upon restarting from where I left off, I was greeted with the same dialogue being said with nobody around. I thought nothing of it until I came to find out that for the rest of the game, every time I got a game over and loaded my last checkpoint, Gollum kept repeating the same exact line from hours ago. It made me even more frustrated as the controls were consistently working against me, causing me to hear the same audio bit over and over again until I rolled the credits.
In the event that you thought any of this was bad, the game actually had a feature titled "Gollum hair simulation". I have no unearthly idea of what this is supposed to do or why it was even added. I toggled it off and on and honestly could not tell the difference between the two. But wait, there's more! The game had the stones to add emotes as paid DLC, why…just why? This isn't Fortnite; I'm not expecting Gollum to bust out and hit the griddy on Sauron's dead body. Instead of adding all these needless features, I wish they would have used that time to polish their game more and fix what bugs it had.
Sadly, the vast number of issues that plagued Gollum will cause most people to stray away from ever trying the game out. I strongly feel if you are a die-hard fan of LOTR, such as myself, you owe it to yourself to give it a go for at least the story. However, I cannot get behind paying full price for a game with so many lingering issues. If you are fortunate enough to pick it up from a sale at somewhere like Best Buy for ten dollars, as I did, I feel that is a perfect price for anyone who wants to give this game a chance.
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