The Lord of the Rings: Gollum Review (garbagebagboy)
I wanted to like this game, I really did. Hitting the points on the developers game description;
The Untold Story:
You get to play as Gollum, though you'll be spending most of your time trapped in the gloomy dungeon of Barad-Dur. While this may sound entertaining, you mostly run around doing "tasks" for your slavers. The story telling is very flat and every interesting character gets booted before you learn anything interesting.
Action and Stealth:
This game has a bit of both, and they're both terrible. The "action" is sneaking up behind characters and holding a button to strangle them to death. This could be an interesting mechanic, but it's not very well implemented, and isn't used a significant amount. The stealth is as basic as stealth could possibly be. Stay in the dark areas, stay out of line of sight. That's about it. If you get spotted, go to a dark area, and your pursuers will be overcome with sudden onset amnesia.
One Character, Two Personalities
This is a cool concept that doesn't seem to have any bearing on the game at all. You get to make choices as either Smeagol or Gollum, which sounds great on paper. There is a small system where you have to "convince" one side that it's the right choice, but seeing as I've never failed it or even see a way of failing it, it doesn't add anything to the game besides some dialog choices.
Bugs
This game has them, and sadly not just the ones you pick up off the ground to recover your health (another thing I've never bothered figuring out how to do since you respawn with full health, and you will be respawning often). You will die from the jank climbing mechanics semi-consistenly. I have encountered bugs that have done everything from disconnect my controller to continually spin my character in place, not allowing me to move.
Graphics
They aren't great, but the worse offense is the character design. Whoever decided the orcs should wear 30 gallon vases as armor needs to be sat down with a licensed therapist and asked to explain their life choices. The design of the other characters isn't much better, though passable. The old king you meet in the first half of the game has a beard with more movement and emotion than the rest of the NPCs and makes for some accidentally hilarious cutscenes.
Overall
I'm going to play through the whole game for no reason other than my love for LOTR, Gollum, and my interest in Daedalic's take on the story. This is not a game I would recommend to anyone trying to do anything other than that. I wish this were a short 30 minute movie rather a game.
Sorry Daedalic. I can't picture how you plan to fix this game because patches and bug fixes won't cut it, and considering I imagine the revenue from this game will be right around $0, I can't imagine you will actually bother trying to fix it, even after your promise to.