The Lord of the Rings: Gollum Review (Keegan)
The Lord of the Rings: Gollum will go down in history as one of the worst, most broken and most disappointing games released by a proper games studio in the past 20 years.
I've played worse £1 shovelware and random asset flips but I genuinely can't remember the last time I played a AA priced game this fundamentally awful. If it was a budget £15 - £20 full price game, I could probably overlook some of it less glaring issues but it's £43 with a £52 "precious" edition and I'm going to review it as such.
- The gameplay is shallow and extremely repetitive.
- The story makes absolutely no sense.
- The background visuals actually aren't that bad but the character models are straight out of an early 2007 PS3 game. Gollum himself is easily the worst model in the game for some reason.
- The voice acting is so-so it's not offensively bad or notably good for the most part... except Gollum. No offence to whoever did the VA but it sounds like someone down at the local pub trying a Gollum impersonation after a few pints.
- The game is 10-12 hours long, I'd argue about 90% of this "play" time is padding, 90%+ of this game is filler.
- The enemy AI is basic at best and brain dead at worse.
- Stealth gameplay is very mixed due to the inconsistency of the AI, sometimes you can sneak right past them while others they notice you exceptionally quickly.
- The climbing is horrible, at times broken and is sadly most of the gameplay. You WILL die while climbing a lot and it will absolutely be the games fault 9/10 times.
- Did I mention how horrible Gollum looks in LoTR: Gollum? Cause it really is something which needs to be seen to be believed.
- Bugs, Gollum has lots and lots of bugs, most are small like Gollum's model bugging out on death or refusing to grab a ledge while climbing and others are unacceptable game breaking issues. For example at the end of ch 8 I somehow missed the cut-scene trigger after returning from the haze and was stuck wandering around the grove for 20 minutes before reloading the checkpoint and then there's the mirror in chapter 9 which seems to be guaranteed to softlock Gollum in place every single time and it requires a work around to continue the game.
- The dlc is a disgrace, whoever decided to put elvish VA and the bloody lore compendium behind a paywall should be sacked.
There's probably more to complain about but Gollum is so mind-numbingly boring that I can't remember a lot of the game.
+ The schizo arguments between smeagol and Gollum are actually quite interesting, if it was more fleshed out and in a better game it could be good.
+ The checkpoints are very generous for the most part, to help balance how horrible the gameplay is and how often the climbing will kill you.
+ The 1st 2-3 hours the game is funny bad ... then it just gets bad.
2/10 but i'm going to take another point away for the unacceptable dlc practice.
1/10. Genuinely one of the worst games I have ever played.