The Lord Of The Rings: Gollum

[Foggy]

Originally Posted by Mavrick

This had me cracking up. The pre release vs the actual game haha

Genuinely can’t believe they use the default Microsoft Office font. This has to be some sort of money laundering scheme surely?

[Blu Lemmy]

It is getting torn apart that's for sure

[Zivouhr]

The Lord of the Rings: Gollum Review - YouTube

The Lord of the Rings: Gollum Review - The Final Verdict - YouTube

When most of the videos from the developer are promoting the music, voice acting, making of instead of actually showing off the gameplay, that's reason for concern IMO, as with this game.

I like the character Gollum from JRR Tolkien, though I'll wait for a heavy discount before giving this a potential chance to play.

Originally Posted by tcripe

Didnt think there would be AAA title worse than Redfall this year, but here we are lol

Daedalic Entertainment is probably more of a middle range developer, but never on the same grounds as Capcom, WB Games, Square/Enix, etc.

Daedalic Entertainment GmbH is a German video game developer and publisher based in Hamburg. They are best known for developing point-and-click adventure games. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daedalic_Entertainment

I looked through their games list, and didn't recognize any games.

They definitely tackled a cool property license to work with, but from the sound of the reviews so far, didn't hit the mark.

[Canada]

Gollum gets his own video game in frustrating new Lord of the Rings adventure

[Zivouhr]

I'm not sure I'm ready for a stealth-heavy game. I wish this was more free form so if you got caught, it wasn't Game Over every time from the look of it.

I'll wait on this one for awhile before buying it. At first, I was looking forward to it, hoping Gollum could freely wander the landscape. I'd be there right away if the game had that kind of vision, exploring all of Middle Earth. That could've been fun IMO. Gollum was a wanderer in the books too.

[Talal86]

Originally Posted by Mavrick

This had me cracking up. The pre release vs the actual game haha

in their defense, both are bad

[Zivouhr]

This game could be possibly entertaining at 19.99 and less, maybe 9.99 sounds reasonable. Just to see a different point of view for the Lord of the Rings story gameplay.

[Zivouhr]

I think this one started at 59.99 for the PS5 version, but is now selling for 39.99. That means the game sold really well and that they can afford to offer a sale price so soon after launch, like what happens with Ubisoft games. Or most likely, the game isn't selling enough units for the amount invested by the retailer, so in order to move units and not take a total loss, they lower the price to sell.

I'm thinking $19.99 to as low as $4.99 will get me potentially motivated to give this a try. It's mostly a stealth game, which I tend to avoid. I was hoping they were thinking outside the box of just telling a story, and giving the player real freedom, but that wasn't their goal clearly. Very strictly a linear story game in terms of map design.

[Zivouhr]

Gollum Dev Studio Gets Shut Down After Disastrous Launch, Publisher Kills All Internal Game Projects - YouTube

This guy reads an article that the Gollum studio was shut down and dispersed or something due to criticism from gamers/critics and poor sales overall, but not sure as they're working on fixes for the bugs. Some employees lost or switched to other tasks or jobs.

The Lord of the Rings sequel was canceled from this studio who had the rights.

[Zivouhr]

Major heads up for those on the fence waiting for a price drop on Gollum. The game in the US PS5 Store, is only 5.99 (base version) until August 1, 2024.

That is the price I was waiting for. Sold as a fan of Lord of the Rings/Hobbit. Digital version though. Good enough for that price.

EDIT: The game can be good at times, but just needs more work to polish it up from being too clumsy with certain things like jumping, going to the next ledge while hanging which doesn't work right like it should often, forcing the player to jump or do something else to get to a simple point right next to Gollum, resulting in frustration. I've fallen probably 200+ times in the game to Gollum's doom due to issues with the lack of polish in the game, which is purely a stealth game, sneaking around most times.

There's an interesting story if one wants to learn what Gollum's life was like as a prisoner, forced to work in the lava mines of the Orcs and Mouth of Sauron and his minions. Then try to help him escape.

The game has some very epic moments, and the story is actually good in my opinion, really filling in Gollum's story. The story lives up to The Lord of the Rings I'd say for the scope of Gollum's journey, which was never written for when he is must escape the giant underground lava mines of Mordor.

Some cool moments are when you have to choose either a Gollum or Smeagol choice, and then you have to convince the other one why.

The scenery is vast and magnificent in scope, though the gameplay is set on a very rigid, linear path most of the time. You are allowed to slightly wander the tiny areas when someone tells you to do something in the story, as there is no real timer most times thankfully.
Lots of good ideas, some impressive backgrounds at times (and other times lacking polish), an interesting story, decent voice acting, controls are generally okay. Lots of Tomb Raider grasping onto ledges and jump stunts. Gollum is a true athlete to survive these obstacle courses.

Animation is good though, backgrounds look good most times despite some unpolished parts sometimes.
The Music score is excellent and really adds to the game a lot.

Some confusing sections later in the game get frustrating for no good reason as the game no longer guides the player with no rhyme or reason and probably due to lack of time by the developers.

All that aside, there's a fun game in here when it's not sloppy, unpolished gameplay design.
If this released for $20 new at launch, I think it would have done better in its current rough around the edges, unpolished state of gameplay and some visuals like the faces, which have a plastic, PS3 quality to them.
Instead, they over-charged and closed off a lot of potential sales.

I would've given it a chance at $20 at launch. 5.99 is perfect though.
If I had to rate the game so far, I'd say it had the potential of a 4/5 game, but because major missions are very clumsy (see chapter 5 most of all so far), the game seems like a low budget title so should be at a low budget price. 3/5 for all the very good aspects the game has much of the time. The glaring issues drag it down a full point. Refine the issues, and this could've gotten more good reviews.