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The Lord of the Rings: Gollum - Information Thread, update: Daedalic Entertainment closes development studio, cancels second LotR project

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cusideabelincoln

cusideabelincoln

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Posted
9 hours ago, best3444 said:

No way I bite on this unless it miraculously turns out to be something amazing which I highly doubt. 😆 

 

Everyone will be eating crow when the game takes a turn 2/3rds of the way in, and after all the sneaking Gollum acquires and puts on the Ring, becomes the new Dark Lord, and you get to wreck shit up.

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Commissar SFLUFAN

Commissar SFLUFAN

Posted
Posted

Game Information

Game Title: The Lord of the Rings: Gollum

 

Platforms:

  • PC (May 25, 2023)
  • Xbox Series X/S (May 25, 2023)
  • PlayStation 5 (May 25, 2023)
  • PlayStation 4 (May 25, 2023)
  • Xbox One (May 25, 2023)
  • Nintendo Switch (May 25, 2023)


Developer: Daedalic Entertainment

Publisher: Nacon

 

Review Aggregator:

OpenCritic - 43 average - 5% recommended

 

Critic Reviews

GamingTrend - 70 / 100

Quote

Just like Gollum, I'm a bit split. The Lord of the Rings: Gollum features a great story that adds to the lore, along with a terrific stealth system, but it misses the mark in other areas. A finicky and redundant platforming system, mixed with a dialogue system that lacks bite makes for a combination that drags the rest down. Gollum is always so close to The Ring, but ever so far.


Nexus Hub - 6.5 / 10

Quote

When I say I did not have a great time roaming around Middle-earth, it’s coming from a place of genuine disappointment and frustration – rather than as a result of any preconceived notions.


TechRaptor - 6.5 / 10

Quote

The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is a great game for hardcore Middle-earth fans, but an experience that didn't do Gollum's character justice.


Wccftech - 6.5 / 10

Quote

The Lord of the Rings Gollum is a game that has a lot of technical issues that also ultimately drag its presentation back. However, it still is a charming game in its own way with its setting, writing, and some incredible environment design that can catch your breath at times. This game is a cautious recommendation for players that aren't Lord of the Rings enthusiasts.


PC Gamer - 64 / 100

Quote

For all its many flaws, LOTR: Gollum is an oft-beautiful and oddly endearing adventure.


GAMES.CH - German - 60%

Quote

It's heartbreaking because the project is courageous and good approaches are recognizable. However, the technical problems are hard to ignore, as is the stale gameplay. Still, we think the game is worth a look for fans of the franchise, if only because of the story.


GamePro - German - 60 / 100

Quote

The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is often a nasty fried potato, even for great Lord of the Rings fans.


Shacknews - 6 / 10

Quote

There’s no doubt in my mind that Lord of the Rings fans will appreciate a lot of what Gollum is offering. It’s genuinely cool seeing such a fascinating side character step into the protagonist role in a story that further expands on a universe teeming with secrets to discover. It’s a bummer that there isn’t much else to write home about. A dull gameplay experience and technical hiccups make The Lord of the Rings: Gollum just as much of a polarizing experience as its main character.


GRYOnline.pl - Polish - 5.5 / 10

Quote

The Lord of the Rings: Gollum has the features of a solid „middle of the road” game. Unfortunately, that’s not the case here. The game is tiring, and I really wish this Gollum had a chance to return – with all his dialog lines, sarcasm, and the Smeagol persona – in a different, much better game.


Hobby Consolas - Spanish - 55 / 100

Quote

The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is a commendable game for Daedalic's effort to tell a totally original story in Middle-earth mixing stealth mechanics and platforming, but it makes water on almost all sides: imprecise controls, terrible AI, insipid narrative, outdated level design and graphics from another generation.


IGN Italy - Italian - 5.5 / 10

Quote

Plagued by several problems and with gameplay far from modern standards, The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is not the third-person adventure that we would have expected from Daedalic Entertainment. Except for the good characterization of the main character and for an overall appreciable plot, the new game of the German software house fails to be convincing and represents a wasted opportunity to offer the right amount of entertainment to all Tolkien fans who have a good passion for video games.


Try Hard Guides - 5.5 / 10

Quote

While LotR: Gollum seems to get all the important names and locations right, the feel and look of the Middle-Earth that many have come to expect isn’t there. The few short entertaining moments aren’t going to be enough to keep anyone’s interest beyond the first hour, with much of the game’s activities after that feeling like an ever-increasing chore.


But Why Tho? - 5 / 10

Quote

The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is a love letter to a flawed character that shares some flaws of its own. The care and love of Tolkien lore are quite obvious, but it doesn’t always mesh well with the disappointing mechanics and less-than-stellar gameplay.


CGMagazine - 5 / 10

Quote

The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is a great idea, but a frustrating experience. Non-Tolkien fans should not play this game, and none but the most hardened fans should.


GamingBolt - 5 / 10

Quote

Despite being presented as a lonely creature, Gollum gets more attention than he might deserve in The Lord of the Rings: Gollum. With average by-the-books platforming and stealth gameplay, there actually is a thoughtful and engaging story at the heart of Gollum. It's up to fans of the genre to decide whether time spent on ordinary gameplay is worth experiencing Gollum's history.


God is a Geek - 5 / 10

Quote

The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is littered with technical and gameplay issues that dampen the fact that there's a great story at its heart.


Spaziogames - Italian - 5 / 10

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The Lord of the Rings: Gollum was a bad idea on paper and is an even worse as a game now that we can play it, with a dull and boring plot and a gameplay formula that feels too old to be real in 2023.


The Games Machine - Italian - 5 / 10

Quote

The Lord of the Rings Gollum is a game that came out of time. the title almost never convinces in any of its aspects, resulting in many parts frustrating. the game optimization itself never manages to be stable making it difficult to play.


Tom's Hardware Italia - Italian - 5 / 10

Quote

The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is a confusing and unfocused experience. The game tries to be an adventure title with stealth mechanics but attempts to mix in a variety of other features that simply do not go together very well. This is a pity because Daedalic Entertainment tried, but failed to build a Gollum faithful to Tolkien's works, placing him in a narrative context that struggles to pick up pace, being really interesting only in the first few hours of play. Between a visual impact anchored to two generations ago and various technical issues, Nacon's ambitious video game is unfortunately a bitter disappointment that does not offer the proper value to the prestigious Lord of the Rings license.


PSX Brasil - Portuguese - 45 / 100

Quote

The Lord of the Rings: Gollum manages to appropriate the best features of one of the best and most complex characters created within an unquestioned mythology, but a limited aesthetic representation of the world surrounding it and sloppy movement systems prevent the the game from being as precious as it should be.


GGRecon - 2 / 5

Quote

It was always going to be tough to pull off a Gollum game, but there’s simply nothing precious about this amateur stealth adventure.

 


A general lack of refinement lurks in every shadowy corner of LotR: Gollum, a game disappointingly barren of interesting ideas or substantial gameplay. Even the most loyal Lord of the Rings fans will struggle through it. If you value your time, do yourself a favour and avoid it like the Eye of Sauron.

 


Gameblog - French - 4 / 10

Quote

The game is not very good and unfortunately quite boring. We would have liked something more epic on a saga like the Lord of the Rings. It's a pity, especially since the game is full of bugs as it is.


Gamer Escape - 4 / 10

Quote

Lord of the Rings: Gollum struggles under its own weight from the word go. Any benefit from a grimmer, more unvarnished look at the characters of Middle-earth from an atypical perspective is immediately undercut by a bevy of technical issues, clunky controls, unexciting game design, and stilted presentation at constant odds with the player.


GamesRadar+ - 2 / 5

Quote

Much like its title character, The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is compromised, inelegant, and a bit of an eyesore. To everyone except the most fervent of Tolkienites; you shall pass.


Hardcore Gamer - 2 / 5

Quote

The Lord of the Rings: Gollum could have ushered in a new era of The Lord of the Rings-based games. One that had the daring to fill in Tolkien’s gaps, but still showed respect for the source material. The Lord of the Rings: Gollum isn’t that game. While the story is compelling with a great performance from Smeagol/Gollum, the remainder of the game is a woeful mess. While Daedalic’s vision for Middle-earth is filled with artistic beauty, it’s altogether let down by a terrible technical presentation that’s far behind today’s standards. Ultimately, though, it’s the lack of polish and jankiness that is its undoing. From the myriad gameplay issues that bog down the simple mechanics to the mind-numbing crashes capable of hampering progression, there is little about The Lord of the Rings: Gollum that’s polished or enjoyable. The Lord of the Rings: Gollum crafts a compelling story around Gollum and Smeagol, but it fails to craft a polished, stable or enjoyable gameplay experience. Unfortunately, The Lord of the Rings: Gollum isn’t the Precious we’ve been searching for.


IGN - 4 / 10

Quote

The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is filled with dull stealth, bad platforming, and a pointless story, and does little to justify why anyone should take the time to play it.


IGN Spain - Spanish - 4 / 10

Quote

The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is a stealth, action and platform adventure that has some interesting ideas, but lacks cooking. A video game of classic structure whose gaps are evident both in the narrative, as in the playable, technical and aesthetic.


We Got This Covered - 2 / 5

Quote

The Lord of the Rings: Gollum has the ghost of good ideas sprinkled throughout, but they're woefully hindered by dated graphics; stiff, wonky controls; endless bugs, glitches, and crashes; and in-game gimmicks that fail to live up to their lofty ambitions. King Theoden sums it up best: “You have no power here.”


Inverse - 3 / 10

Quote

The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is a messy and frustrating action platformer set in Middle-earth. ... Most of the gameplay involves platforming and stealth, though neither works very well. Gollum is full of technical problems that make an otherwise unpleasant experience even worse, and the game’s boring story makes it hard to recommend, even to the most hardcore Lord of the Rings fans.


PCGamesN - 3 / 10

Quote

The Lord of the Rings: Gollum fails to live up to both the Tolkien name and its own potential. From exhausting, repetitive gameplay to a poorly constructed narrative, this is a piece of Middle-earth you should never explore.


Press Start - 3 / 10

Quote

I struggle to think of a positive experience over the thirteen-odd hours I spent playing this game. Gollum is uninspired and dated and The Lord of the Rings fans deserve better than this.


Twinfinite - 1.5 / 5

Quote

The Lord of the Rings: Gollum doesn’t do anything fun or interesting like similar (better) games like A Plague Tale: Innocence and Requiem. It’s hard to say if even the most loyal Lord of the Rings fans would actually find something worthwhile here. Considering good Lord of the Rings games exist, this one feels incredibly out of place.


WellPlayed - 3 / 10

Quote

With dated design, LotR: Gollum is a slow and tedious slog through Middle Earth that even the staunchest LotR fans will struggle to enjoy.


Eurogamer - 1 / 5

Quote

A strong sense of character is let down by poor controls, fiddly implementation, and bugs.


GameSpot - 2 / 10

Quote

Daedalic's long-delayed Tolkienian adventure is just as unlikeable and tragic as its namesake protagonist.


Guardian - 1 / 5

Quote

A derivative, uninteresting and fundamentally broken stealth action adventure that fails to capture anything interesting about Tolkien's fiction


PowerUp! - 2 / 10

Quote

The Lord of The Rings - Gollum is every bit as twisted, nasty, broken and miserable as its protagonist. It is without doubt the most objectively poor and outright broken game that I have ever pushed through to completion. A patch has been promised for launch that may well alleviate some of the technical woes that plague the game, but no amount of fixes can pave over its utterly mediocre overall design. Spend your money on a second breakfast instead.


Push Square - 2 / 10

Quote

The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is a broken mess of a game. There are barely any redeeming qualities to be found amidst what can only be described as a massive missed opportunity. There is some serious potential in a single-player linear Lord of the Rings experience like this, but with outrageously dated level design, clunky controls, a severe lack of polish, muddy and unimpressive graphics, and a dull story, Gollum completely misses the mark. As massive fans of the books, films, and games, it's sad to see that there is nothing precious about this experience.


Tom's Guide - 1 / 5

Quote

The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is an unwelcome throwback to the era of truly awful licensed games. It looks and plays like a movie tie-in game rushed out to meet a tight deadline. This is baffling as it was one of the first ‘next-gen’ games announced in 2019, and seemingly had a long production period. But even so, it’s a game that conceptually, visually, and technically screams out for additional development time. Patches and updates may squash the bugs. But with core gameplay so dull and lacking, I can't see a saving grace for Gollum.


TheSixthAxis - 1 / 10

Quote

The Lord of the Rings: Gollum was conceptually a game with some promise, but from what I've seen so far, it's a mediocre and messy experience that doesn't really come together into a cohesive whole. That is, of course, before coming to the bugs, the crashes and the game-breaking progression issues that make it impossible to complete at this time. Considering that I was actually looking forward to this, this one really stings.


ACG - Rent

Quote

"A mess from start to finish. This is truly tators."


Rock, Paper, Shotgun - Unscored

Quote

It's unfortunate, but The Lord Of The Rings: Gollum fails to expand the world of Middle-earth in any meaningful way. There are glimmers of something good(ish) in there, but it's suffocated by a disjointed story, awkward controls and dull stealth.

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  • Commissar SFLUFAN changed the title to The Lord of the Rings: Gollum - Information Thread, update: not-so-very-"Precious" reviews from OpenCritic posted
Spork3245

Spork3245

Posted
Posted
4 minutes ago, BloodyHell said:

Lol 40% 

 

Man, it must suck to work on a game like this and then watch the world trash it 😂 but they had to know, right?

 

Imagine making a game like this, knowing how it would probably sell, and then making a launch DLC for "Elven language" to nickel & dime the handful of people who are actually going to buy it.

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BloodyHell

BloodyHell

Posted
Posted
11 minutes ago, best3444 said:

 

Why do you care about reviews? :p

I don’t at all, but the people who work on the games have to. Usually their bonuses are tied to metacritic scores. It’s not about the numbers, the number is meaningless, but the reviews behind them are savage. Having your game savaged has to be soul crushing.

 

Also, you were complaining about a96 falling to 95, not 40.

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Best

Best

Posted
Posted
13 minutes ago, BloodyHell said:

I don’t at all, but the people who work on the games have to. Usually their bonuses are tied to metacritic scores. It’s not about the numbers, the number is meaningless, but the reviews behind them are savage. Having your game savaged has to be soul crushing.

 

Also, you were complaining about a96 falling to 95, not 40.

 

Lol I was being sarcastic when I had the sad emoji for the 95. Smh

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Commissar SFLUFAN

Commissar SFLUFAN

Posted
Posted

From Gamespot's review:

 

 

Quote

In my roughly 11 hours of playtime on "Performance" mode on a PlayStation 5, the game crashed over 120 times (yes, I counted; masochist, remember?), averaging about one crash every five minutes. After my 20th-or-so crash, I got the dreaded "save data corrupted" message, only to realize I'd lost half a day's progress upon reloading. In multiple other instances, game-breaking bugs--such as a companion I was charged with protecting instantly dying over and over again for no discernible reason--forced me to restart entire levels, losing significant progress. Finally, during an especially tedious and time-consuming puzzle, the crashes became too frequent to possibly make it to the next checkpoint in time. Determined though I was to get through to the end and make these setbacks feel worthwhile, I threw in the towel at 40% completion, defeated.

 

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Spork3245

Spork3245

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Posted

The first 5ish points in most video game reviews are based around “does it work” (ie: sound, controls, bugs, etc) the rest tend to be based on quality and fun. This isn’t the same for every review style but is typically there for the “6/10 is bad” IGN-style ones: it’s like how spelling your name correctly on the SAT nets you points. Most other media doesn’t have that technical aspect to think of or score in any meaningful way. So when a game scores this low it means it’s not only bad from a gameplay perspective, it’s a technical mess as well.

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  • Commissar SFLUFAN changed the title to The Lord of the Rings: Gollum - Information Thread, update: "Official Developer Apology" issued
Brian

Brian

Posted
Posted
Froehlich-am-Freitag-2023-21-Daedalic-Go

Gollum: Mit Flip-Flops auf den Schicksalsberg (Fröhlich am Freitag) - GamesWirtschaft.de

WWW.GAMESWIRTSCHAFT.DE
The Lord of the Rings: Gollum sollte auf die Image-Werte von Daedalic Entertainment und dem Games-Standort Deutschland einzahlen. Eigentlich.
Quote

First discovered by German games industry outlet Gameswirtschaft.de in the database of video game projects receiving a German government subsidy is a second Lord of the Rings game codenamed "It's Magic":
Description:
Daedalic is working on a new project that will transport the player into a lush world full of mythical creatures and magic. It tells a story from a character's perspective that has never been told before. The player discovers completely new regions and influences the events of the world within the scope of his role and his abilities. In his own way, he tries to influence the course of things and change the fate of the world. This project is aimed at avid fans of the fantasy story and 3D action-adventure genres around the world.

Projected release is August 2024, with a subsidy of 2.03M Euro. The rules allow devs to apply for a subsidy of up to 40% of the projected development cost.

The owners of the LotR IP better send a cease and desist letter before Daedalic does irreparable damage to the IP. :p

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Nokra

Nokra

Posted
Posted
5 hours ago, Brian said:
Froehlich-am-Freitag-2023-21-Daedalic-Go

Gollum: Mit Flip-Flops auf den Schicksalsberg (Fröhlich am Freitag) - GamesWirtschaft.de

WWW.GAMESWIRTSCHAFT.DE
The Lord of the Rings: Gollum sollte auf die Image-Werte von Daedalic Entertainment und dem Games-Standort Deutschland einzahlen. Eigentlich.

The owners of the LotR IP better send a cease and desist letter before Daedalic does irreparable damage to the IP. :p

 

Even just the title of that article is fantastic:

 

"Gollum: With flipflops on Mt. Doom.". :daydream:

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Spawn_of_Apathy

Spawn_of_Apathy

Posted
Posted
On 5/26/2023 at 2:46 AM, Bacon said:

I feel bad for GamingTrend for giving it such a high score :lol:


yeah that seems generous. Maybe they’re Gollum Stans and just couldn’t help themselves. 
 

On 5/26/2023 at 2:32 AM, Spork3245 said:

The first 5ish points in most video game reviews are based around “does it work” (ie: sound, controls, bugs, etc) the rest tend to be based on quality and fun. This isn’t the same for every review style but is typically there for the “6/10 is bad” IGN-style ones: it’s like how spelling your name correctly on the SAT nets you points. Most other media doesn’t have that technical aspect to think of or score in any meaningful way. So when a game scores this low it means it’s not only bad from a gameplay perspective, it’s a technical mess as well.


It’s like how you get SAT points for spelling your name correctly. Except in game reviews you get 50% of the score if you can get past the title screen. 

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