The Lord of the Rings: Gollum released yesterday, and the reviews are nothing short of embarrassing for the developers. All the major gaming reviewers have brandished it bad, some even going to the extent of calling it the worst game of the year.
Gamespot has given the game a 2 out of 10 rating, and so has GamesRadar. Eurogamer, however, has given it only 1 out of 5. The Guardian has called it:
“A derivative, uninteresting and fundamentally broken stealth action adventure that fails to capture anything interesting about Tolkien’s fiction.”
As all the promos and the fully leaked walkthrough of the game suggested, LOTR: Gollum is a stealth-action game. The quality of graphics had already failed to impress people in the officially released trailers and footage, however, once the reviews started coming in, it was obvious that the game had missed the mark by miles.
While some admired certain platforming levels and puzzles in the game, the overall quality of the narrative as well as gameplay failed to amuse. The review for IGN claims,
“Even if it looked and sounded uniformly spectacular, Gollum would still feel pointless to play, and that feeling turns to despair when technical issues crop up.”
The character design of this very famous Tolkien character also seems to have come off as monotonous and simple beyond reasoning in LOTR: Gollum. Smeagol and Gollum, two polar personalities sharing a body, were lauded in the book and movie adaptations as one of the most complex and narrative-rich personas for Middle Earth. The sweet simplicity or Smeagol and cold brutalness of Gollum – denoting epic struggle between a person’s ego and superego – seems to have been lost in the myriad.
The only things that have managed to impress gamers seem to be the game’s sound design and the character animation of Gollum. Other than that, all the reviews have complained about various glitches, barren open world that fails to mesmerize, lack of detailing in various iconic places from Middle Earth, inability of LOTR: Gollum to offer any combat mechanics, and the pointlessness of roaming around to find collectibles.
Overall, LOTR: Gollum seems to be a thoroughly boring game that some reviewers claim has the same feel and gameplay experience as any stealth-action game that’s at least a decade old. It would be safe to assume that this game will be forgotten amidst all the exciting titles coming out this year.
