The game
Why? This is the question I have asked myself over and over during my experience with The Lord of the Rings: Gollum. Why, of so many characters and events in Tolkien’s world, has Daedalic decided to focus on one we already know everything about and has already been explored in different media? Why take the platform mechanics of one if not two decades ago as a model, and make them the centerpiece of the entire game? Why, despite the numerous postponements, did the game come out with an indecent technical sector and a series of bugs so serious as to make it literally impossible to finish the game? Yes, you read correctly, but we will talk about this in detail shortly. As they say, let’s proceed in order.
MX Video – The Lord of the Rings: Gollum
The premises of the game aren’t actually bad: although, as mentioned, Gollum is a character widely explored by Tolkien in his books, the idea of a game that has him as the protagonist could still be intriguing, and certainly unexpected. In fact, the 2019 announcement left us quite taken aback, but there was curiosity, as well as a discreet hype. After all, we are still talking about a new game set in the world of Lord of the Rings, one of the most important IPs ever, and the recent successes of titles such as Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War have shown that Tolkien’s world still has so much to offer to the videogame medium. The temporal choice of the setting is also interesting, taking up one of the moments only mentioned in both the books and the films.
In fact, the game begins with Gollum a prisoner in Mirkwood after being captured by Aragorn, where he is interrogated by Gandalf about how he managed to escape from Mordor and where his treasure is. Through flashbacks we therefore have the opportunity to relive Gollum’s atrocious period of slavery and how he managed to survive and escape by doing what he does best, which is to exploit his agility, stealth and the ability to manipulate the people around him with lies. . Over the course of the more than fifteen hours needed to complete the game, however, we not only visit the prison camps of Mordor, but the story continues even after Gandalf’s interrogation showing us a totally new part such as the alliance with the rebel elf Mell to escape from Mirkwood. Daedalic then used a connection to the original work to give us a more detailed look at a story we already knew and to tell a completely new story. However, it is appreciable how this part still manages to fit well without distorting the canon of the Lord of the Rings, and the developers have also relied on the associations of Tolkienian studies precisely to be sure not to contradict any point of the original work.
The main feature of the protagonist, as we well know, is his double personality, and even in the game we can make choices and decide whether to indulge the more evil side of Gollum or the more innocent one of Smagol. Sometimes these are simple dialogues where basically it only changes whether the answer is rude or not, sometimes instead there are real crossroads that can change events, complete with an inner dialogue in which we have to convince the opposite personality that the choice made the best. An interesting system on paper, but which in practice does not really influence events, changing at most a few minor details but always bringing the plot back to the tracks decided by the developers.
Gameplay-wise The Lord of the Rings: Gollum presents itself as an adventure that mixes platform and stealth, and the main inspirations seem to be Uncharted and Styx. In fact, during the platform phases, the environmental suggestions that indicate where Gollum can hang seem to have taken weight from the work of Naughty Dog, while in the stealth phases you can hide in the shadows, crawl and distract your enemies by throwing stones just like the little goblin from Cyanide Studios . Granted, Gollum doesn’t have the same powers as creating shadow clones, however he can use Gollum’s sense to point out enemies, interactive elements, and better paths around the area. Stealth kills can also be accomplished by sneaking up behind enemies unnoticed, but Gollum can rarely indulge his killing spree, and for the most part pure stealth and agility are the only weapons available. There are no skills, experience points, levels or anything else: Gollum’s skills are the same from the beginning to the end of the game, with no variations. The only exception to there are the very rare moments in which we have to guide an ally by providing him with indications on where to go to retrieve objects or activate switches that are impossible to reach, or sporadic environmental puzzles that try to break the constant monotony of the experience.
From a technical point of view The Lord of the Rings: Gollum surprising, but in the negative. The game offers three options namely Performance, Quality and Quality + Ray Tracing. On Xbox Series X by choosing the maximum resolution you still get to 1440p, but the 60 fps are so unstable that they almost force you to choose the Performance mode by going down to 1080p, but at least with a fairly stable frame-rate, albeit with sporadic drops. Furthermore, the default HDR graphics settings look off on Xbox compared to other platforms, with a constant red filter effect that saturates the colors and makes everything much darker and less sharp, forcing us to manually recalibrate.
On the other hand, the English dubbing is good, even if unfortunately the original actor Andy Serkis did not lend his voice and interpretation to Gollum, but the substitute Wayne Forester managed the difficult task of giving a worthy acting to the character. For non-English speakers, the game localized in Italian in all texts and subtitles.
Amore
A good second act…
– The story of The Lord of the Rings: Gollum could not deviate too much from the official Tolkien material, and if the first part explores a phase of Gollum’s life that we already knew, with the second set in Mirkwood the developers have enriched the lore with a more interesting and engaging story. Of course, we are still not dealing with a masterpiece of writing, but compared to the first part too tedious both in terms of narrative and gameplay, the second almost seems like a different game. in fact, it is here that Daedalic has inserted a minimum of variety, wider maps and different solutions to reach the objectives, and even the rebel elf Mell manages to be at least a decent character.
I hate it
…but an atrocious first act
– A pity that to get to that part you have to spend the first 5 / 6 hours in Mordor, a real agony for both Gollum in the story and for the players in front of the screen. The first few hours are slow, boring and tedious, and all the limits of the game are amplified to the max. Considering that the first few hours are crucial to capture the player’s attention, The Lord of the Rings: Gollum it fails big making us overcoming this obstacle no mean feat. Most of the missions turn out to be completely useless for the story, and the feeling that they have been placed solely as a filler to increase the ever-present longevity. Were they dealing with missions that were interesting or fun to play, we could also pass over them, but our only thought is while we make them hope that they will end as soon as possible.
If you must copy, do it right
– Taking inspiration from masterpieces such as Uncharted is more than legitimate, but the Naughty Dog title is famous mainly for its history and graphics, certainly not for the platform sections, which however are well masked thanks to the cinematic cut and are only a part of the whole experience. The Lord of the Rings: Gollum instead it tries to emulate perhaps the weakest element of Uncharted by making it the main focus of the game, and totally missing all the other elements that made the Naughty Dog title immortal. The too guided and assisted platforming, with wooden animations that make Gollum hook to the holds like a magnet, and with an too generous margin of error at times. In fact, the game goes from one extreme to the other according to incomprehensible logic: sometimes Gollum almost teleports to hang on a ledge, while other times if you don’t hit the precise pixel, you fall into the void. In the same way, sometimes the path is all too obvious and signposted, other times not even Gollum’s sense suggests where to go, making us turn around at random until we come across the solution.
Artificial intelligence not received
– If platforming is not your forte The Lord of the Rings: Gollum, stealth is no less, indeed. Enemies, be they orcs, humans, or animals, must have serious problems with helmets, as their field of vision is far too limited. It doesn’t help that their routine literally consists of two movements to be repeated in a loop, and all it takes is a glance to understand their movement patterns and work around them without problems. Add to this that a minimum of shadow is enough to make Gollum practically invisible, and the challenge is practically nil. Even the distractions with the stones turn out to be almost useless, so much so that I only used them when the game necessarily suggested it as the only way to move a guard who wasn’t moving, but otherwise you don’t feel the need at all.
Technical sector of the First Era
– We have seen that Gollum was not an example of beauty in the cinematographic film, but his videogame counterpart is even more terrible. The character models (but not only) are static, sketchy, with flat textures that load lag and animations worthy of a puppet show. The art direction tries to save what the graphic power fails to achieve, and just a few glimpses of the Mirkwood manage to stand out, but in general there is very little to save. Truly one of the ugliest titles of recent times.
A Russian roulette
– If you really are masochistic enough to want to get to the end credits, arm yourself with patience and above all do it only if you feel lucky. The current state The Lord of the Rings: Gollum risks being literally impossible to complete, as happened for me. In fact, I was forced to watch the last chapter on YouTube, as a bug kept freezing and crashing the game always in the same place. This was the latest in a long series of technical problems that undermined my experience, but if up to that point between reboots, prayers and curses I had managed to go on, at some point I had to give up. Or maybe it was my Xbox Series X refusing to go on, making me realize it was time to make better use of my time.
Let’s sum up
The Lord of the Rings: Gollum an insufficient title from every point of view. Something good can be glimpsed in the second act, but it is still a drop in a sea of mediocrity and insufficiency that is not worth your time, and above all not worth the waste of an important license like that of the Lord of the Rings. If you really are a diehard fan and want to give it a chance, do it at your own risk, because if luck is not on your side you could find yourself with an expensive doorstop that is impossible to complete due to one of the many bugs that plague the game.