The Lord of the Rings: Gollum Review – Flawed Premise

At occasions, an occasion or character could be profoundly impactful to its originating fiction, however not the suitable selection for a devoted highlight mission of its personal. It’s laborious to think about a stronger working example than The Lord of the Rings: Gollum, a sport that basically misunderstands the enchantment of its supply franchise, specializing in a personality who, by nearly any measure, is the improper selection for a lead. That stated, it’s not unattainable to think about the sport which may someway have made the weird premise click on. This isn’t that mission; like its depressing and piteous lead, this sport is greatest prevented in any respect prices.

Gollum tracks the story of the titular fellow within the time interval between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, principally throughout his slavery and misuse in Mordor and the associated escape to pursue his treasured ring. With its drab colours, concentrate on merciless and unappealing characters and chore-focused gameplay, it feels at odds with many of the core tenets and themes of Tolkien’s fiction. Even stripped of its connection to that vaunted legendarium, the storytelling is poorly paced, meandering, and infrequently incoherent. A promising exploration of the dichotomy between the Gollum and Smeagol character initially appears compelling however is rarely leveraged in a significant means. 

Gameplay is break up mainly between old style linear traversal sequences and clumsy, uninteresting stretches of stealth. In navigation of the levels, the leaping is imprecise, levels are poorly structured to speak the place you possibly can go, and the digital camera is unwieldy, or generally even damaged, flipping completely the other way up whereas climbing or refusing to rotate to view the following obligatory bounce. I died repeatedly and incessantly to jumps that ought to have been simple or mistakenly guessed the place the following platform could possibly be reached. The one small blessing is frequent checkpoints to melt the blow of the limitless repeats.

Whereas horrible, I longed for these platforming sequences each time the sport switched to one among its plentiful stealth sequences. In contrast to any fashionable stealth sport, Gollum has no fascinating methods or instruments to complement these passages. As an alternative, the slippery protagonist can solely glide between the shadows previous immeasurably silly guards, alongside paths upon which it’s laborious to know whether or not you’ll be seen. No sense of mastery or management over the setting emerges. Once more, respawns are fixed. Each time the sport requested me if I wished to reload to the final checkpoint, it was a power of will to proceed.

Technical issues and poor implementation abound. Sound mixing typically makes voices laborious to listen to. Character faces (excluding Gollum) are poorly animated or under no circumstances. Onscreen figures transfer in excellent synchrony with each other, like one thing seen in early PS2 video games. Textures are muddy and lack element. Greater than as soon as, the sport demanded an goal that didn’t perform or seem and didn’t respawn upon a checkpoint restart; solely redoing all the degree would repair the issue.

I continuously struggled towards the controls, digital camera, and goals as they had been introduced. And nothing concerning the story or characters of The Lord of the Rings: Gollum gives purpose to push previous the frustration. As a longtime fan of Tolkien’s fiction, it’s potential that I preferred the sport even much less for the way in which it appeared to misuse the supply materials. It’s laborious to have a extra damning indictment than to say that this Gollum sport isn’t for followers of The Lord of the Rings, however right here we’re.

 

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