The Lord of the Rings: Gollum

Imagine spending 50 dollars on a game and upon opening it the developers say “sorry”.
This game is like if EA released a new FIFA game where you get to play as the guy who sweeps the parking lot.
I love my wife. She'll be out browsing the store and just randomly decide to surprise me with a game. It's super cute, but she never checks reviews and isn't a gamer herself, so this was one of those games that she bought me on a whim. I’m starting to think she might not love me.
Golum looks like the unknown offspring of Doby from Harry Potter and Toby Mcguire. Definitely looks like he's addicted to a lot more than just the one ring.
The worst part is that 10 years from now, a niche video game Youtuber will post gameplay of this and the comments will be filled with people saying "deadass, this game was my childhood frfr" and we'll all know that their parents secretly hated them and expressed it by buying this game for them to play too.
This game makes you feel exactly like Gollum. Bitter, sad, broken, depressed and alone. It's a Gollum type game.
This game is brilliant and should be treated as such. The player slowly descents into madness and turns into a screaming creature that talks to itself in self hatred, just like Gollum. The inconsistent controls is just the game immersing you in Gollum's descent into madness. A masterpiece of immersion.
As a world renowned Tolkien scholar, I can confirm that Tolkien did in fact intend for Gollum to wall run but knew that the world wasn't ready for such a groundbreaking innovation so it wasn't included in the books.
Simply looking at Gollum's busted ass face model gives you all the information you need to know about whether or not you should purchase this game. Yet, despite all the justified jokes… I didn’t think it was half that bad. I know what you’re thinking, that’s the madness talking, but please hear me out.
I’m not saying it’s a good game per se, but the story really got its hooks on me and wouldn’t let go for weeks after I rolled credits. So much so that I made an essay to try and rationalise my thoughts. If anyone from Daedalic comes across this review, thank you for an exceptional story. And I swear I’m not a victim of self abuse.
I played the game inspite or maybe even due to the bad criticisms it obtained from players and reviewers. Without having watched any in-depth review of the game I can guess which parts of the game were not so well received and I want to give some arguments here why I stil think that the game can be enjoyable and is actually a pretty good game for what it was meant to be.
Let me start with the core gameplay, which is a combination of a platformer and a stealth game. In many cases Gollum has to climb on big structures like buildings, rocks or trees in order to reach a certain location in the level. While the way this works feels a bit clunky at the beginning, it gets more and more natural the longer one plays. There are frustrating moments here and there where one needs to repeat certain difficult sections over and over again until a jump or another action fits. But I think that the game is very forgiving with the player, because it has many automatic checkpoints, so that the amount of repetition is kept to a minimum.
I only experienced a few cases where I felt like the game could have been more generous with checkpoints. For me the platforming parts of the game never got boring, because there were always cases where one had to investigate the environment in order to be able to find the next section. In addition, the different levels are very diverse and have some beautiful graphics as well, particularly in the woods by the elves.
The second big element of the gameplay are the stealth sections where Gollum needs to sneak past orcs or elves, sometimes also combined with platforming elements. To make this part easier, Gollum has the ability to look through objects to visualise enemies or other objects to interact with, very similar to Assassin's Creed. And this part was actually the most fun for me, because in many cases it was quite tricky to find a proper solution.
And as a third element of the gameplay there are few (I'd say) puzzles known from classical adventure games (which were the core expertise of the Daedalic development studio). Since here the objective sometimes was to find and collect stuff it was not very engaging most of the time. Because the yellow marker always showed where to go. And I think that this part of the game could have been made more exciting. If Daedalic would have made Gollum less action and more adventure it could have become a great game I think.
I still enjoyed Gollum, however. Because all the above mentioned game elements are woven into a story which gets more and more exciting the deeper one is in the game. Gollum must find his way out of the deepest areas of the realm of the dark lord and out of the impenetrable woods controled by the elves. All in order to be able to be free to find the thief who stole his treasure! And all while trying to figure out whether he wants to be “Gollum”or “Smeagol”. I must add it was utterly fascinating to see the struggle between Gollum’s two sides, and the revelation that it's actually more complex than one is evil and the other is not.
It honestly makes me kind of mad how much hate the game gets, when it genuinely has several aspects that are good or decent, like the story, enviroments and music. The story actually feels canon, which alone is incredible in todays landscape of always throwing source-material in the garbage. Mell is also honestly a great addition to the lore. If this had been released for the N64 or PS1, it probably would have been remembered as a cult classic. I'm someone who likes to play retro games from the NES to N64 era, even ones I have no nostalgia towards. Most of those games are janky and have either garbage gameplay or garbage story, but one of them usually redeems the other.
It's the same for this game, but people don't see it that way. Expectations are different today. It honestly just feels mean and heartless to trash this game so hard, when it's clear the devs actually did their best and were very passionate. I would never feel bad if EA had released something like this.
Kind of makes me afraid to ever release any fan-made work or indie game, because if you can't match a billion dollar studio, it's better to just not try I guess.
So, despite all the jokes and the hate… I recommend it. If you give it a chance you’ll find that despite all the bashing for this game, the story and the decisions you had to make are way more interesting than you ever could’ve expected. Perhaps wait for a sale. I'm ready for a sequel but something tells me we're not getting one lmao.
7/10

It used to be a badge of honour to say "I beat Dark Souls". Now it is a badge of honour to say "I beat the Gollum game".
Still, if you can live with the extreme jank, and get it on a big sale, there is some cool stuff here.
There are moments of frustrating gameplay. There are some action sections you will need to try several times and push past.
Mostly though it's pretty easy and linear, so it just felt like playing through a strange story. It's nice sometimes to play a straightforward adventure game like this. The second half is definitely a lot better than the first half. I was genuinely curious how the situation of the elves and Mell would work out, so that kept me going.
The graphics aren't great but there are some nice looking areas and lots of cool ideas, I think they just lacked the resources to realise them. The weird costumes are a highlight. The music is also good and there is some fine voice acting.
Mainly it's just very weird, in a way that few games are, which has its own charm.
If you are curious, I would wait for a big sale so there is low-risk, and try it.

Solid good time. I enjoy LOTR but I'm not a die hard fan by any means. would I buy it while it was on full price? no absolutely not. but on sale it was worth the price for sure. the game lasted me about a week. some parts, especially at the beginning, dragged on for too long. but it was really nice to play a game that I could play for 15 minutes at a time here and there and actually make progress. I'm too old and have a family to have all night gaming sessions now so being able to find time to play and it be meaningful time spent was refreshing.
I never had the game crash and ran just fine, never running into moments where the game didn't work.
There were times the puzzles stumped me and i stopped for the night and had to come back the next day. but they weren't too easy to where it felt like i was going through the motions and they weren't too tough to where i had to look up how to solve it. honestly looking back besides the slower parts that bogged it down, i can really see where the design of the game was going and what their intention was, and you can just feel the higher up corporate strain in the game while you play it, it honestly has so much potential but i think the suits got in the way of taking it from a 8/10 at launch to a 2/10.
the suits expected the next Skyrim, but if you except it for what the workers who made the game made it to be. its a great time.

more you play, the worse it gets and it's so bad that I kind of like it (especially the dying sounds)

Diary type review, updated as I play:
6.1.25
This seems like a prison simulator in a pipe. There is not much freedom, at least not where I am right now. The orcs are running a tight security and the player has to do exactly as told. The split personality choices are alright and fit the character, but I cannot say how much these affect anything unless I make a 2nd playthrough. Going with Smeagol choices mostly. Character is a somewhat hard to control, Smeagol accelerates to full speed very quickly and sometimes it i confusing, it feels like the camera cannot keep up or points in the wrong way. I did read other reviews and people are unhappy on what you can do with the little guy. He is weak, there isnt even an attack button. He can strangle from behind and throw rocks to distract NPCs. Perhaps more options later.
As a player who likes thief type games, this has been alright. I'll update this when I get more progress.

I think I must have been playing a different game than the one that has gotten all the bad feedback. This game was not nearly as bad as the internet seems to claim. Heck, it's not bad at all, it's actually a pretty fun game. I wouldn't say it's a great game by any means, but it's a fun little platformer that I think anyone could enjoy. I especially think Lord of the Rings fans will enjoy the narrative about Smeogol. Maybe it's because I played the game in 2024 after the patch came out, but I seriously doubt the game was improved that much by the patch. I'm guessing a few influencers played it and didn't like it and then a bunch of people jumped on the bandwagon.

I enjoyed the game quit a bit. It's fun to run around as Gollum. The feeling of playing as a crawly type creature instead of a bipedal is a bit refreshing. The platforming is reminiscent of the first Crystal Dynamics Tomb Raider games (Legends, Anniversary, and Underworld), maybe that is too old school for some, but not for me.

I'll admit... I bought the game because of the negative hype. I just had to see what kind of dumpster fire this game was, and I guess I was surprised how wrong the internet was. (Either that or the patch seriously improved the game.)

I will grant that the game has some flaws. Gollum looks funny, that's true. It wasn't really what I would expect him to look like, but it's nothing you can't get used to it. I've always made the argument that whether or not a game is fun is more important than the graphics. And this game is fun. Another flaw is Gollum's basic jump feels weird. He just springs into the air like six times his height. It doesn't feel quite right, but it does seem like that was to account for the platforming, and the platforming is fun, so I can accept some suspension of belief for that.

I did hit quite a few bugs. None of them made the game unplayable. The only real frustrating bug I encountered was an objective marker that didn't trigger a cutscene and I was stuck, and restarting the checkpoint didn't solve it. Instead I had to restart the whole section of the chapter, which was very annoying but it only happened once.

I'll even concede that there are some bad platforming sequences in the game. There were a few times that I found myself getting killed over and over in a few locations because it wasn't quite clear what path I was supposed to take. But that's true of any game, and this game wasn't even a particularly bad offender. Checkpoints are also super frequent (maybe too frequent) so making mistakes doesn't generally set you back very far.

I will say that the narrative is a bit weaker than I expected. The plot seemed to jump around a lot, sometimes a few hours, sometimes years at a time, and why Gollum ended up where he was wasn't always clear. It also wasn't as hard hitting as I thought or hoped it would be, but it was okay, and it was interesting.

That's pretty much all I can say in terms of flaws. Nothing bothered me that much. I can't fathom why the developers put an apology on the Steam page. The only explanation I have is that this is not the same LotR: Gollum game that so many people have been hating on, or that the patch really did fix all the major flaws with the game (again, I say I doubt that, the patch notes do not read like the Cyberpunk 2077 v2 update notes).

So I guess I'll end by saying, give the game a try. Ignore the internet and give it a try and decide for yourself if you like it. It's probably not for everyone, but I'd imagine most players will find some enjoyment in it.

I'm so glad I got this game and played, despite the negative reviews! I actually really loved it. I enjoyed the story, music, scenery, getting to know the different characters and wondering what will happen...I definitely got attached to a couple of them! Even if gameplay is repetitive, as a lot of negative reviews mentioned, the environments and characters keep it interesting. I'm grateful most of the glitches have been fixed, and although I did also get stuck in a death loop in an early level, I just had to restart the level and keep trying not to fall and finally made it! I didn't experience any more issues after that one. It was a fun game and as an avid Middle Earth fan, this was a really interesting perspective from Gollum/Smeagol and made me appreciate him more. I feel bad for the game developers, to have gotten so many harsh reviews! Loved it.