At instances, an occasion or character might be profoundly impactful to its originating fiction, however not the precise selection for a devoted highlight challenge of its personal. It’s exhausting to consider a stronger living proof than The Lord of the Rings: Gollum, a recreation that basically misunderstands the attraction of its supply franchise, specializing in a personality who, by nearly any measure, is the fallacious selection for a lead. That mentioned, it’s not unattainable to think about the sport which may in some way have made the bizarre premise click on. This isn’t that challenge; like its depressing and piteous lead, this recreation is finest averted 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 valuable ring. With its drab colours, give attention to merciless and unappealing characters and chore-focused gameplay, it feels at odds with a lot 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 sometimes incoherent. A promising exploration of the dichotomy between the Gollum and Smeagol character initially appears compelling however isn’t leveraged in a significant method.
Gameplay is cut up mainly between old school 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 digicam is unwieldy, or generally even damaged, flipping completely the other way up whereas climbing or refusing to rotate to view the subsequent obligatory leap. I died repeatedly and steadily to jumps that ought to have been straightforward or mistakenly guessed the place the subsequent platform may very well be reached. The one small blessing is frequent checkpoints to melt the blow of the countless repeats.
Whereas horrible, I longed for these platforming sequences each time the sport switched to considered one of its plentiful stealth sequences. In contrast to any trendy stealth recreation, Gollum has no attention-grabbing tips 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 exhausting to know whether or not you’ll be seen. No sense of mastery or management over the atmosphere emerges. Once more, respawns are fixed. Every time the sport requested me if I needed to reload to the final checkpoint, it was a pressure of will to proceed.
Technical issues and poor implementation abound. Sound mixing typically makes voices exhausting to listen to. Character faces (except for Gollum) are poorly animated or in no way. 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 the complete degree would repair the issue.
I consistently struggled in opposition to the controls, digicam, and targets as they have been offered. And nothing in regards to the story or characters of The Lord of the Rings: Gollum provides motive to push previous the frustration. As a longtime fan of Tolkien’s fiction, it’s doable that I favored the sport even much less for the best way it appeared to misuse the supply materials. It’s exhausting to have a extra damning indictment than to say that this Gollum recreation isn’t for followers of The Lord of the Rings, however right here we’re.
