The Lord of The Rings has been a rich source for video games with many games based on the J. R. R. Tolkien property. The latest entry in this beloved franchise focuses on a well-known character but one who would not be people’s first pick to star in a game: Gollum. Developed by Daedalic Entertainment, best known for point-and-click adventures like their Deponia series and Ken Follett’s The Pillars of the Earth, Gollum was announced in 2019 and has now finally been released.
The Koalaty Critics are in agreement, this game is not worth your time or your money. Daedlic Entertainment have attempted to make an action-adventure third-person stealth game but no element of it is up to the standards expected of the franchise, or modern games in general. With each reviewer’s experience plagued by technical issues, it is impressive that they each powered through to the end to give the game a fair shot.
The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is out now on Playstation 5, Playstation 4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One and PC
Here’s what Australian critics are saying about the game.
KOALATY CRITICS – AUSTRALIAN CRITICS
Checkpoint Gaming – 2/10 (Bree Maybe)
The Lord of the Rings: Gollum uses a gameplay system very similar to the one we are used to seeing in Assassin’s Creed games. And while this flavour of climbing, sneaking, and stealth kills has become very widespread, Gollum, unfortunately, handles like the first games in the AC series. Messy, hard to control, imprecise. It feels like the first tentative steps of a new genre, not one that has been prevalent in video games for over a decade at this point.
Player2 – D (Paul James)
In a world where Redfall launches with issues, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is in a less than satisfactory state, and The Last of Us Part I does some mystifyingly bad things on PC, this new title from Daedalic Entertainment, makes each of the aforementioned launch day disasters look relatively smooth in comparison. The Lord Of The Rings: Gollum is an absolute trainwreck, layered atop a pretty mediocre game to boot.
PowerUp Gaming – 2/10 (Jam Walker)
The Lord of The Rings – Gollum is every bit as twisted, nasty, broken and miserable as its protagonist. It is without doubt the most objectively poor and outright broken game that I have ever pushed through to completion. A patch has been promised for launch that may well alleviate some of the technical woes that plague the game, but no amount of fixes can pave over its utterly mediocre overall design. Spend your money on a second breakfast instead.
Press Start – 3/10 (Steven Impson)
A world that is exciting to explore and enjoyable to look at can elevate even the most mediocre of games. And yet, with all of Middle-Earth available as a possible environment, half of Gollum’s chapters are spent in a dull brown mine in Mordor doing prisoner work – every bit the dull brown trend that was tiresome in the Xbox 360 era. It makes the drudgeries you’re tasked with all the more mind-numbing.
WellPlayed – 3/10 (Zach Jackson)
The Lord of the Rings is no stranger to dragging things out (no one will ever convince me that The Hobbit needed three films), but LotR: Gollum is genuinely taking the piss clocking in at more than 10 hours. It just doesn’t have the gameplay legs to sustain that length, and it isn’t helped by some dated design – you’d be forgiven for thinking this is a remaster of a game from the PS2 or PS3 generation. It is a game where the gameplay revels in frustrating repetition and is devoid of creativity.
Koalaty Critics
Aggregator Score
