At instances, an occasion or character could be profoundly impactful to its originating fiction, however not the proper selection for a devoted highlight venture of its personal. It’s laborious to suppose of a stronger working example than The Lord of the Rings: Gollum, a sport that basically misunderstands the attraction of its supply franchise, specializing in a personality who, by nearly any measure, is the unsuitable selection for a lead. That stated, it’s not unimaginable to think about the sport that may in some way have made the uncommon premise click on. This will not be that venture; like its depressing and piteous lead, this sport is greatest averted in any respect prices.
Gollum tracks the story of the titular fellow in the time interval between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, largely 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-targeted gameplay, it feels at odds with most 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 manner.
Gameplay is cut up mainly between previous-normal linear traversal sequences and clumsy, uninteresting stretches of stealth. In navigation of the phases, the leaping is imprecise, phases are poorly structured to speak the place you may go, and the digital camera is unwieldy, or generally even damaged, flipping totally the other way up whereas climbing or refusing to rotate to view the subsequent crucial leap. I died repeatedly and regularly to jumps that ought to have been simple or mistakenly guessed the place the subsequent platform could possibly be reached. The solely small blessing is frequent checkpoints to melt the blow of the infinite repeats.
While horrible, I longed for these platforming sequences each time the sport switched to at least one of its plentiful stealth sequences. Unlike any trendy stealth sport, Gollum has no fascinating tips or instruments to counterpoint these passages. Instead, 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 surroundings emerges. Again, respawns are fixed. Whenever the sport requested me if I wished to reload to the final checkpoint, it was a pressure of will to proceed.
Technical issues and poor implementation abound. Sound mixing usually makes voices laborious to listen to. Character faces (with the exception of 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. More 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 whole stage would repair the drawback.
I always struggled towards the controls, digital camera, and goals as they have been offered. And nothing about the story or characters of The Lord of the Rings: Gollum affords motive to push previous the frustration. As a longtime fan of Tolkien’s fiction, it’s potential that I favored the sport even much less for the manner 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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