Lord of the Rings: Gollum has naturally generated a lot of interest as it approaches its first release date on other platforms in May, with a planned Switch release later this year. Fans of LotR and the work of JRR Tolkien were eager to see how developer Daedalic Entertainment would make a game based on such a beloved character, and lines to test the demo at PAX East were hours long by the weekend.
We had a chance to play a roughly 30-minute gameplay demo of the PC build, and it’s a classic ‘mixed bag’ — we saw some promising elements as well as some obvious opportunities for improvement.
After finally getting our hands on it after waiting, we were initially held back by a game-breaking bug that appeared the moment we started playing. A bit worrying. As the game progressed, it was clear that resources were invested heavily in certain areas, including some impressive voice acting, but not so much in other areas.
The game seemed to struggle with even the smallest tasks, such as sprinting, and had frequent lags and framerate drops that somewhat spoiled the LotR magic we were hoping for. The game struggled with performance issues during the demo, often dropping frames and popping up with the simplest of tasks like sprinting or jumping. While the narrative was solid during cutscenes, character animations were often poorly timed and clunky, and felt dated for a game built using the Unreal Engine.
While we only tested the gameplay from the first chapter — which mostly focused on tu torials and walkthroughs — it took place in a fairly uniform setting, while feeling relatively unpolished and lacking in detail. From what we’ve seen in trailers and promos before, the environment art generally seemed pretty nice (see the latest trailer above for a reminder). Unfortunately, our PAX East demo looked very different from the cinematic announcements we’ve seen in terms of performance and graphics quality:
Other chapters were available for the demo, and while we didn’t have time to get to them, from what we saw, the environments seem to get more and more appealing as the game progresses. Hopefully this will show when the full version is released. On the other hand, if the upcoming chapters really up the ante in the environment department and stay true to the visual details seen in the announcements and promotional materials, we worry that the performance issues could only get worse in more complex environments.
The story is definitely interesting, and while the cut-scene animations had similar performance issues to the rest of the game, we were intrigued by the text and impressed by the strong voice acting that was very reminiscent of the movies. Andy Serkis’ performance from the film adaptations casts a huge shadow over any new interpretation of the character, of course, but this version worked well enough for us.
All in all, Lord of the Rings: Gollum has a lots of things that could absolutely be improved, and hopefully will be the case before its launch. For LotR fans who simply want to experience some new stories and beautiful environment art, Gollum might scratch that itch.
But even if we’re skeptical and assume its various issues will be ironed out before release, Gollum still feels like small potatoes compared to the vast, stunning fantasy worlds other games offer in 2023. If this PC version has already struggled with many from the frequent issues with the Switch’s ports, we’re definitely curious to see exactly how it will work when and if it finally makes its way to Nintendo’s console. For a game so close to release on other platforms, this demo felt incredibly unpolished.
What do you think of The Lord of the Rings: Gollum? Were you at PAX East and tried the game yourself? Let us know in the comments.
