We have a copy of the game The Lord of the Rings: Gollum since last Monday, May 22, it reached us several days before its release, but there is no review of this title on PS5. We are going to tell you the sad story of our experience with this work based on the books of JRR Tolkien and the reason why we do not have a review of this title.
We cannot deny that we were quite curious to discover that Daedalic Entertainment —mainly known for their work on graphic adventures such as the saga landfill and the adaptation of the book by Ken Follet The Pillars of the Earth— was working on a game starring one of the most unexpected characters in The Lord of the rings. Gollum, despite his ugliness, has a certain charisma and has been well loved by the public even before the Peter Jackson movies arrived, but we didn’t imagine what a modern game with him would be like.
The trailers and images we’ve seen since your ad more than four years ago they did not convince us. Gollum looked strange—even stranger than usual—and we found the graphics disappointing. Still, we remained intrigued by the promise of “a unique stealth system” and the supposed narrative importance of the protagonist’s split personality. We would have to decide whether to go the “Gollum” path or the “Smeagol” path at certain plot points and that could be very interesting. In addition, the plot would focus on Gollum’s escape from Mordor, which had not been previously detailed.
When we finally received the review code, we installed The Lord of The Rings: Gollum and several of its DLC on our PS5. We started playing and before we could learn Smeagol’s twisted moves we saw the screen that would define our experience with this title.
That’s how it is. It had not been five minutes since we started playing when the game crashed., as they say. We didn’t give it too much importance. Sadly it is common for this to happen with some games nowadays and although it can be annoying, a single crash does not define the experience with a game.
Thirty minutes later, The Lord of The Rings: Gollum it had ‘crashed’ four times on our PS5. In that time we had barely been able to play 10 minutes.
We must clarify that in the email we received along with the review code, they warned us that we could have this kind of problem and said that the next day there should be a patch that would solve them. We waited until Tuesday and the “launch patch” of the game was indeed available. We installed it and finally got ready to experience Gollum’s game and start preparing our review.
It wasn’t 20 seconds before the game crashed again.
We immediately contacted a representative of the game distribution company for Latin America. She told us that they were aware of the issues and that “some reviewers had managed to fix the issue by uninstalling and reinstalling the game.” Of course, we try it right away.
At last things seemed to work out. We were able to make some progress during the first section of the game, where we have to chase a bird and end up stalking some orcs. We got to know the stealth systems of the game, which were quite basic, and the mobility of the protagonist. We were surprised by the good work of the voice actor behind Gollum, who doesn’t sound like Andy Serkis but does give the nasty creature quite a bit of personality.
We also found out in confusion that Gollum apparently has the strength to hang orcs and that… we didn’t find out anything else because the game crashed again.
This situation was getting desperate. The state he was in The Lord of the Rings: Gollum made it impossible for us to write a proper review of the game. We decided to wait. Surely a new patch would arrive soon. But the launch day came and there was no update. The next morning didn’t come either. The game continued with the same problems.
By that time, several reviews of the game had already appeared, some even made with the PS5 version. Many of them mention constant ‘crashes’ and the impossibility of finishing the game in that state.
Something like this had happened to us before. When we reviewed the PS4 version of The Ascent we encountered constant ‘crashes’ that also prevented us from completing the game. But in that case we did get to experience several hours of gameplay and felt comfortable talking about all of its features and giving it a score despite the issue. That is not the case Gollumbecause its problems have not allowed us to get a clear idea of what the game is really like.
The truth, everything seems to indicate that it is not a good game. The graphics, animations and the brief experience we had playing the game did not leave a good impression on us. Reviews from other outlets have been overwhelmingly negative, making it the worst reviewed game of 2023 on Metacritic.
The developer studio He has already published the traditional statement on social networks apologizing to the players for the state of the game. In this they say that they are listening to all the comments of those who have had problems with the title and that they are already working on patches to solve them. They don’t say what date these fixes might start arriving.
It is possible that these patches will eventually make this title playable. By then maybe we can give it a try and write an honest review. For now it is impossible for us to have a review of the Gollum game.
What we can tell you for sure at this point is this: We do not recommend you buy this game, no matter if you are a fan of The Lord of the rings and of this character.
