The Lord of the Rings: Gollum Reviews
The Lord of the Rings Gollum is a game that has a lot of technical issues that also ultimately drag its presentation back. However, it still is a charming game in its own way with its setting, writing, and some incredible environment design that can catch your breath at times. This game is a cautious recommendation for players that aren't Lord of the Rings enthusiasts.
The Lord of the Rings Gollum is a game that came out of time. the title almost never convinces in any of its aspects, resulting in many parts frustrating. the game optimization itself never manages to be stable making it difficult to play.
Review in Italian | Read full review
The Lord of the Rings: Gollum tries to be a respectful homage to Tolkien’s masterpiece. Unfortunately, it’s expressed through buggy, unpolished, and not very interesting or enjoyable gameplay. Gollum is a fascinating and complex character, but makes a poor protagonist for an action game. Only ravenous fans of Tolkien will want to come near this game, and then only if they have a very high tolerance for crashes, bugs, and disappointment.
Much like the namesake character himself, The Lord of The Rings: Gollum couldn't be saved from what it became. Frustrating platforming coupled with boring gameplay and cheap ways to die make any experience hard to play. Unfortunately, the intriguing setting and lore exploration can't come close to overshadowing the game's fundamental issues.
The Lord of the Rings: Gollum has the ghost of good ideas sprinkled throughout, but they're woefully hindered by dated graphics; stiff, wonky controls; endless bugs, glitches, and crashes; and in-game gimmicks that fail to live up to their lofty ambitions. King Theoden sums it up best: “You have no power here.”
The Lord of the Rings: Gollum doesn’t do anything fun or interesting like similar (better) games like A Plague Tale: Innocence and Requiem. It’s hard to say if even the most loyal Lord of the Rings fans would actually find something worthwhile here. Considering good Lord of the Rings games exist, this one feels incredibly out of place.
The Lord of the Rings: Gollum fails to live up to both the Tolkien name and its own potential. From exhausting, repetitive gameplay to a poorly constructed narrative, this is a piece of Middle-earth you should never explore.
The game is not very good and unfortunately quite boring. We would have liked something more epic on a saga like the Lord of the Rings. It's a pity, especially since the game is full of bugs as it is.
Review in French | Read full review
The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is often a nasty fried potato, even for great Lord of the Rings fans.
Review in German | Read full review
Perhaps it’s thematically fitting that the game itself is such an oddball outlier that’s been met with cruelty and misunderstanding since its announcement. There’s poetry to that, but it didn’t make my 11-hour playthrough any more enjoyable.
We were very sorry not to give at least enough to The Lord of the Rings: Gollum. But the limits are too many. The portion of unpublished history is not up to Tolkien's saga and the playful phases are inaccurate and obsolete.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Gollum just feels so shockingly old hat—a disheartening collection of mechanics that, at best, bring to mind one of the lesser pre-2013 Tomb Raider games and, at worst, suggest leftovers from the N64 bargain bin. Every success involves wrestling the loose controls, unhelpful camera, and iffy collision detection into submission against an ever-increasing wave of bugs and glitches, only some of which have been fixed by the game’s Day One patch.
I was looking forward to, at least, a delivery that met the minimum quality of this generation, even knowing that Gollum was not going to offer us the adrenaline that we can get from other characters mentioned above, for example. But it has not been so, The Lord of the Rings: Gollum needs a lot of work if it wants to position itself as a decent delivery.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
I struggle to think of a positive experience over the thirteen-odd hours I spent playing this game. Gollum is uninspired and dated and The Lord of the Rings fans deserve better than this.
The Lord of the Rings: Gollum has the features of a solid „middle of the road” game. Unfortunately, that’s not the case here. The game is tiring, and I really wish this Gollum had a chance to return – with all his dialog lines, sarcasm, and the Smeagol persona – in a different, much better game.
Review in Polish | Read full review
The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is a great game for hardcore Middle-earth fans, but an experience that didn't do Gollum's character justice.
The Lord of the Rings: Gollum was a bad idea on paper and is an even worse as a game now that we can play it, with a dull and boring plot and a gameplay formula that feels too old to be real in 2023.
Review in Italian | Read full review